George Monbiot, a British writer, known for his environmental and political activism stated today that “climate delegates are not dealing with climate change”. He explained that this was do to contradictory policies of supply and demand. On the one hand we are working on policies to provide new non-polluting sources of renewable energy. At the same time we are trying to maximize supplies of fossil fuels thereby undermining the more expensive alternatives.
He said that science has shown that once we put CO2 into the atmosphere it is there for at least a thousand years and that once you reach a temperature it isn’t coming down. The 2-degree rise that scientists say we must stay below is based on the cumulative emissions of the total CO2 released into the atmosphere. When you look at the total amount of estimated coal and gas reserves we can only use 60% of them to stay under the 2-degree ceiling. The real question is what part of the oil, gas and coal reserves are going to be left in the ground. Furthermore total reserves of the primary fuels doesn’t take into account the even dirtier sources being looked at with greedy eyes, like tar sands, oil shale, coal gasification and other unconventional fossil fuels. People think, oil in the ground is like money in the bank but it is also a superhighway to destruction of life as we know it. “We need to eliminate supply side policies and totally replace fossil fuel with alternative sources of energy”, says George Monbiot. “The real problem we’re facing is too much fossil fuels!”
We’ll run out of atmosphere before we run out of fossil fuels, as my energy professor used to say.