NET ZERO: TALKING POINTS I FIND USEFUL
KEEPING IT REAL ABOUT THE FUTURE OF ENERGY
April 20 2022—A few talking points about the journey to net zero carbon I find useful (in no particular order)
CERTAINTY
1. The physics won’t change. I find this a particularly useful ‘cut-through.’ It doesn’t matter what you believe, or what I say, or what Gods we pray to, or who is in the White House, or what state the economy is in, or if there is war, the world WILL get hotter. The atoms and molecules don’t care about our opinions. Add CO2 into a perspex box with a sunlamp on it, it gets hotter.
2. The earth will now continue to get hotter NO MATTER WHAT. Even if we magically shut off all greenhouse gas emissions tomorrow, the global average temperature continues to rise, which means a truly monumental effort is now required to keep it below 2 degrees. Why? Because we’ve charged the system, we’ve filled the carbon-sinks, there is inertia in the system. Some of the CO2 we’ve already spewed out stays up there fifty years, some for hundreds, some for thousands. I know. Sorry :-(
3. Atmospheric carbon capture machines are nonsense, a non-starter, a distraction, a false promise and a dead-end. They do work, BUT it takes a LOT of energy to run them and that energy would have to come from precious renewables if we aren’t to generate almost as much CO2 as we suck in. A FAR more efficient use of that energy is displacing the fossil-fuel energy sources spewing out CO2 in the first place. Oh, and that’s before you do the math:- try 100,000,000,000 tons x $600/ton at today’s prices (and no scientist I’ve spoken to thinks we’ll ever get better than $100/ton).
4. Each degree of global warming increases the water carrying capacity of the atmosphere by about 7%. That, plus the additional injection of energy, equals bigger weather events. You already know what 1.2 degrees warming and 5% more water vapour (and rising) feels like …
BUT, on the positive side of the ledger …
OPPORTUNITY
5. We have all the technology we need NOW to make the transition. To get to net zero by 2050, we need to accelerate the global renewable install rate from under 300GW/yr to more like 1500GW/yr. Is this huge? Yes. Is this hard? Yes. Can we do it? Of course we can! Taking just one example, look at what we just achieved globally, and rapidly, in response to COVID!
6. About USD 73 trillion will be spent on this transition, according to the Stanford estimates that I use, but feel free to substitute your own, because any way you cut it, it’s BIG.
7. When we transition, we reap a direct energy cost savings dividend of $600 for every man, woman and child in the United States, every year, FOREVER ($74/year for every man, woman and child on the planet). Oh, and that’s before factoring in any of the much, much larger averted costs from floods, crop-failures, superstorms, bushfires, sea-level inundations, etc, etc, etc.
8. As we transition, we create MANY MORE jobs than we lose. Case in point: Australia, which has a significant fossil-fuel industry, will see approximately 380,000 new long-term jobs created. The total employed in coal mining, oil & gas extraction and petroleum and coal product manufacturing as at February 2022 was 67,400. Do we care about the 67,400? Yes! Can we help that many reskill and transition? Of course we can! (McDonalds Australia, as a comparison point for scale, employs 100,000).
9. Solar and wind farms take up a lot of real-estate BUT guess what takes up more? Yep, the fossil fuel industry. All those pipelines, storage tanks, gas fields, strip mines and refineries add up to a HUGE amount of land! And guess what? We get to have that back :-)
10. Photovoltaics are STILL getting cheaper. Because of the decades-long decline in PV module prices, no fossil fuel power station can compete, dollar for dollar, with a new grid-scale solar plant. Great! But who says it’s stopping? Yep, many more reductions to come. So what happens when the price of solar electricity halves again? :-)
11. There is more new wealth to be generated from the transition to sustainability than any other field of human endeavour. Discuss. (See points #5-10 above)
ENGAGE
Now ask your foot-dragging politician if he or she is pro-business, pro-jobs, pro-economy :-)
Your interlocutor has trouble dealing with the negatives? (totally understandable, since they make all sane people anxious) Stick to points #5 - #11
Your interlocutor doesn’t care about humanity, the future, anyone but themselves? Start with #11 and work back. At least they can make money!
Hope this is helpful :-)