Why is nobody even talking about the simple, efficient and effective solution?
For God’s sake. This is not possible. Is it?
We can put a man on the moon. We can talk to someone on the opposite side of this beaitiful planet; we can even see that person, moving, in real time. With less than 200 grams of metal, glass, and plastic in our hands, put together in a particular way by human ingenuity, according to the laws of nature. A mobile phone is applied physics. So is global warming.
Every child shown a visualisation of 2023 climate data against the past can see immediately that something is wrong. It’s simple physics. We can’t make a deal with the laws of nature.
Whether it’s surface temperatures, ocean temperatures, the melting of ice shelfs, or extrem weather events – all climate indicators in 2023 are beyond everything human kind has ever experienced. The earth energy imbalance is the amount of energy (measured in wats per sqm of earth surface) that should, but now cannot radiate back to space because of CO2 and the other so-called “greenhouse gases” in our atmosphere that absorb heat energy. This extra amount of energy that cannot escape is now equivalent to 1.35 million Hiroshima Bombs – each & every day. The surplus energy translates into the storms, the hail, the rain bombs, the floodings, the heat waves and droughts we have experienced in 2023, too many to count. As long as we keep burning oil the energy imbalance is increasing – meaning what we are experiencing is only the start.
Our civilisation is not ready for this. It is only a question of time before we’ll see what scientists call “multiple bread-basket failure”: staple food harvests are affected by heat, and/or drought, hail storms, and floodings. We are looking at global food shortages.
We have cheap and efficient technologies – wind, solar, battery costs are coming down rapidly. It is only a question of accelerating the market developments. Making fossils more expensive, renewables even cheaper: taxing fossil fuels. Yet… we seem to be unable to find a common path to replace the 19th century technology of burning oil, with something far more efficient and cheaper we already have: renewable electricity.
Meanwhile, 70’000 people are descending on Dubai for COP28 to squabble over a formulation they will sign before the leave again: should we (who?) at some point (how?) “phase down” or “phase out” oil/gas/coal? There will also be pledges for tripling renewables by 2030. That is nice, but since renewables are now so much cheaper than the fossil 19th-century technology, the market will do that anyway. We all know that that is not enough. Lesser developed countries are calling – rightly so – for more climate loss and damage funding. Unfortunately, that is alienating the “normal” people in the “Noth” and “West” who will be asked to bankroll this funding – people who did not wreck the climate by choice but simply by being born into a system running on fossils, people who have never benefited from the profits generated by and for oil fossil executives and shareholders and oil exporting countries. If that fund is not substantially covered by oil exporting countries and oil companies, it is understandable if other coutries are reluctant to contribute.
Whatever the exact outcomes of COP28 will be: it’s all about pledges that “someone” “should do” “somewhen”.
No how. No plan. No global framework or policy to put pledges into action. No framework for financing the transition that could save us.
The simple solutions are not even on the table: Taxing oil/gas/coal. Worldwide. And then use the revenues as climate cash: cash for the people, and to finance the energy transition.
