Insane.
I haven’t read the study, but I’m suspicious of anyone who tells me that several billion dollars will be “needed” for “learning costs” that “will” lead us to “mature technologies”, and then purports to tell us what those mature technologies will be able to do, but I understand that you need to come up with a number, and that’s not really that big of an objection. I’m a little nervous about the fact that they seem to be supposing that carbon capture and storage (CCS) will be a feasible solution for almost all coal and natural gas processes (especially in the BLUE scenario), which seems pretty unreasonable to me (I could be wrong about my interpretation of their charts though). What immediately comes to mind is the question of how much money they anticipate would be spent without doing anything about climate change; developing nations will be spending inordinate amounts of money as it is to build up their energy infrastructures, so the relevant question doesn’t really seem to be how much will need to be spent, but rather how much more will need to be spent.
Otherwise, it does look like they did a pretty good job of taking into account the major technological trends as far as I’m aware of them. I personally think that it’s pretty ridiculous to even attempt a report like theirs in today’s conditions: pretty much all the technologies they discuss are at relatively early stages in their development, and I’m not sure why they don’t think anything completely new could come along in the next 50 years, but it seems like it would just be inherently difficult to predict what the future of the energy industry will look like with any degree of certainty whatsoever. However, in terms of sketching one possible scenario, I think they’ve done a decent job of putting something on the table for people to look at and discuss.
As most of us expected, the whole Global Warming drama has entered the “lot of money is needed” act, which is where everything boils down to. A few countries, with little or no proof, are already thinking about how to tax their own serfs (sorry, meant citizens, I am still in my pre-1789 frameset) according to their “carbon footprint”. To reassure that this won’t raise the tax burden we are being told that the so-called “carbon tax” will take the place of existing forms of taxation. On the paper looks like a winner. Too bad we have come to know the enemy and we know that the “carbon tax” will simply be yet another form of taxation, to be piled on top of everything else. Yes, it has nothing to do with “making the Earth a better place” and yes, it is just a decent-sounding excuse to raise the present horrific taxation levels, especially in Europe. How can you say no to a tax that will ensure “our children will still be able to see a polar bear”, those fuzzy giant stuffed animals?
A few words would need to be spent on how great companies are responding to this. Let’s set aside for a few moments those greenwashing operations which have been commonplace since the '80s and focus on the issue at hand. Present day, large-scale economy can be considered a mixed system, with corporations and large industries strictly co-operating with governments. Microsoft learnt it the hard way. Nowhere else is the system more clear than in automotive industry, in my opinion the most politicized industry in the world. A not-so-hidden agenda is to force people to change their cars every three years or so (ie once they finished paying for them). Emission and safety regulations ensure that even long-running vehicle series get “updated” every four years or so. Some European countries (Italy and Belgium for example) have already tried their hands at severely restricting the sale of second-hand vehicles and, at the same time, to seduce people into buying new, “greener” cars they don’t really need. This has been done with the full support and approval of the automotive industry. If I buy a second-hand Ford I’ll only buy a few spare parts from them and I’ll probably pay cash, but if I buy a brand new Ford, I’ll buy a whole new vehicle from them and, since I won’t be able to afford it, I’ll need financing through the Ford financial services. At the same time the government gets a sizeable slice of it (VAT), keeps unions and bankers happy and can also play the part of the heroic knight out to save the planet from all those old Fiestas…
Makes me wonder where they get their numbers.
This guy has a plan for zero carbon emissions by 2050 without building an additional 1400 nuke plants…in fact without building a single new nuke reactor at all.
There’s a link to his book on the page that I’ve only read part of but it seems a reasonable goal if you can get beyond some of the assumptions like government intervention being necessary for such a plan to succeed.
The real question is does anyone expect governments not to interfere?
The premise; at a 50% worldwide decrease the US would have to cut back by 88% and at a 85% worldwide decrease the US would have to cut back to 96% of 2000 levels which is close enough to zero carbon emissions to make fossil fuels basically obsolete.
The way things are going it looks like it’s getting close to the time to pick your dog in the fight.
“How to Cripple an Economy” co-authored by Barack Obama and the Socialists of the Western World