> If all the "impossible" technologies necessary to stop climate change existed today then I don't think anyone would say we should go back to the old fossil fu

> If all the "impossible" technologies necessary to stop climate change existed today then I don't think anyone would say we should go back to the old fossil fuel days. The argument isn't about whether or not fossil fuels should be used in the presence of hypothetical cheaper energy harvesting devices in the future, but whether or not fossil fuels should be used now, while they are cheap, abundant and available to everyone. I have recommended a book above: The moral case for fossil fuels. It may not be obvious what I'm talking about if you live in a well developed nation with adequate sunlight and you can easily accumulate some capital and install PV panels on your rooftop (and you're OK ignoring the devastating environmental impact of PV). The moral case for fossil fuels is about the underdeveloped nations whose economies are held back by low carbon agendas. The most developed nations are doing quite well (perhaps not well enough for some) on clean energy, but poorer nations are nowhere near at the same level. They are decades behind on technology and general standards of living. The argument for fossil fuels is that we should attempt to accelerate these economies as quickly as possible to bring them up to global standards, and one of the primary tools for enabling this is the availability of cheap and abundant energy. Fossil fuels provide this, even if they're not "clean." Developed nations have cleaner air, cleaner water, much lower birth rates, fewer pollutants and better environmental protection programmes. We can't expect poorer nations to abide by the same standards of the developed world when they do not enjoy the same standards of living. The longer the delay in bringing them up to standard, the more environmental damage will be done in the long term. I am all for cheap and abundant clean energy and the idea of phasing out fossil fuels, but holding back progress for alarming unrealistic predictions is not the way to go about it. Focus should be on innovation and not subsidy. But it is still questionable whether or not an increased CO2 atmosphere is an inherently bad thing. In greenhouses, a doubling of CO2 can lead to more than a doubling of plant mass growth. This is an experiment you can reproduce at home, unlike most climate "science". If more focus were placed on greening the earth, reforesting instead of destroying entire ecosystems to grow soy, palm and canola, I might not be so sceptical of the real aims of these climate scientists and their mouthpieces. The aversion to nuclear energy, which is very clean, is the most tell-tale sign that many "environmentalists" are nothing of the kind.