Maybe in other countries, but the US seems to be going backwards.

To meet the 50% reduction by 2030 goal, the US would need to replace existing fossil fuel energy use by installing 400 (+/- 50) 1GW nuclear power plants or their equivalent in renewables and storage. We installed 12GW of renewables in 2017, which is probably the equivalent of 6 1GW nuclear plants after taking capacity factor differences into account. We have 2-4 nuclear plants under construction; outside of that, don't expect any new US nuclear plants to be online by 2030. I haven't bothered to look at how we're doing on storage needed for 24/7 power from intermittent renewables.

We'd need to replace 130 million personal vehicles with EVs. Tesla looks like they might produce 600K a year. No other US car seller has ramped up EV sales. VW might be there in a couple years, but will VW and Tesla be able to sell 130M cars in 10 years? That doesn't touch the air travel or cargo or freight portions of the transportation emissions.

Those two items alone seem to indicate this is a difficult challenge. Given the current administration's (and 40% of the population's) bullheadedness on gutting the EPA and rolling back environmental regulations, it will be extremely difficult for the US to meet the 2030 number. Not because we don't have the technology, but because too many of us just don't believe this needs to be done.

So yes, this seems rather dire.

I think GP's point was that even using less stuff, including energy, you're still using stuff. At some point, there won't be any more stuff to use. We'll have millions of years of solar power, but what happens when all other resources are used up and all waste is too degraded to efficiently produce new items?

Actually, this study disagrees with the chart you mention for the second link. Wind has the same life cycle emissions as nuclear, and solar appears to be twice the LCE of nuclear. Your link shows wind having twice the LCE, and solar having 10 times the LCE of nuclear.

Bah, forgot to upgrade a prefix. Those 200 1MW and 500 1MW reactor counts should be 200 1GW and 500 1GW.

Also looks like you missed my comment about using clean energy for mining and manufacturing renewables, which brings down the indirect parts on that chart.

The problem is getting contractors to do it correctly. Westinghouse's initial estimate for Vogtle: $14B. Current estimate: $25B, but even that might not be enough. I have no confidence in a contractor that is that far off on the construction costs. The US has commissioned only two reactors since 1990: one was 1996, the other 2016. Both of those started construction in 1973 . Get me a contractor that builds it correctly the first time, at a reasonable cost, and in under 5 years, and I'll be with you. I'll accept reputable foreign contractors: Japan seems to know what they are doing with respect to construction, barring a tsunami: seems like they average 5-7 years for construction. Not sure if that includes the initial proposal, siting, permitting, etc., so that may still be too long. Until we find that contractor, I'm going renewables and storage. Large quantities of those can be built and brought online each year, and if someone screws up, you don't end up with a multiple-mile disaster area with a half-life of hundreds of millions of years.

Remember: we have to cut our GHG output 50% by 2030. We won't do that if new reactors won't be commissioned until 2030. Basically, we'd need to bring 200 1MW reactors online by 2030 just to cut 50% of GHG emissions from electrical generation. Given that electricity only accounts for 40% of our GHG emissions, you'd need to bring 500 1MW reactors online by 2030. Worldwide, only 454 power reactors are running, and there are another 226 research reactors. Those were built over a span of 60 years, so roughly 110 per decade worldwide. Do you really want to try commissioning 500 new reactors in the U.S. alone by 2030? I could see ramping up nuclear reactor production so that we could bring as many reactors as possible online between 2030 and 2040 for the other 50%, but it's too difficult to do that by 2030. Much easier to expand solar/wind in the short term, while at the same time expanding reactor manufacturing for the 2030-2040 run.

You are not free because you are armed. You are "free" because the powers that be have not decided to take away your freedom, as you are not yet a threat to the powers that be. If they decided you were a threat, they have better weapons, specifically the "law" (even if said law would be illegal in a government truly of/by/for the people) and the military & police. Currently, the fossil fuel industry steals $1000 from each American every year in the form of increased health costs and property damage. The FF industry also takes the lives of 70,000+ citizens yearly. Both of those could be fixed by switching to clean energy, but the FF industry doesn't want that, so our government doesn't want that. If you wanted to be free, you'd take out the fossil fuel industry that currently owns the government. I don't see you doing that simply by being "armed".

