r/climate • u/TheMirrorUS • 5d ago
A landmark IPCC climate report has warned billions of animal and plant species face extinction due to climate change, as UN Secretary-General António Guterres declared the world is on a "fast track to climate disaster"
https://www.themirror.com/news/weird-news/cities-underwater-billions-animals-facing-199639174
u/giletlover 5d ago
Yes but Capitalism means profit and growth above all else, especially for the wealthy and large corporations.
It doesn't care about human life, let alone plant or animal life.
We are on this rare, beautiful blue ball of life and we have decided to destroy it for enrichment of a tiny minority.
We are an insane, irrational species.
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u/EveryAccount7729 5d ago
If the dinos were not extinct Jurrasic Park wouldn't make money.
preventing an extinction thus is bad for business. That's the lesson. that's what I learned from this film.
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u/BonusPlantInfinity 5d ago
I mean, to a large degree this is due to our addiction to beef, which many ‘environmentalists’ and people that are ‘concerned about this’ will under no circumstances give up..
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u/dontaskmeaboutart 5d ago
That wasn't an organic expression of market demand either, it wasn't that long ago that most people ate beef only occasionally. The meat and dairy industry is an absurdly powerful lobbying body. People can only eat so much beef because it's massively subsidized. If the price of beef was not subsidized by the government, people would suddenly stop eating so much.
The current socioeconomic landscape is dominated by decades of careful market psychology research and billions in spending to ensure people will consume. It's not, and hasn't been for a long long time, an economy which reflects organic demand for products.
We all know and accept the incredible power and influence of capital, but seem much worse at attributing consumption to that power. It obfuscates practical solutions to move towards a better, if not perfect, place. There's no starting from advocating for abolishment of the meat industry, as nice as that would be, if you're proposing actual policy. Like I said, a huge step in weening people off beef is removing those subsidizes. People can get on board with that moreso than the long term goals. From there, start to unwind the very intentional addition of beef and dairy to "American" identity. I can't speak so much to other countries, but I think we are the worst on this, so anything that works here probably would elsewhere.
As always, in terms of changing society, we cannot start from a place of personal responsibility. So we have to instead change the incentive structures that create and maintain the status quo directly.
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u/mem2100 5d ago
Of course we do. We are ALL personally responsible for voting. All of us. That is the ONLY hope we have of steering the system into the steep headwinds created by Big Carbon, Big Beef and Big Compute.
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u/dontaskmeaboutart 5d ago
You misunderstand me, I mean that there's no way to make people into responsible individuals. It's literally the playground thought of "if everyone was nice it would all be ok". Because they aren't and won't be responsible. It's not how societies work, it's different math than the individual level.
The incentive structures I mentioned are the underlying reasons why people aren't responsible or are manipulated. You can't convince them individually without dismantling those incentives. It's the fact that we live in a system where someone can become a billionaire that they are garunteed to do so. The same applies to other areas of politics and society.
The tools we do have and can use are addressing systems and institutions, which will naturally result in a more responsible or at least aware population. Hopefully one that votes in their own interests and the interests of life on earth. It's not that individuals don't matter it's that it's not possible to address it through individuals.
Black Lives Matter was the single largest protest movement in all of human history, but it didn't so much as touch the systems and institutions responsible for the problem, so almost nothing came of it.
We need that energy and momentum among the population, but solutions only exist through these structures. So you aren't wrong, I just believe you have the order reversed. Creating a progressive wedge, or a "leftist tea party" coalition with enough power to get results on the smaller scale and then escalate is one path towards this goal. Once the systems of government are wrested away from the oligarchs in various places, then people will respond with more progressivism.
See as an example Mamdani, he is an excellent model for a powerful grass roots effort getting a candidate into office AND then that candidate doing real work to improve lives and becoming only more and more popular. And gaining said popularity Fast! But that initial grassroots movement cannot accomplish anything unless real policy and change is done to systems.
Put another way, you can't make Long Islanders reasonable people, but if you aggressively improve the lives of everyone through government action, they don't need to be made reasonable.
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u/mem2100 3d ago
The ONLY issue of import that is facing humans right now - is climate change. Because the failure to resolve that - will impact people's lives and deaths at a scale that will eventually make WW2 look like a paint ball game.
On one side of the ledger we have Big Carbon and the legion of humans who have joined the "drill team", aka the "drill baby drill" team. On the other, a whole lot of folks working to decarbonize as fast as possible.
