The battle against dense, mineral energies is stymied because of a simple concept that the climate alarmists (including the mainstream media) do not want to comprehend: energy density.
Consumers want the best energies, while an intellectual/political elite scheme for and mandate inferior substitutes. And the crusade is further complicated because carbon dioxide (CO2) is the green greenhouse gas, hardly the satanic gas the anti-industrial Left wants to ban.
As energy density drives the world’s daily work, how are the climate crusaders responding? One major complaint concerns the frontal push of China to coal-fired generation.
Jennifer Layke of the World Resources Institute deals with the elephant in the room as follows:
…As the world turns attention to the UN climate meetings this week, news from China has captured global headlines: From January 2018 to June 2019, the country added 43 gigawatts (GW) of net new coal power capacity to its existing 1,000 GW coal fleet, while the rest of the world collectively reduced coal capacity by 8 GW.
“Big polluters must be rubbing their hands in glee that carbon market mechanisms, which further dilute the already weak and inadequate Paris emissions targets, are back on the agenda,” said Dipti Bhatnagar, Climate Justice and Energy Program coordinator for Friends of the Earth International ….
The groups condemned [carbon offsets] as “commodification of the Earth” that enables “climate-destroying business as usual under the pretense of climate action.”
A carbon tax? Emissions trading? Carbon offsets?
Forget all that: climate activists wants something much more comprehensive.
Think global statism from source to sink, even if that means the carbon police ringing your doorbell to make sure you are not using natural gas or firing up the outdoor grill. Remember what Christiana Figueres, former head of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, opined back in 2015?
…“Despite mounting climate impacts and radio silence from politicians, media and other important players, the panelists were hopeful that climate change will soon earn the attention it deserves.” (World Resources Institute, 2016)
Just prior to the 2016 election (which Hillary was going to win, of course), a group of leading climate alarmists opined about why they were losing in the court of public opinion. “If Climate Change Is the Existential Crisis of Our Age, Why Isn’t it Getting More Attention?” by Sarah Parsons of World Resources Institute (October 28, 2016) is reprinted below (with yellow headings inserted). My final comment follows.
Sarah Parsons asks “What Gives” about the “existential crisis” that received very little attention in the Presidential election.
The evidence is everywhere. Drought dries up farmland from California to the Sahel.
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