I’m all for clean air, clean water, preserving natural beauty, and abundant energy & food for every person. Net-zero goals are unlikely to achieve what some believe.
Imagine that we reach net-zero C02. Human activity is no longer introducing more C02 into the atmosphere.
What other climate-driving forces aside from atmospheric C02 will still be at work?
- Solar radiation variation over time, which also drives oceanic heating and cooling patterns
- Deep geological forces uplifting continents and powering volcanoes
- Whatever else drove long cycles of glaciation and retreat before 28,000 years ago
No one knows what the “right” temperature is, or the “right” amount of C02 in the atmosphere. Everything in the physical world is dynamic.
So, it’s important to think carefully about the costs of net-zero (for everyone) and the tradeoffs. About 1.5-2 billion people do not have enough energy (fuel, electricity) to thrive. Despite our terrific progress in reducing starvation to almost zero, about 1.2 billion people a month are getting only enough calories to survive. Clean water is not readily available to 800 million people. We need to make progress on these for human flourishing. I’d be in favor of addressing those issues and then using energy and calories with clean water to adapt to variations in climate.