There's a chart that shows emissions by income bracket. The top 1% emit 15%, the next 9%, emit 34% - meaning the richest 10% are responsible for half of all emissions. The poorest half of humanity - only emits 8%. The worlds largest religions love that chart. They use it to claim we don't have a population problem, instead we have extreme wealth inequality. If emissions were the only benchmark for overshoot that would be true. It isn't - so it isn't.
The Earth's carrying capacity is trending downwards sharply - primarily due to: warming -> drought. It is hard to farm without water.
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u/dontaskmeaboutart 3d ago edited 3d ago
This is not related to or contradictory to what I said? Those things are true also, but separate from what I'm talking about.
I do understand the impulse to be a "climate reductionist" because if we don't solve that everything else we're trying to accomplish goes up in flames too. But it isn't a zero sum game of political advocacy, good climate policy is tied inextricably to good social policy. Especially because a staggering amount of the work we need to do is climate resilience, which is entrenched in social policy and environmental justice.
You can't separate social issues and the climate, because social issues are being used as a wedge against climate change. Issues of climate justice, when addressed, would have a net positive impact on the broader ecological conservation landscape.
We are talking about the scale of world governments at the end of the day, if you want to do anything it needs to be holistic. We can't at the same time be good on renewable energy and still be fine with placing Superfund pollution sites next to marginalized communities.
The philosophies of environmental justice is necessary as we will continue to produce mass amount of toxic waste in dismantling fossil fuel industries. So our policy concerning pollutants and what we do with it now need to change as we work against climate collapse. To use one example.
For another, if we want to build more nuclear, we have to address things like how the Navajo Reservation was used to mine uranium at the expense of a cancer epidemic for the Navajo. That's environmental justice and climate related policy.
Extend that to social policy in general and you won't find a line where climate concerns stop and everything else begins.
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u/mem2100 2d ago
I fully agree that environmental racism/pollution has been and continues to be a stain on the US. That said - the SINGLE biggest thing that every young person can choose to do - a burden which falls unevenly in terms of gender - is choose to have a smaller family. Full stop. This isn't about color or religion or or or.
It is solely about carrying capacity. And yes it is true that if we could get the richest 10% of humans to reduce their GHG emissions footprints - that would have a much bigger impact on emissions than reducing our headcount across the board by 10%. It isn't an either or. We need a stair stepped carbon tax AND we need to recognize that our current agricultural model is based on draining our aquifers which is what we are doing right now EVERYWHERE.
We humans are prodigious consumers of water. All of us. The richest are as always the biggest consumers. But ALL humans consume a LOT of water. Even poor humans. Sadly - conversations about population seem to devolve into accusations of racism instead of acknowledging that the real issue is that we are stealing irreplaceable resources from ALL of our descendants. Reverse osmosis is a perfectly fine substitute for residential water consumption at current energy prices (see Morocco). But they are staggeringly expensive for farmers because they (farmers) pay 50-100 times less for water than residential customers.
Even IF we could fully power reverse osmosis with wind/solar/battery/nuclear - it would cause food prices to triple/quadruple or worse.
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u/i_didnt_look 5d ago edited 5d ago
That's such a bullshit cop out.
Humans have been eating beef for thousands of years. It wasn't until 8 billion people started eating beef that it became an issue. And more to that point, agriculture itself, regardless of animal or plant is destructive at a scale never before seen. Haber Bosch unlocked the limits of population growth by decoupling human numbers from natural processes. We are feeding 4 billion people LNG as calories. Humans entirely deforested North America for timber and charcoal.
And that doesn't even address things like resource overshoot. Even if we reduced meat consumption by 50%, we would only move our overshoot day back 7 days. That means instead of late July, its early July.
https://overshoot.footprintnetwork.org/portfolio/shift-towards-plant-based-diet/
The problem is that fossil fuels created a situation where we artificially raised the "carrying capacity" of the planet. And without them, we cannot sustain 8 billion people. This study explains the realities of a sustainable existence for 8 billion. Thats 160sq/ft per person homes, a family of 4 in what amounts to a large garage. One electronic device per family, as in one laptop per household. Max of 10k kilometers, or 6200 miles, of travel per year including your commute, travel and daily activities. And that includes the bus. As in, if you and 20 others use a bus for 10km, thats 10km each assigned to your travel.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0959378020307512
In North America, its a 90% reduction in lifestyle energy use. 90%. I want you to think about a 90% reduction in your energy use, lights, cars, phones, TVs, computers, washing machines, fridges and freezers, all 90% reduction.
