The clear skies many cities have enjoyed thanks to an economic slowdown forced by COVID-19 responses has led to fresh discussions about the need to stop burning ‘stuff’ to satisfy our energy needs.
Samantha Gross, an engineer by training and a fellow in the Foreign Policy program at Brookings (the non-partisan Washington based think-tank), weighs in with a great essay (neither long nor wonky) on how we got to where we are with energy use; and why simply ‘getting-off’ of fossil fuels isn’t a realistic option.
In terms of a constructive discussion about things that might really work she highlights THE BIGGEST PROBLEM OF ALL IS POLITICAL. Scientists, she implies, would be having a very different conversation.
However, as she so decorously summarizes; “I fear that magical thinking and purity tests are taking hold in parts of the left end of the American political spectrum, while parts of the political right are guilty of outright denialism around the climate problem.”
A key point in all this is no amount of virtue-signaling Teslas in Western driveways are going to solve the problem if the needs of the developing world aren’t factored into long term thinking.
Perhaps it was the intention of the author or perhaps this work sharpened a view that I’ve been turning over more and more. The long term solution to arresting fossil fuel consumption for power generation (we’ll need it for decades for other uses) is staring us in the face. It’s a solution that’ll provide enormous benefit for the developing world at practically zero climate cost and is, on any cool analysis, extremely safe.
Fusion may one day work, cold fusion who knows? Today though if you really, really care about the environment no amount of dammed water courses, solar-panel degraded farm land or off-shore egg-beaters will get us, and our poorly developed cousins, where we all need to go.
You can access the essay in full at Hard to Quit Fossil Fuels. Still not getting it? Hint, the solution begins with an ‘N’.
Happy Sunday.