It’s politically impossible. Even if we do it, the resulting reduction in fossil consumption here will lower their price and cause them to be burned in developing nations. CO2 is CO2 and physics doesn’t care about politics.
Poor countries cannot afford the luxury of caring about the distant future and poverty is worse than most natural disasters. There is too much to be gained by exploiting cheap energy to undercut others on manufacturing cost. The rise of China is illustrative.
Game theoretically this requires an “all cooperate” scenario in a game whose defection payoff increases as more cooperate. Ask yourself the odds of that in today’s world.
The climate solution would be to pour massive amounts of funding and subsidies into every possible candidate for this, and into scaling and cutting the cost of the candidates that we already have.
We have to get some mix of solar, wind, nuclear, geothermal, hydro, batteries, etc. scaled to the point that it can beat coal and oil on the open global market. It has to be able to win on pure economics.
Reducing the cost of non carbon based energy to below the cost of carbon based energy is the only solution that will “take.”
Poor countries cannot afford the luxury of caring about the distant future and poverty is worse than most natural disasters. There is too much to be gained by exploiting cheap energy to undercut others on manufacturing cost. The rise of China is illustrative.
Game theoretically this requires an “all cooperate” scenario in a game whose defection payoff increases as more cooperate. Ask yourself the odds of that in today’s world.
The climate solution would be to pour massive amounts of funding and subsidies into every possible candidate for this, and into scaling and cutting the cost of the candidates that we already have.
We have to get some mix of solar, wind, nuclear, geothermal, hydro, batteries, etc. scaled to the point that it can beat coal and oil on the open global market. It has to be able to win on pure economics.
Reducing the cost of non carbon based energy to below the cost of carbon based energy is the only solution that will “take.”