A Happy New Year to all.
Let’s take stock of the year that has just ended.
COP21 (the 21st Conference of the Parties) took place in the year 2015 in Paris. It generated for a brief moment a sense of optimism. It seemed possible that the governments of the world would get together and seriously address the climate crisis.
Two goals came out of COP21. The first was for countries to limit the increase in atmospheric temperatures to 1.5°C by the year 2020. The second goal was to achieve Net Zero greenhouse gas emissions by the year 2050.
It was not to be. It appears as if we hit the 1.5°C threshold (or at least came very close) in 2024. And greenhouse gas emissions have continued their inexorable increase.
Even at the time of COP21 there were some skeptics. For example, David Wallace-Wells said,
At Paris in 2015 world leaders agreed to ‘pursue efforts’ to keep the rise in global temperatures below 1.5°C. After signing the agreement with great fanfare, they returned home and quietly continued with business as usual: growing the economy, building more fossil-fuelled power plants, expanding road networks for ever more oil-guzzling cars and SUVs, and drilling or fracking over larger and larger area. Never mind all the warm words at the UN meetings, all the tearful waffle about ‘future generations looking us in the eyes’, the pats on the head for teenage climate activists and the like. It is the hard stuff in the real world that matters: tarmac, pipelines, refineries, gas turbines, petrol engines and coal boilers. This is where the carbon hits the atmosphere. This is where the future is decided.
I started this blog (and writing a book with the same title) with the goal of providing a technical background to Net Zero programs. Which were the most efficient? Which were realistic on such a short time scale? How did the proposed technologies work with one another?
By the year 2024 it was clear that Net Zero ― at least a voluntary Net Zero ― was not going to happen. Even some of the successes have been rather misleading. For example, there has been considerable hype to do with the lower cost of renewable energy sources, particularly solar and wind. It is good to see such progress. But we need to recognize that solar and wind are not replacing fossil fuels, they are merely contributing to our increased energy consumption.
During 2024 there were three upshots to this thought sequence. First, I turned off the paid subscription option, at least for the time being. Second, I wrote the post No Happy Chapter. That post, sad to say, drew the strongest response of the year. Third, the report from ExxonMobil about oil supplies, which I discussed at An Extraordinary Report, has received almost no attention in the media. I said in that post that, if the ExxonMobil assessment is correct, then its conclusions are more important than the recent election in the United States. A drastic fall in the supply of oil could force a large cutback in greenhouse gas emissions. (Or maybe it could increase the use of ‘dirty’ coal ― the Law of Unintended Consequences is always with us.)
I intend to continue with this blog. But the goal has changed. Rather than exploring which technologies can help us achieve Net Zero, I will consider which technologies will best help us make a transition to a new type of society. Until now there has been a general belief in ‘progress’ ― a belief that infinite growth on a finite planet makes sense. That paradigm is shifting.
The above comments are rather discouraging, but the laws of physics, evolution and thermodynamics care little for our feelings. The challenge now becomes: which technologies are best suited for an Age of Limits? What can we realistically achieve?
None of us know what 2025 holds. The only thing that is certain is that it will be an interesting year.