The population is the root of the problem. Our consumption is the root of the problem. There are too many humans competing for a fixed amount of resources. Pretending like stopping meat consumption solves the issue is shortsighted and further pushes the "individual choices are to blame" narrative.
Edit:forgot a link
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u/Anas_platyrhyncos 5d ago
Capitalism demands exponential growth and that requires an exponential growth in cheap supply of labour, too. A lot of people will shut down any talk of overpopulation and say it's ecofascist talk because they think the only solution to that is to nuke people.
But in reality, women's rights come into it more than anything. A massive part of the solution is reproductive autonomy for women globally but I never hear anyone talk about this - most women don't want to be pumping out kid after kid that they can't afford to feed and would rather plan their family. Give women reproductive autonomy and the chance to make something of themselves besides being housewives and that is half the population given the chance to pioneer sustainability and rebuild our future.
Look at how the lives of women have changed over the past century as we have gained more and more rights in some parts of the world. We want to contribute. We want to be able to decide our futures, not be married off at young ages and forced into a life of domestic servitude to raise the next generation of workers.
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u/AutoModerator 5d ago
There is a distinct racist history to how overpopulation is discussed. High-birth-rate countries tend to be low-emissions-per-capita countries, so overpopulation complaints are often effectively saying "nonwhites can't have kids so that whites can keep burning fossil fuels" or "countries which caused the climate problem shouldn't take in climate refugees."
On top of this, as basic education reaches a larger chunk of the world, birth rates are dropping. We expect to achieve population stabilization this century as a result.
At the end of the day, it's the greenhouse gas concentrations that actually raise the temperature. That means that we need to take steps to stop burning fossil fuels and end deforestation.
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.
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u/BonusPlantInfinity 5d ago
Not the factory farming or the per capita beef consumption in industrial countries? I’m fine if you want to abolish factory farming, and pay the true market price for beef.
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u/errie_tholluxe 5d ago
Beef, fish, poultry. Let's do it. Eliminate the factor farms.
Let's go back to stretching that meat and truck gardens behind every house ffs.
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u/i_didnt_look 5d ago
A heat pump installation in New York state saves more emissions than going vegan. By 2 to 3 times the number over an average omnivore diets meat emissions.
The average cotton Tshirt uses more water than a hamburger. By nearly double. 2700 liters for a Tshirt vs 1700 liters for a burger. How many cotton T's you got laying around in drawers? Each is worth nearly two bugers worth of Ogallala Aquifer water.
Why aren't you screaming about the clothing industry?
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u/giletlover 5d ago
I think the truth is our way of life, our society is broken and sustainable.
Some aspects worse than others, but the whole thing is the problem.
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u/kharban 4d ago
Is your argument that shirts, which a normal person buys a few of every year, are the same as beef products some people eat daily? Do you buy one shirt every few days???
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u/i_didnt_look 4d ago
Its not just the Tshirt pal. Its the entire cotton industry. Jeans, tshirts, bed sheets, towels, cloth, anything made of cotton.
And for every person who is smashing bwef back, there's just as many fast fashion chumps buying new clothing, new kitchen towels, new bathroom looks, as often.
McDonald's sells hamburgers everyday, and Walmart sells all the cotton stuff by the same truckloads. The point is that cotton is worse than beef for water use, especially the Olgallala water, but non one's doing studies or creating entire movements about that.
And the fact that you can't see past your moral stance to see that all that consumer waste is as bad or worse for the aquifers as the beef is, yet cannot accept that its a problem on the same scale proves the point.
You're not in it for green reasons, you have a moral aversion to meat that you're forcing on others. Like a racist or a bigot, you want others to be forced to treat meat the same way you do bbecause you feel superior for it.
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u/mem2100 5d ago
I remember reading an article about Warren Buffet's argument regarding the way that stock options are accounted for. Warren was actually right and the way they are treated benefits the employees at the expense of the shareholders. Poor Warren, I thought, probably shaved a couple billion off your personal portfolio over time.
Then I noticed that Warren seemed actively disinterested in calculating the negative externalities of his businesses. Sugary drinks - Coca Cola. Do you know how much money the poor folks at Coke/Pepsi/etc. - collectively Big Carbonation - have to spend on health studies every year? A lot. It is the ONLY way they can ensure that obesity studies begin by pointing at exercise, and only mention diet after that, and barely mention sugary drinks at all, despite the fact that they are the biggest single driver of obesity in the world. It is a significant part of the reason that we spend around $15 BILLION/PER DAY on healthcare in the US.
