The “green meanies” have been working in this for 60 years and already won. And they cost us half a century of progress on decarbonization in the process.
What’s too late is decarbonization based on wind and solar. If everyone in the developed world had taken the same approach as France in the 1960s, the developed world would emit so little CO2 that the entire developing world could afford to come up to the same standard within the same total CO2 budget as today. We would have a decades longer runway to decarbonize the other aspects of the economy—construction, transport, etc.
Instead, what’ll happen now is that developed countries will take until 2040 or longer just to decarbonize their grids, and developing countries will cause global CO2 emissions to blow by every target on the way to a 4C increase in average temperature.
What’s too late is decarbonization based on wind and solar. If everyone in the developed world had taken the same approach as France in the 1960s, the developed world would emit so little CO2 that the entire developing world could afford to come up to the same standard within the same total CO2 budget as today. We would have a decades longer runway to decarbonize the other aspects of the economy—construction, transport, etc.
Instead, what’ll happen now is that developed countries will take until 2040 or longer just to decarbonize their grids, and developing countries will cause global CO2 emissions to blow by every target on the way to a 4C increase in average temperature.