the focus must be adaptation and planning for the worst
"First proposed by Japanese energy economist Yoichi Kaya back in 1993, the Kaya Identity expresses global CO2 emissions as the product of a simple mathematical equation with just four variables: population, GDP, the energy-intensity of GDP, and the carbon intensity of energy. Multiply these four variables together and you get a figure representing the amount of CO2 we pump into the atmosphere. The math is disarmingly simple. And it’s an accounting identity, true axiomatically: not something you can really argue with.
Now, climate scientists spend a lot of time measuring each of the terms in the Kaya Identity as precisely as possible. And what they find, year after year, like clockwork, is that the change in the third and fourth variables is remarkably stable."
"In climate circles in Europe, “de-growing” the economy is all the rage. Degrowthers go there, shining a light on the first two factors in the Kaya Identity, the ones that make us squirm. And they’re not exactly wrong: as a matter of plain arithmetic there’s no question that the reason carbon emissions continue to rise is that the global population keeps growing, and is also getting richer on average. The conclusion seems overwhelming: if you want to reduce atmospheric carbon, you’re going to have to tackle all four factors in the Kaya Identity, not just the politically approachable third and fourth ones.
But budging the needle on population and GDP is hard. It’s possible in theory, but doing so would require an exertion of state power that’s just not compatible with democracy or basic humanity."
"And so the good news is the bad news. Degrowth won’t be pursued as a policy because there’s no imaginable political equilibrium to support it, which means that emissions will continue to grow for the foreseeable future.
This conclusion is dispiriting. But unpleasant facts are better faced forthrightly than covered up or wished away. Once we accept the bitter truth that we don’t know how to reduce carbon emissions anywhere near fast enough to avert drastic atmospheric changes, we can have a more honest discussion about the options we do have. ".........
"But while there are many good reasons to be scared of a geoengineered planet, there are more (and better reasons) to be scared of runaway climate change. And so the world is at a strange juncture: sleep-walking into a future it refuses to talk about, and swatting away the resulting cognitive dissonance with fairy-tales about Net Zero and feel-good bans on plastic straws.
Sooner rather than later, we’re going to be forced to engineer our planet’s climate. It will be one of the riskiest things the human race has ever attempted. Shouldn’t we do the research on it now, so that we know what to expect when we’re forced to implement it? And wouldn’t this be a more fruitful conversation to have at a meeting of world leaders on climate change than the annual festival of disingenuous preening that COP has become?"
Consultation has concluded