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I personally never found Noah's argument very convincing here. There are people living decent lives that are consuming fewer environmental resources, and all el
by fdr 4y ago
I personally never found Noah's argument very convincing here. There are people living decent lives that are consuming fewer environmental resources, and all else being equal, they have less elasticity to modify their behavior (whether personally, or with government organization) to reduce it yet more with techniques available. Because, by definition, the very best such systems are somewhere near the frontier of what we know how to do.
A country like the United States has a lot of room to improve without getting into exotic techniques. We'll need exotic techniques as well to achieve the most ambitious aims, but we shouldn't overlook mature options.
- tuatoru 4y agoWe won't need exotic options. The paper that Noah's piece is based on focuses on technologies with a long track record, except for electrolyzers. But the unknowns with electrolyzers merely mean the possible outcomes from using them range from "save trillions" (worst case, using century-old alkaline electrolysis), to "save trillions and trillions" (with likely-cheaper-after-more-engineering polymer-electrolyte membrane electrolyzers). The paper rigorously chooses conservative costs (i.e, costs that favor fossil fuels and nuclear over renewables) in every case, so its predictions are worst-case. And all the numbers in the paper are "cost of energy" only. It ignores side benefits like better health and reduced climate change damage.