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michael_nielsen
A couple of weeks ago I asked on Twitter what people felt they, individually (not others!), should do about climate change. There were many thoughtful replies:
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michael_nielsen 29. pro
Odgovor korisniku/ci @michael_nielsen
I don't yet have an answer to this question which I'm personally satisfied with. But here's a few observations.
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michael_nielsen 29. pro
Odgovor korisniku/ci @michael_nielsen
(Thoughtful comments welcome, but please read through before replying, since some ideas need to be unpacked over multiple tweets! I know: shock, some ideas require more than 280 characters!)
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michael_nielsen 29. pro
Odgovor korisniku/ci @michael_nielsen
1. Renewable energy is growing like absolute gangbusters
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michael_nielsen 29. pro
Odgovor korisniku/ci @michael_nielsen
According to BP's Statistical Review of World Energy, in 2018 renewable electricity grew 14.5%. For comparison, CO2 emissions from energy use (the vast majority of CO2 emissions) grew just 2.0%
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michael_nielsen 29. pro
Odgovor korisniku/ci @michael_nielsen
Not to belabour the obvious, but that’s a humungous difference! Renewable energy is expanding at an incredible rate. But in terms of overall energy use, it’s still just a tiny, tiny fraction. The tiny (top) sliver of orange here is renewables.
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michael_nielsen 29. pro
Odgovor korisniku/ci @michael_nielsen
It’s tempting to look at that sliver & feel pessimistic. On the other hand, ask Blockbuster how that tiny (but rapidly growing) upstart Netflix did. Compound growth is an incredibly strong force. That’s especially true when many govts are strongly supporting renewables
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michael_nielsen 29. pro
Odgovor korisniku/ci @michael_nielsen
This growth is being supported by many trends. One is the amazing drop of solar prices (Swanson’s Law): . More than a factor 200 over 40 years, in constant dollars.
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michael_nielsen 29. pro
Odgovor korisniku/ci @michael_nielsen
Incidentally, this is a fun paper about _why_ prices have dropped so rapidly.
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michael_nielsen 29. pro
Odgovor korisniku/ci @michael_nielsen
Battery prices show a similarly incredible drop. They’re down by a factor 7 since 2010, from $1,100/kWh in 2010, to $156/kWh in 2019:
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michael_nielsen 29. pro
Odgovor korisniku/ci @michael_nielsen
Something I don’t understand are the price points at which solar + battery ought to take over most of the electricity system. I don’t think we can be terribly far from that point - 10 years? I don’t have a good model, nor of how centralized it will be.
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michael_nielsen 29. pro
Odgovor korisniku/ci @michael_nielsen
(Also: I’d like to better understand the environmental impact of batteries and solar. Lithium ion batteries seem to be pretty nasty stuff.)
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michael_nielsen 29. pro
Odgovor korisniku/ci @michael_nielsen
In any case: there are incredibly strong forces driving renewable growth.
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michael_nielsen 29. pro
Odgovor korisniku/ci @michael_nielsen
At the moment, 6 of the world’s 10 largest companies (by revenue) are oil and gas companies. 2 are car companies, still mostly fossil fuels. And 1 is an electricity company, almost certainly mostly fossil fuels.
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michael_nielsen 29. pro
Odgovor korisniku/ci @michael_nielsen
My guess - this is just speculation - in 30-40 years time many of those fossil fuel companies will have been replaced on that list by either renewable energy or (maybe) nuclear companies. Or they themselves will have largely switched. Volkswagen is certainly in that mix.
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michael_nielsen 29. pro
Odgovor korisniku/ci @michael_nielsen
Incidentally, when I talk to tech folks they sometimes tell me climate/energy is a niche, interesting but obviously much less important than tech. See all the tech companies on that list above? Neither do I.
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michael_nielsen 29. pro
Odgovor korisniku/ci @michael_nielsen
It’s true that by market cap tech is currently larger. But energy is a multi-trillion dollar industry. And the growth of renewables suggests a major transition in energy is near.
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michael_nielsen 29. pro
Odgovor korisniku/ci @michael_nielsen
(Just to be clear: I'm not saying tech isn't incredibly important! Just that there's a myopia on the part of some tech people I've chatted with about this. There's a very large world beyond technology.)
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michael_nielsen 29. pro
Odgovor korisniku/ci @michael_nielsen
2. But hang on, aren’t capitalism and growth models the problem? Why are you talking about all this growth? Isn’t it a bad thing?
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michael_nielsen 29. pro
Odgovor korisniku/ci @michael_nielsen
This argument basically says climate change is just a symptom of a much more unhealthy pattern: growth models. Capitalism produces growth produces more human ability to change the world. And that means goof-ups produce more damage to the world.
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michael_nielsen 29. pro
Odgovor korisniku/ci @michael_nielsen
I’m somewhat sympathetic to this argument. Certainly, and just as a for instance, battery waste really is something I worry about, if we’re all of a sudden using 100x the scale of batteries.
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michael_nielsen 29. pro
Odgovor korisniku/ci @michael_nielsen
And you do see this pattern over & over. Subprime mortgage derivatives seem, in principle, a great idea - pooling risk to provide capital to people who otherwise can’t afford homes. Except they were systematically mispriced, resulting...
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michael_nielsen 29. pro
Odgovor korisniku/ci @michael_nielsen
... not just in the evaporation of trillions of dollars during the financial crisis, but huge followon effects that have massively changed the world.
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michael_nielsen 29. pro
Odgovor korisniku/ci @michael_nielsen
Sometimes we find technological solutions to these problems. The original refrigerators used ammonia as a coolant. This sometimes leaked, killing people. Solution! Use CFCs instead. Except that damaged the ozone layer. Solution! Use HCFCs instead. And so on.
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michael_nielsen 29. pro
Odgovor korisniku/ci @michael_nielsen
Maybe tomorrow some magic genie will produce a way of doing scalable direct air carbon capture at 10 cents per tonne of CO2. If so, we can be back down to pre-industrial CO2 levels in a flash, if we choose.
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michael_nielsen 29. pro
Odgovor korisniku/ci @michael_nielsen
The pessimistic view is that we keep playing with fire, & sometimes we get lucky. But eventually humanity will damage ourselves in a way that makes the financial crisis look like a rounding error. Maybe climate is it. But even if not...
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michael_nielsen 29. pro
Odgovor korisniku/ci @michael_nielsen
... capitalism & growth models have this as an inevitable side effect. They’re the real culprits.
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michael_nielsen 29. pro
Odgovor korisniku/ci @michael_nielsen
The trouble with this point of view is that the alternatives seem far worse. Yes, you can go for a low-growth or communist model. I’m sure the Amish CO2 emissions are much lower than middle America. North Korea’s are 1.6 t / yr, one tenth of the US per capita, one third of global
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michael_nielsen 29. pro
Odgovor korisniku/ci @michael_nielsen
But I don’t want to live in North Korea, & I suspect most of the “down with capitalism” crowd don’t either.
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michael_nielsen 29. pro
Odgovor korisniku/ci @michael_nielsen
(Of course, they don’t think of it that way. But whenever I’ve dug down into concrete plans, they seem poorly thought through, relying on wishful thinking and “this time will be different”.)
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michael_nielsen 29. pro
Odgovor korisniku/ci @michael_nielsen
Now, the optimistic point of view here - the opportunity! - is to try to find smart and wise alternatives that are much better than capitalism’s current incarnation. That really is an exciting opportunity.
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