> “The upshot is that the total cumulative carbon allocation for humanity compatible with a 50–50 chance of keeping global warming under 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) is, in round numbers, a trillion tonnes.
That’s it.
Forever.
And of that trillion tonnes, we have already used up over 630 billion tonnes, leaving just 370 billion tonnes to go.
That might seem like a lot of tonnes, but at current emissions rate, we’d get there in just 37 years, or 2057.”
This makes me sincerely feel that it’s likely not worth it to pursue reducing carbon emissions except where it’s super easy and unobstructed.
Instead, it would be better to create technology and plans for how best to live in a rapidly warming world.
I do not believe we can solve political coordination fast enough so that the long tail of consumer demands, from floss to x-ray machines to smart phones, can be manufactured without accumulating much more carbon emission than this limit.
Meanwhile, suggesting we live without these things, especially when they dramatically improve, even save, lives, is equally unrealistic.
(It reminds me of the David Deutsch anecdote in The Beginning of Infinity where people were criticising color TVs in the 60s, as a ludicrous consumer indulgence, totally ignorant to the possibility that they would be vital for saving lives (surgical imaging, among other uses) decades later.)
Using air conditioning will increase the energy usage per capita which will accelerate climate change. More realistically a lot of people will move away from the equatorial regions to the north or maybe even to Antarctica.
Air conditioning and heating will be needed well into the hot future. It saves lives (especially of the elderly). Trying to “not have air conditioning” is unrealistic, never gonna happen.
So either we devise carbon-neutral air conditioning very suddenly, or else we prepare for hotter planet and geological-scale side effects.
(This just by air conditioning... so then multiply by agriculture, consumer media products, medical products, transportation, etc. etc.).
That’s it.
Forever.
And of that trillion tonnes, we have already used up over 630 billion tonnes, leaving just 370 billion tonnes to go.
That might seem like a lot of tonnes, but at current emissions rate, we’d get there in just 37 years, or 2057.”
This makes me sincerely feel that it’s likely not worth it to pursue reducing carbon emissions except where it’s super easy and unobstructed.
Instead, it would be better to create technology and plans for how best to live in a rapidly warming world.
I do not believe we can solve political coordination fast enough so that the long tail of consumer demands, from floss to x-ray machines to smart phones, can be manufactured without accumulating much more carbon emission than this limit.
Meanwhile, suggesting we live without these things, especially when they dramatically improve, even save, lives, is equally unrealistic.
(It reminds me of the David Deutsch anecdote in The Beginning of Infinity where people were criticising color TVs in the 60s, as a ludicrous consumer indulgence, totally ignorant to the possibility that they would be vital for saving lives (surgical imaging, among other uses) decades later.)