I mean, if you are going to impoverish people, what's the point? Isn't preventing global warming supposed to be for the sake of helping people?
Again, people don't understand how essential cheap energy is.
It would be interesting to see an in-depth quantitative analysis of the effects of dramatically reduced fossil fuel use versus dramatic climate change, in terms of a general global sum of badness (and if anyone knows of such a resource, please link it!) But there's more to the whole matter than global utilitarianism- there's also the sheer unfairness of the situation.
This isn't a topic they dared to cover, but imagine the benefit to the hundreds of millions in Africa living without access to reliable cheap power if their countries could secure international loans for coal plants. Jobs, prosperity, food, industrialized living.
The IPCC has never stated there is a high probability of a loss of arable land and fresh water. They've stated it is a possibility with a high amount of unknowns. And given that CO2 barely warms the Earth, it is the water vapor feedback loop that is the mechanism for large amounts of global warming, it seems odd to believe the world's atmosphere would get wetter, but there would be less rainfall.
It gets trickier later, but a lot if it just needs a tiny push in the right direction, as can be seen by the many countries around the world, already doing the "impossible" with relatively little fuss.
The bigger economic issue is that a very small number of people benefit directly from coal usage, and they can buy off politicians easily without challenge from the millions of people who suffer the ill effects indirectly through healthcare costs etc.
Only if you pick the right action. Doing something big and expensive now that turns out to have negligible effects or unintended consequences will lead to us not only exhausting resources now, but also having to spend exactly the same in the future.
So while I agree that action now is important, let's not fall into the trap of "We most do something. This is something. Let's do this".
No, cheap energy is not "essential." It's essential to living like a suburban American, but when you see Europeans living more comfortably than Americans, while consuming far less energy, that ought to give you pause.
It also should give you pause to notice how "essential" it is for the sea not to force you to relocate, something global warming is slowly doing to hundreds of millions of people.
We're leaving hundreds of millions in abject poverty today, for some mild to negligible benefit in the future (We aren't cutting CO2 emissions from industrialized nations much anytime soon).
But asking the Congo to invest in massive solar farms when it can't afford cheap coal, is just cruel.
And Vietnam, China and many other countries see nuclear as the only sensible option. We only have about 3 billion years of fuel left (including thorium, but excluding the immeasurable amount of uranium that could be mined from Ocean water).
Wind more and more is looking like it might be a nightmare. Natural gas is way cheaper in terms of energy provided when you factor in maintenance costs of wind turbines. In addition, there's significant concerns about the environmental impact of wind farms.
http://www.seas.harvard.edu/news/2013/02/rethinking-wind-pow...
Natural Gas is actually insanely good right now in terms of carbon footprint versus cost. Most countries don't have the infrastructure for NatGas E&P though like we do in the US, and it's mostly a local resource.
And we could cut CO2 emissions from industrialized countries quite soon, with the right kind of nuclear power. ThorCon, for example, has a design for a molten salt reactor using existing technology, which could be built in modular form at a rate of 100GWe capacity per year by a single shipyard. It'd be safe, very proliferation resistant, six times more fuel-efficient than conventional reactors, and as cheap as natural gas. Their only problem is that the NRC won't let them do anything.
75% of U.S. coal plants are scheduled for retirement within the next decade. Air pollution from coal kills thousands of Americans per year, according to the American Lung Association. We have lots of shipyards. We have a historic opportunity here, if the government will get out of the way.
Yes, they should be built everywhere.