Et maintenant, le miracle

The American Geophysical Union's latest position statement states that if global warming of "2 degrees Celsius warming" above the levels of the 19th century "is to be avoided, then our net annual emissions of carbon dioxide must be reduced by more than 50 percent within this century.”

World Climate Report blog explains why a 50-percent reduction in CO2 this century is just a pipe dream.

First, there is a direct correlation between rising population and rising co2 emissions of all kinds. So direct, in fact, that the graph since 1900 looks like this:



"Currently, global CO2 emissions stand at about 8,600 million metric tons of carbon (MMTC)." Half that is 4,300 MMTC. And the projected 2050 global population is expected to be just over 9 billion people.

"There are," report WCR, "only four ways to bring total global CO2 emissions (blue line) down below the target" of 4,300 MMTC by the end of this century.

One is to reduce the world's population to 4 billion. Ain't. Gonna. Happen. At least not short of a global war catastrophic beyond imagining, in which case CO2 emissions will be the very least of humanity's worries.

Which means that somehow, some way, we must try to break apart the blue and the red curves and send the blue one (CO2 emissions) downward, while the red one (population) continues upward.

There are three possible way to for this to happen. One is the immediate and massive build-out of nuclear fission power plants all around the world. The other two fall under the category “and then a miracle happens,” in other words, reliance on new technologies that are nowhere close to currently existing—the development of some highly efficient CO2 sequestration technique that doesn’t require much energy to run, or the development of a completely new method of producing energy that doesn’t emit greenhouse gases—something like nuclear fusion. Rest assured that each of these three solutions—widespread nuclear fission, CO2 sequestration, a new energy source—will be met with an outpouring of opposition like never seen before due to their inherent danger (on many fronts) and possible environmental impact. ...

The lack of a plethora of nuclear power plants in the works means that we are putting all of our eggs in the hope-for-a-miracle basket. Obviously, mankind will someday have to rely on a different energy source than fossil fuels, after all, they are in finite supply. So in the long run, if not sooner, a new type of energy production will be developed. One of these eggs will hatch, it is just a matter of whether it will hatch in time to drive CO2 emissions below the target by the year 2100.

Notice the things that didn’t make the list of possible ways to separate the blue line from the red line, namely, expansion of solar or wind technologies, burning our food rather than eating it (i.e., ethanol production) and conservation measures. Ironically, these are the primary solutions being proffered. Check out any “10 things you can go to stop global warming” lists or read through proposed congressional legislation to see for yourself. Consider that if these “alternative energies” were widely feasible, they would currently supply more than 1.5% of the world’s total energy.

There's more, but the writer concludes there is nothing that will be done to reduce significantly the level of CO2.

So what really will happen is business-as-usual. Legislation will be proposed both in the United States and in other countries around the world with the stated goal of reducing carbon dioxide emissions, and some of this legislation will pass. But the targets won’t come close to being met as a bits-and-pieces solution will not achieve the goal of halving current global CO2 emissions by the year 2100—much less any year before then. In fact, more than likely, these legislative efforts will not, to any noticeable degree, even begin to separate the blue and the red curves for a long time to come—far too long to avoid elevating global temperature 2 degrees above “natural” levels.

I think he's right. But I would add that we will see our daily lives regulated to a rapidly increasing degree, and that things that today we cannot imagine government trying to regulate and control will be quite routine before I pass on before mid-century.

As I wrote, in a different but related context, in December 2003,

When my children are my age, they will not be free in any recognizably traditional American meaning of the word. I’d tell them to emigrate, but there’s nowhere left to go. I am left with nauseating near-conviction that I am a member of the last generation in the history of the world that is minimally truly free.

So say I still. After all, California's government has already declared the authority to regulate thermostat settings of private homes.