I'm all for nuclear if it is done correctly. That seems to be difficult for the US these days: too much concern about profitses, causing low-ball construction companies to be hired instead of companies that know how to build nuclear reactors correctly the first time.

So, my guess is a lot of "lefties" talk about Solar, Wind, and Storage because you have more opportunities to refine the manufacturing and installation process, reducing the failure rate. They are also easier to install, which means you can quickly build up a pool of experts. If somebody screws up with Solar, a roof on a building might catch fire. If someone screws up with Wind, a turbine falls over, but wind turbines usually aren't occupied. A battery farm could catch fire. None of those compare to a major reactor failure, however.

So yes, based on the chart you provided, solar and wind aren't as efficient as nuclear, especially when you add in the storage we'd need. They are still significantly better than fossil fuels and are something we can do today while we figure out who we can trust to install nuclear correctly. Even then, we might find solar and wind with storage are cheaper per TWh. Also, don't forget that you can build mining equipment that runs on renewable energy: the chart seems to worry about CO2 from mining raw resources, but that can be avoided, except for any explosives used.

I think this is the first time I've bookmarked a comment.

I can see two ways of interpreting the "no longer wash our hands" statement.

Meaning 1: Businesses should no longer sell products that have more than some threshold of risk of harm. E.g. fossil fuels. We know they are bad, but the fossil fuel industry keeps buying government/spreading FUD so that they can continue selling the stuff. To be a responsible member of society, the FF industry should work with government to end our dependence on fossil fuels.

Meaning 2: Businesses should control how people use their products. E.g., when I pull the trigger on a Smith & Wesson, the gun should send a video of the current situation to Smith & Wesson to receive approval to fire.

You seem to be using Meaning 2. Taking the sentence in the context of the rest of the statement, I'm pretty sure Benioff was implying Meaning 1. As such, I'm not going to call BS. I'd need to see an official, proposed "Declaration of Responsibility" to see what is really meant, instead of this informal proposal. (Too many ambiguities in informal proposals.)

"MCAS is fine. Shut up, or you're fired."

Combined, some of the most GHG-contributing businesses make hundreds of billions of dollars in profit a year. No civilization means no business, so if they want to make profits in the future, they need to fight climate change today.

Who the heck said that? Was it in the IPCC?

Again, who the heck said that? Scientists acknowledge we can't prevent the effects of climate change because we're already seeing them. The goal is to do as much as possible, as optimally as possible, to limit the effects of climate change while doing as little damage to the economy as possible. Do nothing, we lock in civilization's downfall sometime in the next century. Ban fossil fuels tonight? Civilization falls tomorrow.

We need to find the optimum balance, a difficult task made even challenging by people spreading BS, albeit on both sides.

Yes, false. For our environment to get better, we would need to clean up more pollution than we emit. For instance, say humanity eliminates combustion for energy purposes: electric cars, heat pumps, solar panels/wind turbines/etc. If we dump 12 million tons of plastic, but only collect 2 million tons, we've still added more garbage to the environment than we've collected, so the environment would not be getting better.

Since we are currently emitting tens of billions of metric tons of GHGs each year and collecting almost none of it, there is no way our natural environment as a whole is getting better. Yes, some local areas have improved compared to 50 years ago, but that doesn't hold true for the entire planet. And yes, we are doing slightly less damage each year compared to the year before, but it's still more damage done than what humanity fixes.

That's BS. If that were the case, the climate scientists would be "deniers" simply because they question each others' work, with the goal of verifying the work was done correctly.

Yes, some folks out there misunderstand the situation and send the wrong message as a result. That doesn't mean the main message, "Barring a miracle, human civilization will be critically/fatally damaged if we don't get serious about cutting GHG emissions," is wrong.

I also couldn't find that $40K/year number you quoted. Further, taxing the [uber]wealthy will significantly reduce the amount the low-income families need to contribute. Done right, the low-income families shouldn't need to contribute at all, from a financial standpoint. (They'd still need to make environmentally friendly decisions when possible.) Also, when pollution is reduced, the number of health problems caused by pollution decreases, which lowers the cost of health care - something everyone should like.