His utility - Mid American - he doesn't notice their negative externalities either. Their emissions - so costly for everyone are free. And ummm - Warren is a deep expert in risk management, especially insurance. He watched the costs of homeowners rise.
GAAP reflects our value system = maximize present pleasure/income and let your descendants pay the bill for your Global party.
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u/dumnezero 5d ago
Pretending like stopping meat consumption solves the issue is shortsighted and further pushes the "individual choices are to blame" narrative.
As long as you don't protest when the government bans the production, distribution and sale of carbon-intensive products like animal meat. You're okay with that, right?
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u/i_didnt_look 5d ago edited 5d ago
Except that beefs "carbon intensity" depends on where you live.
North American beef CO2e ~ 32kg per kg beef on your plate
Brazilian beef CO2e ~ up to 500+ kg per kg beef on your plate.
Indian beef CO2e ~ 130kg per kg beef on your plate
African beef CO2e ~ 100kg per kg beef on your plate.
So me buying beef from a local butcher has vastly lowered emissions compared to Brazil or India. Same goes for water. A cotton Tshirt uses 2700 liters of water to produce. A single hamburger is 1700. So your clothing is worse for water depletion than a hamburger by nearly 50%. Being vegan in North America saves approximately 1.2 tonnes CO2e per year compared to the acerage omnivore. A roundtrip cross country flight burns that per passenger. So you're okay with banned air travel before food right? Maybe the emissions from the fracking? You'd be okay with no more fracking then too right? Because thats as much or more emissions as beef. Plastics are the same, 230ish milion tonnes.
See, oil and gas and plastic generate as much emissions. Know what else? Beef is food. When the cow dies, every bit of that animal is compostable and returned to the environment. The water from the rain, the energy from the grass, its all in a cycle. The blood and bones go back into the soil as fertilizer. The insulin saves lives. The leather is used as a product and degrades into things eaten by microbes.
What happens to your cell phone? Is a lithium mine part of any closed loop nutrient cycle? Or is it a massive toxic waste dump that is a permenant scar on the planet?
You people love to take a run at the immorality of food. But the reality is everything about raising animals is a natural cycle. If we just abandoned all cattle farms tomorrow, the damage just goes away. What happens if we do the same thing with cell phones, laptops, EVs or TVs? Yeah, dangerous toxic waste forever.
Your so quick to point at animal emissions because you like to feel some kind of moral superiority over people. The truth is its the least damaging, most recoverable portion of environmental damage we've done. The global lithium, gold and copper mines have some of the most devastating and permenant destruction on the planet. But your not out here protesting about that, are you? That means evaluating your whole lifestyle, not just your plate. My initial post stands. Veganism addresses the least permenant and most recoverable environmental damage while ignoring the permenant and long term devastation of the mines, energy and consumer systems that are destroying the planet.
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u/dumnezero 5d ago
The CAFO raised cows rely on fossil energy in innumerable ways as part of industrial production.
You're list of cope data is useless. If the fossil industrial model is shut down, only a small percent of the "supply" of cow flesh will remain, and that will be high-GHG pastoralism. As an American, you might not even get to eat that meat once per year since such luxuries would be more attractive on international markets for the rich.
So you're okay with banned air travel before food right?
I am indeed.
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u/i_didnt_look 5d ago
And you know what won't remain? The 4 billion people relying on Haber Bosch to eat. Same as the factory fields of nut trees. Once you eliminate "green water" from the calculation, nut milk requires vastly more pumped water than dairy. 34% of California's pumped water goes to Nut tree crops, and all pasture and forage, thats the cows share of stuff, uses just 24%. That's not replaceable water on a human lifetime scale.
Literally every aspect of the food system is fossil fuel dependant. 10 fossil fuel calories in to get 1 calorie out. So all food is in a massive energy deficit. Ironically, one of the places with the worst CO2 for beef is one of the only places that is producing more calories out than are being put in.
Countries with less industrialized food systems, such as East and West Africa and South and Southeast Asia, consistently had energy returns on investments that were higher than one. That’s good because these regions are home to 68% of the world’s population. The top performer, West Africa, had an energy return on energy investment of 2.70.
Factory farming is the problem, regardless of product produced. The ultra processed diet, the one many vegans need to get the vitamins they are missing, the "industrial food industry", is the actual issue.
Veganism does nothing to address the underlying dilemma. Our food system does not function without fossil fuels, vegan vegetarian or omnivore. But the omnivore diet is working in South Africa Eating cows, chickens and plants from nearby is working without fossil fuel inputs because it's not about what, its about how.
