Living with renewable energy

[profloater]

Like Hemingway’s bankrupt, the many feedbacks from climate change progress gradually then suddenly; fires, floods, droughts, storms, crop failures, fish stocks collapsing and more.
Human nature has faced these before by moving, by conflict and to some extent by using smart new technology. Maybe we have used up the scope for moving? The big question for me is when the sudden phase will begin. Will conflict overtake new technologies?

[Noclevername]

My point is that we have been at 'ecological feedback tipping points' for a long time. Usage of fire put us on a precarious evolutionary journey wrt Climate Change. Had we not progressed as we have, we would have been unaware. At this point our growing science, technology and energy resources ironically put us in a better situation to deal with it.

Swift, if the world had access to the same transportation as you do, Climate Change would be accelerated. The document presented in OP would severely limit transportation, especially for Western Countries.

You are not the first to call upon us to change our ways before imminent ruin does. And you are not the first to use the science to indict our behavioural shortcomings and propose social and cultural change. I think the solutions with the best chance of success for humanity will lean on our nature rather than attempt to change it.

cheers.

As I've already pointed out, it's not our nature, it's our accustomed lifestyle, which has changed before and will change again. There's a broad spectrum of ways to live between conspicuous consumption and subsistence farming.

But I did not start this thread to try to convince the doubtful. If you have your mind made up that it won't be as bad as predicted by the world's best experts, that's up to you.

[Robert Tulip]

the key concern is CO2 going into the atmosphere

This statement picks up on the agenda driving the call to cut energy use in the OP article. In fact, the key driver of global warming is radiative forcing, which mainly comes from past CO2 emissions, as well as methane, smaller GHGs and resultant albedo feedbacks.

Trillionthtonne.org estimates that humans have added about 640 Gt C to the atmosphere, increasing by about 15 Gt/y. Cutting the annual 15 Gt by 20% by decarbonising the world economy would be a result far in excess of Paris Accord 2030 pledges, but would only remove 0.5% (3 Gt) of the RF problem each year. That is too small to have material impact on global warming, and would come at great expense and difficulty.

So the key concern should be cutting RF in the best ways possible. Reducing energy use is likely to be marginal to that agenda once people start grappling with the real scale of transformation needed to stabilise the climate.