Yesterday, Karen wrote about the contrast between the statements made by President Trump and Greta Thunberg at the World Economic Forum in Davos. The NY Times has published Thunbergs full remarks at the forum and they are pretty striking. In addition to her usual tone of condescension toward world leaders, Thunberg explained that the only solution was to completely abandon fossil fuels immediately. She doesnt want to talk about net zero emissions she wants to see real zero right now.
One year ago I came to Davos and told you that our house is on fire. I said I wanted you to panic. Ive been warned that telling people to panic about the climate crisis is a very dangerous thing to do. But dont worry. Its fine. Trust me, Ive done this before and I can assure you it doesnt lead to anything
We are not telling you to keep talking about reaching net zero emissions or carbon neutrality by cheating and fiddling around with numbers. We are not telling you to offset your emissions by just paying someone else to plant trees in places like Africa while at the same time forests like the Amazon are being slaughtered at an infinitely higher rate
Lets be clear. We dont need a low carbon economy. We dont need to lower emissions. Our emissions have to stop if we are to have a chance to stay below the 1.5-degree target. And, until we have the technologies that at scale can put our emissions to minus, then we must forget about net zero. We need real zero.
A bit later she spells it out:
We demand at this years World Economic Forum, participants from all companies, banks, institutions and governments:
Immediately halt all investments in fossil fuel exploration and extraction.
Immediately end all fossil fuel subsidies.
And immediately and completely divest from fossil fuels.
We dont want these things done by 2050, 2030 or even 2021. We want this done now.
Theres one paragraph in her speech which acknowledges this could make for difficult times:
All the solutions are obviously not available within todays societies. Nor do we have the time to wait for new technological solutions to become available to start drastically reducing our emissions. So, of course the transition isnt going to be easy. It will be hard. And unless we start facing this now together, with all cards on the table, we wont be able to solve this in time.
This is why adults shouldnt be listening to children who dont know much of anything about the world. And no, the fact that Thunberg crosses the oceans on multi-million dollar sailboats as opposed to airplanes does not mean shes taking this seriously.
What Thunberg is counselingreal zero, i.e. an immediate end to the use of all fossil fuelswould, if enacted, destroy the worlds economy overnight. What Thunberg doesnt seem to grasp is that a significant portion of that energy goes toward things we would miss rather desperately, things like food, heat, light, etc.
Just to pick one obvious example at random from the seemingly endless pile, trucks are used to transport food from places like Californias central valley to store shelves in San Francisco and Los Angeles. What happens when there is suddenly no more diesel fuel for those trucks? You simply cant cut off the transportation of food with no alternative on hand and expect no one will notice.
Obviously, all of the cars would be out of gas within a week or two if we went to real zero emissions. At that point everyone who cant walk to their current place of employment is out of a job and unemployment leaps to never before seen levels. Suddenly there are tens of millions of people who can no longer provide for themselves. At the same time our social safety net would be most needed funding for it would collapse.
Along with cars and trucks you can forget about ambulances and fire engines which also require diesel fuel.
Maybe people will appreciate the burning buildings that never get put out. After all, its January. Once the natural gas stops flowing into millions of homes for heating and cooking, its going to get chilly. This would be a relatively minor inconvenience for me here in southern California but it would be more than that in, say, Canada.
And its not just heat. What happens to the electricity that powers homes and industries (and electric cars) when power plants suddenly cant purchase natural gas to power the turbines? About a third of US electricity generation is powered by natural gas (as of 2018). So if we follow Thunbergs advice and go to real zero emissions tomorrow welcome back to the 19th century! But again, it wont matter that you cant cook or refrigerate anything because there probably wont be any food available anyway.
And please dont say Im not being fair. Teen Cassandra just said we need real zero emissions right freaking now. Thats only possible if youre a psychopath who enjoys seeing millions of people die. Calling it a hard transition is underselling the raw carnage that would follow pretty significantly.