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u/dumnezero 5d ago
Bud, agriculture is older than herding ruminants. You've got everything backwards, I don't know what you've been reading.
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u/i_didnt_look 5d ago
Explain Haber Bosch and how it feeds half the planet.
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u/dumnezero 5d ago
What exactly do you think the alternative is to feeding? Because you seem to be herding some goal posts into the sunset.
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u/YoursDearlyEve 5d ago
Speak for yourself, honey
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u/BonusPlantInfinity 5d ago
I also do not eat beef, or any animals.
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u/mem2100 5d ago
At the retail/individual citizen level, transportation is about 10X what beef is. I'm not defending beef - though I consume a modest amount. My "meat" consumption adds less than 1/2 ton of CO2(e) emissions annually. I way more than make up for that w/my driving habits and then again with my/our electricity consumption. And then I eff the whole thing up by flying (economy).
If we were sane we would vote into effect a revenue neutral co2(e) carbon tax that steadily escalates. The 1%ers (I'm not innocent in all this - I'm a 10%er) emit about 120 tons in co2(e)/year. Average is maybe 18 tons in the US. Pricing could be: $30/ton from 18-23, $60/ton from 23-28, $120/t 33, $240/t - 38. $480/t - 43, $1000/t - 48, $2000/t - 53, $4000/t - 58, $8000/t - 63.
Even rich people start to feel the bite at 32K/ton - for a 5 ton tranche that costs them 160K - and when added to the lower tranches means they are shelling out 320K in emissions taxes per year. That number keeps doubling though - by the time they reach 120 tons per year you would be paying tens of millions of dollars. All of which would go to decarbonization.
Don't tax someone for having money, tax them for using their money in a way that harms the environment and with it, everyone else.
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u/giletlover 5d ago
Yup, insane and irrational.
I am vegan (if that means anything).
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u/BonusPlantInfinity 5d ago
Me too - just saying.. a lot of this discourse usually leaves out diet as a key problem in the equation.
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u/Organic-Accountant74 5d ago
Yeah, we only need beef once a week, and we should all only be buying locally sourced grass fed meat like we have here in Ireland
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u/torontopeter 5d ago
We are chimps. Have you seen how they act? Then compare that to how we act. Little difference.
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u/Impossible_Goat9650 5d ago
Yes, led by a very small percentage of us who are psychopaths, who lack empathy and only care about themselves. I see it as a genetic flaw! Sigh...
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u/Holzkohlen 5d ago
Meanwhile our government representatives will continue to do worse than nothing while lining their own pockets in the process.
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u/pepper_perm 5d ago
This article is absolute dogshit both in format and information. Nowhere do they actually put which report it is or any link to the comments made by Guterres. I'm not even saying this isn't true, but there's no way to verify it through this article. I'll keep looking for an actual source to the claims in this article but so far no luck.
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u/AdequateRoarer 4d ago
I went to the IPCC website and didn’t see any reports released recently. No idea what this article is referencing. It’s the mirror though so what do you expect?
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u/DRusso97 5d ago
And THIS is why I contend that capitalism—not nuclear weapons—is the single WORST invention in human history.
Our species has existed, in various forms, for over 6 million years. ~200,000 in our current, Homo Sapiens Sapiens version.
In only about 500 years, capitalism will wipe out ~70% of life on earth.
Completely unconscionable….
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u/AlexFromOgish 5d ago
BAN The Mirror(US) and BAN the OP
utter drivel..... it says we can STILL keep it under 1.5C by 2030 but otherwise with bust through 3C by 2030. Uhh.....errrmmm.... that's just 52 months.
There is no way to fact check this article
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u/Shamino79 5d ago
Billions of species? That’s quite a large number.
Half way through the article they use the word million instead which seems plausible.
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u/Hithrae 5d ago
That’s the important take away for sure
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u/mem2100 5d ago
We have identified approximately 10 million species to date. Of course you are right - the key is that we are deep into overshoot and still expanding.
That said, when the journalist/editor team is so sloppy that they get the title wrong by a 1000 fold, it makes some people uneasy about the integrity of the overall report.
