Winn Dixie and Reddog, What do you propose to do about it?
United states emissions in the year 2000 were 6 gigatons and 23% of the world total. In 2021, our emissions were 4.7 gigatons and 12.5% of the world total. We cut our emissions by 20.8%, close to Europe's 22.4% over the same time period. Our success was due in no small part to substituting cleaner burning natural gas over coal.
In the same time, Chinese emissions increased from 3.7 gigatons to 12.5 gigatons, and Indian emissions increased from 1 gigaton to 2.6 gigatons.
https://edgar.jrc.ec.europa.eu/report_2022
China and India and other developing countries are continuing to add coal fired generating capacity.
The USA has very little control over the future of carbon emissions. China, India and other developing countries will determine what happens in the future. What are we going to do about that? Tell Indians they can't have air conditioning?
At present, wind and solar provide little in the way of base load electrical generating capacity. They only work when the wind blows and the sun shines. Maybe battery technology will change that someday. Or maybe not. The cost, environmental impact, and even carbon emissions required to produce all the steel, lithium, nickel, cobalt, etc. would be huge. Remember that there's no substitute for coking coal or petrocoke in steel production right now. It may not be possible to get to "0" net emissions unless we're willing to lower our living standards substantially. Or implement WD's population control strategy.
So how about getting base load capacity from nuclear you say? Well, that's unlikely to happen in the USA because of pressure from environmentalists and the courts. And, again, what difference will that make when U.S. carbon emissions are destined to be just a drop in the bucket, compared to developing countries, anyway?
We probably should spend more money on geoengineering research, like spraying sulfuric acid in the upper atmosphere. There are smaller steps too, like a new white paint that reflects 98% of sunlight so it doesn't heat the earth.
Bjorn Lomborg has written some good stuff on this topic. You start spending tens or hundreds of trillions of dollars to go to 0 net carbon emissions by 2040 or 2050 and you're going to crowd out a lot of other spending. We could eliminate world hunger and malaria with a small fraction of the money we'll be spending to get to "0" net carbon in the developed world.
If Bernie Sanders et al get their way it would basically end the oil and gas industry. I'm not sure whether Biden deserves to be in the same category. Certainly based on his campaign platform in 2020 he does. But his bark has turned out to be worse than his bite, due in no small part to political considerations (i.e. high gasoline prices) and the courts which, for example, caused him to call off his drilling permit ban on federal leases.
Do you understand yet??
