This is all good, but the reality is we'll not have enough renewables any time soon:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_consumption
We should seriously consider solar geo-engineering. Not as the ultimate policy but to buy time.
We should seriously consider solar geo-engineering. Not as the ultimate policy but to buy time.
Future is green or none at all.
Of course, I'm all for thorough planning and extensive, well-funded and organized research first - unfortunately, we can't seem to start doing one of these things seriously, let alone all three...
Geoengineering is for example emitting particles to atmosphere to lower amount of sunlight hitting earth. This will cause sky to change color, lower yield of crops and possibly other unknown consequences. That I would rather live without. That is last resort think, not first think to do.
We don't even have carbon tax, plane fuel is not taxed etc. and we already talk about geoengineering. This is crazy.
Assuming we could hit zero today is of course wildly optimistic. Even reaching an equilibrial state of carbon inflow and carbon outflow would mean approximately halving emissions, rather than tinkering around the edges.
that is true only for one kind of geo-engineering: emulation of volcano eruption, and that's indeed not the kind of geoengineering we need. What we need instead is a much finer control over weather to prevent +35 and -20 in cities, drive more water to deserts, and make arctic warmer without melting all of greenland ice sheets.