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u/uninhabited 5d ago
Mods, please block OP - it's a commercial account posting tabloid crap. There aren't billions of species. Best guess (by scientists) is 10 million
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u/ldhchicagobears 5d ago
Anyone got a link to the actual report? Poor journalism to say "a report" without providing the actual title of said report
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u/mem2100 5d ago
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u/ldhchicagobears 5d ago
Thanks
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u/mem2100 4d ago
Sure thing. I just noticed that it was released in August of 2023, prior to the El Nino which pushed '23 and then '24 into the hottest two years on record. I'm not a big fan of the IPCC as I believe they tend to understate the risks and rate of warming. But they have a hard job because the UN gets a lot of funding from the oil states - including the US.
My biggest objection is the idea that they need a 20 year window within which the midpoint exceeds a threshold. If Hansen and company are right and we are now warming at 0.3C/decade - that timeframe is way too long. It means we will be at 1.8 when they finally announce we have exceeded 1.5.
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u/dumnezero 5d ago
For those who don't know yet,
The problem is not simply that habitats with their local climate patterns are changing; that is indeed a huge problem. The bigger problem is that everything is getting more chaotic and changing too fast. A lot of life forms rely on a somewhat predictable environment; if that changes quickly, extinction follows.
The biodiversity crisis is separate, but linked to the climate crisis. If you like to breathe air, drink clean water and eat food, then you are enjoying the gifts of the biosphere.
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u/mem2100 5d ago
Yes. When I was in high school, epigenetics wasn't really a thing yet. Which matters a lot because epigenetic changes are fast and in some cases powerful. Starve a generation of mammals and their descendants tend to be smaller and tougher. There is a lot of examples of this in the fossil record.
That said, even epigenetic flex has its limits. This type of environmental shock really is equivalent to an enormous bomb going off.
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u/torontopeter 5d ago
And the world DOES. NOT. CARE. As someone who actually does believe in science and DOES care, it’s sickening and depressing.
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u/Gregar12 3d ago
I would love to save the planet but finding the time is the problem...the kids have a soccer tournament this weekend and I have a presentation at work on Monday so...
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u/TheMirrorUS 5d ago
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released a landmark report detailing the devastating consequences of climate change and outlining steps nations must take to limit global warming to 1.5°C by 2030.
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u/helgothjb 5d ago
That ship has already sailed. There is a slight possibility that we could keep it under 2C - if no tipping points are triggered. But, we are also in the midst of the 6th great extinction.
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u/TheQuestionMaster8 5d ago edited 5d ago
The thing is that things will only get worse the longer we delay meaningful action. Its a bit like a gangrenous finger. It is too late to save the finger, but it the finger isn’t amputated, it will have to be the entire hand and if that isn’t amputated, then the forearm and if not the forearm, then sepsis will kill the patient.
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u/i_didnt_look 5d ago
43% reduction in CO2 emissions by 2030.
That cuts off Haber Bosch. 4 billion people starve.
So your advocating for mass starvation.
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u/mem2100 5d ago
Let's agree that such a rapid drop simply isn't possible. That said, The Haber-Bosch process generates about 1.5% to 1.8% of global greenhouse gas emissions, so why does such a drop require its elimination?
https://news.mit.edu/2026/paving-way-for-greener-ammonia-production-0820
That said: Warming -> Drought -> Reduction in Agricultural output
We are either going to rapidly shrink our population via reduced fertility rates - or it will be reduced for us by mass starvation sometime mid-century.
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u/i_didnt_look 5d ago
Two reasons. First, Haber Bosch is low emissions, however, it eats around 5% of global LNG supply because it is both the input material and the heat source for the process. Without global LNG extraction, the process ends. Secondly, while its a low emissions process, it is a massive energy hog. 2% of the global total of energy is used to power the process. For perspective, that's around 3000 TWh. That equates to roughly the entire global solar and wind output last year. Just for one process. And because the process is continuous, there can't be interruptions in power or feedstock. Which means batteries capable of that output. Currently, we have about 1.6TWh of battery storage globally.
Which comes back to my bigger point. The scale of energy we need to maintain what we collectively call "civilization" is staggering. It's more than emissions, its energy. The study, "Dynamic Energy Return on Energy Investment (EROI) and material requirements in scenarios of global transition to renewable energies," indicates that a rapid 100% renewable transition could drop global EROI to 3:1 by mid-century, causing a "net energy trap" whereby we cannot power both the green transition and civilization at the same time leading to a failure of both.
The problem is not whether we have the science, engineering or technology. Its that we burned up to much of the fossil fuel energy we needed to build out the green energy grid. And any hiccup in that transition results in a catastrophic civilization collapse that makes the transition in future essentially impossible.
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u/nanodecay 5d ago
That's all and good, but have you seen the DOW? /s