50 percent reduction in carbon emissions by 2030? 🌎 ♨️

The other day I posted an NPR article that mentioned that many activists are pushing for a 50 percent reduction in carbon emissions by 2030, a goal that the UN has described as mandatory to prevent a severe economic disruption, which seems inevitable.

The decisions we make now will determine the course of the next 30 years and beyond:  emissions must fall by half by 2030 and reach net-zero emissions no later than 2050 to reach the 1.5 Celsius goal.

Science is clear:  if we fail to meet these goals, the disruption to economies, societies and people caused by COVID-19 will pale in comparison to what the climate crisis holds in store.

And so, our shared responsibility is equally clear: redouble our efforts to recover from the economic and social crisis and get on track to achieve the SDGs [Sustainable Development Goals] and build a sustainable, inclusive and resilient future.

… The thing is that’s an absolutely absurd goal !

Nine years is a tiny time period, something that most adults will admit passes in blink of an eye.

There is no way we can reduce emissions by that level in nine years, because things just take much longer then that. Few people who buy a gasoline-powered car in 2021 are planning to discard it less than in nine years. Public transit authorities are required to keep diesel-powered buses purchased with federal funding for 12-years or reimburse federal funds for purchase of the bus. So they are required to keep buses bought in 2019 on the road through 2031. People who have purchased gas furnaces and water heaters in past year expect to use them for many more years, and power plants have a lifespan rated in decades – often 50 or more years.

Even if we could force people to throw away all of their existing equipment prematurely, the electrified alternatives aren’t always drop-in replacements. While electric drives with IGBTs and inverter-motors are a vast improvement over a decade or two ago, and electric cars make sense for many consumers today, there are still many advantages to gas-powered motors like quick fueling and longer trips between refills. And most power plants, which burn fossil fuels, are almost certain to be burning the same fossil fuels in nine years from now. Solar is great, but it’s going to be a reach for government to force every homeowner, landlord, and business owner to install panels and supporting infrastructure immediately on their buildings.

Change can happen quickly, as we saw in the response to the COVID-19 pandemic with lockdowns and work-from-home that changed life dramatically for nearly every American. But those changes were unpopular, widely resisted and did not last for any significant length of time. COVID-19 was unique, as it came upon the country quickly, served as a strong “focusing event” that gave politicians for a brief period of time unprecedented powers.  Climate change is unlikely to have any such “focusing event”, even as it slowly drowns our cities, melts the ice caps, burns the west, floods the east, culls whole species and ecosystems, and indefinitely change our planet for good or bad.

The truth is we are going to blow right through any climate goals, and it’s going to be real bad.