> Not long ago there was an interesting article on research that showed that if we simply replaced fossil fuel infrastructure with clean alternatives as the for

> Not long ago there was an interesting article on research that showed that if we simply replaced fossil fuel infrastructure with clean alternatives as the former reaches end of life, that would be enough to hold warming to under 1.5 C. >No need to force early retirement of fossil fuel infrastructure. If you've already got a coal plant, a gasoline car, etc., it's OK to keep using it, as long as we can commit to your and everyone else's future plants, future cars, etc., being clean. That is a gross misrepresentation of said research. The idea was that yeah, if in theory you don't add any new fossil generation then it might work out. Yet think for a moment what that would mean. Stopping all car production today, no new gas/oil wells, no new steel mills and cement factories (technologies where clean alternatives don't practically exist at scale). Stopping any kind of fossil fuel plant construction even in developing countries. All of that now. This isn't a plan that is realistically feasible to implement (even though it would probably be the right thing to do). So yeah, it totally makes sense to shut down existing particularly dirty fossil fuel plants, because it's not particularly realistic to completely stop the production of new fossil fuel infrastructure immediately.