What It Would Really Take to Reverse Climate Change

What It Would Really Take to Reverse Climate Change.

Two (2) of the engineers who worked on Google's RE<C project write that:

As we reflected on the project, we came to the conclusion that even if Google and others had led the way toward a wholesale adoption of renewable energy, that switch would not have resulted in significant reductions of carbon dioxide emissions. Trying to combat climate change exclusively with today’s renewable energy technologies simply won’t work; we need a fundamentally different approach. So we’re issuing a call to action. There’s hope to avert disaster if our society takes a hard look at the true scale of the problem and uses that reckoning to shape its priorities.

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They had realised that even if the project had succeeded, it would not be enough to stop global warming as we have already passed the safety limit of 350ppm of CO₂. The amount of CO₂ in the atmosphere means that the Earth will keep warming for the next 100 years.

That realization prompted us to reconsider the economics of energy. What’s needed, we concluded, are reliable zero-carbon energy sources so cheap that the operators of power plants and industrial facilities alike have an economic rationale for switching over soon—say, within the next 40 years. Let’s face it, businesses won’t make sacrifices and pay more for clean energy based on altruism alone. Instead, we need solutions that appeal to their profit motives. RE<C’s stated goal was to make renewable energy cheaper than coal, but clearly that wouldn’t have been sufficient to spur a complete infrastructure changeover. So what price should we be aiming for?

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What a damming indictment of Capitalism? The survival of the human race is not profitable!

The real problem is how to convince workers that Capitalism needs to be overthrown. Even if workers could understand all of the scientific and engineering papers, they would still be reluctant to take action because they feel safer in what they know than with what might be. This is only natural.

It does not help that these pleas for action are coming from the privileged stratum of society. The workers are right to mistrust these collaborators. Past experience in various struggles has shown where the interests of these collaborators lie.