this post was submitted on 25 Aug 2023
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Sorry to ruin this dream, but not a single developed country (and most likely not a single non-developed either) has a remote chance of being carbon neutral in 10years.
Reason number one is "carbon-neutral" is yet another greenwashing marketing idea involving emissions compensations that are just not there.
We've seen now that planting trees will probably not do any good: we already see trees growing failure rate increasing due to excessive heating. They grow slower already, making all compensation calculations wrong, and they'll burn in wildfires in summer, releasing all the carbon they captured.
The second reason is the insanely high dependency we have to cheap oil. You need to convert haul truck, small trucks, buses, etc. to electric all while you turn the grid to 0 emission.
You need to convert cargo ships to electric otherwise your net neutrality will need to conveniently ignore all importations and exportations.
You need to convert all farm machines to 0 emissions and abandon quite a lot of the chemistry considered for granted today, which means yields will drop.
You need to convert blast furnaces to alternative energies. Today, there is almost nothing done there other than "we'll get hydrogen" that everybody know cannot be produced in the volume they need, let alone at an acceptable price.
And no energy source whatsoever is carbon neutral!
Solar panels need quite some metal and semicon-based manufacturing techniques. Wind farm need concrete for their anchoring, and use advanced materials to build. They both have a limited lifespan, after which you need to recycle (By the way: noticed that when "recycling" is advertised, no one mentions if it's rectcling for the same usage and not recycled to lower grade material we can't use back to produce the same device? That's because we just can't get them back with the same purity level...) and make some replacement, that will again have a share of emissions.
Short of producing absolutely everything in the chains of supplies locally, you will import emissions from another country
Any human activity is basically emitting or causing greenhouses emissions.
And while you think all of that can be managed, we already have all signals to red on the natural resources: we can't extract lithium fast enough, and we may not want to given how dirty the mines are. We may run out of some metals we rely on.
And most of these issues are eluded in the great plans, because it's too complicated or we simply have no solution and no one wants to say it up and loud.
Now, the good/bad news: all of this will end because we're also running out of cheap oil.
It's a good news because that will put a break in humans activities and so greenhouse gas emissions.
But it's bad because not a single country is preparing for the aftermath, and that means... they will collapse!
How else? How about not? You simply don't because you can't. Barring some weird exceptions, no country will be able to be carbon neutral in 10 years, let alone the entire world.
Yes we need to do loads of work, and yes, nuclear will form a huge part because we don't have another choice. Nuclear will cause CO2 too, yes, during building mostly and nothing near what coal or similar plants do.
I'm simply saying we can (and must) do nuclear next to solar and wind.
Either way it doesn't matter since entieht you nor I make those decisions and those that do mostly don't give a shit as long as they get their paycheck
Edit: you want to make a real change?
Increase taxes on carbon fuels significantly every year. Prohibit the construction and sale of useless throwaway products like fashion that lasts 3 wears until it breaks, phones that will work for only 1-2 years. Invest heavily in improving recycling so that we can recycle everything. Invest in alternative nuclear fuels like thorium so that more countries can go nuclear without having to worry about bombs. Stop the "delivery in one day! " economy, which basically requires alAmazon to be destroyed . Redesign American continent cities completely to no longer be car dependent so that people can walk and cycle for 95% of their needs and use public transportation or shared cars for the rest.
Those are some insane but required solutions if we want to stop climate change.
Car dependent cities are unsustainable, financially and environmentally. Our throwaway economy is unsustainable. Our dependency on fossil fuels in unsustainable
No I did not.