No. We will blow past 1.5 degrees. Right now the projection under current policies is that we end up at around 2.7 degrees. Which will have consequences, to be sure. But not so severe consequences that the lift of a typical 16-year-old in a wealthy developed OECD economy will be drastically different than it would otherwise have been with 1.5 degrees.
We won’t prevent climate change, and there will be negative impacts. But we will probably avoid going significantly above 3.0, which means the worst case scenarios are very likely going to be avoided.
Oh, that’s the assessment of where we will end up by the year 2100. I misremembered that 2.7 degrees as the average case, but it’s the best case under current policies. Expected case under current policies is about 3.2. Doesn’t change the analysis much:
I think that’s probably way too high, since recent assessments of population growth show we’ll peak far before then and start seeing real declines in global population before 2100 in a way that are not (yet) incorporated into climate models.
Anyway, ignoring that for now, today’s 16-year-old is very unlikely to live past 2100. So that’s a convenient outside date. So while we’ll go past 1.5 degrees, we’re almost certainly not going to go past it by enough to drastically change the life they experience.
So the likely achievable goal, if we follow the Paris accords, is that worldwide temperature averages will have risen by 3.2 degrees centigrade by the end of the 21st century?
Are you confident that the future tipping points will not be catastrophic?
Are you confident that worldwide temperatures will not continue to rise after that point?
Fairly. I mean, no one can ever be confident about what might happen 75 years from how. But human population growth has collapsed far, far faster than anyone thought it would. The UN now thinks that population will peak in 2084 and actually be on a downslope as we head into 2100 - and I think it’s more likely those numbers get revised more downwards than upwards.
Probably also okay, on the whole. It really depends on whether the global industrialization of developing countries that underlies the assumed increase in carbon emissions actually happens. If China and India keep developing really rapidly, then we’re in the intense carbon situation - but then their citizens have more resources with which to mitigate against climate effects. If they don’t, then their citizens will be vastly poorer - but then we’re in a lower temperature delta timeline.
They won’t be in as good of shape as in the scenario where we dramatically reduced emissions and the developed West paid for most of it (which is what they want, and I don’’t blame them). But it seems pretty likely they’ll be better off in the “keep emitting and keep developing our economy” scenario than the “dramatically reduced emissions paid for by the developing world.” Like the developed world, they’d also rather have the cheap energy than bear the costs of decarbonizing.
Why do you assume that an eventual leveling off of population will produce a proportionate reduction in emissions?
I just read a bbc article claiming that wealthy populations and people use a greatly disproportionate amount of resources and produce a disproportionately large amount of emissions as compared to less wealthy people.
How do you propose to raise the standard of living of the billions of less wealthy people to deal with the impacts of climate change without allowing them to use the additional resources that allow them to raise their standard of living?
Right now the bulk of emissions are spewed out are by the top ten percent. Namely us. How do we raise the standard of living of the other 90 percent without allowing them to increase their consumption and emissions?
Because there will be fewer rich people relative to prior projections, so the carbon emissions will be lower relative to projections.
It’s the “getting rich” part of development that is the main cause/correlating factor for the decline in birth rates, so if we have X% fewer people in 2100 than we thought we would back in the day, it’s going to mostly be fewer rich people (which in this context is the global definition of “rich,” which is nearly everyone in an OECD country).
They’re going to increase their consumption and emissions. That’s why we’re going to go up from present levels of just under 1.5C to nearly double that amount at around 3.0C by 2100. But what we now know is that as they raise their standard of living, the projected population growth of all those nations will be much lower than previously thought. So if the fictional developing country of Albabia was thought to go from 40 million people at $8K of GDP per capita to 80 million people at $30K of GDP per capita in the next 75 years, it might instead land at only 60 million people at that $30K of GDP per capita. Far fewer emissions relative to the prior projections.
That used to be the case. It hasn’t been for quite a while. Developing countries account for about 75% of global CO2 emissions, and close to 95% of the delta in global emissions:
I’m not sure that’s what that link was saying. The article says that about 10% of the population meets all the criteria it describes for people that can effectuate significant change to emissions - college degree, high income on global standards, and can vote in a liberal democracy. These folks can change not only their personal consumption habits, but also influence industrial and financial policy outside their own resource consumption through their voting, banking, and investment choices.
The infrastructure for oil and coal is already multi-decades old. Old refineries are burning down, old coal and oil fields are in decline, and industry does not want to big investments in refineries, drilling and mining those fossil fuels.
The American public is bombarded by Trump Admin’s false climate, economy, health care, law and order narratives daily - this is seriously misleading and a socially destructive for public policy. The American public is suffering PTSD from all these lies.
I disagree with your opinions. The graphs you show are from 2023. In 2025 China has decreased CO2 emissions by 1%. And USA is increasing CO2 emissions under Trump Admin’s orders for more coal, oil and gas consumption.
I believe the case is quite compelling. And the frog doesn’t notice that the water in the pot is getting hot enough to kill him until very late in the game.
It’s actually a perfect example. For years people said “Oh, it’s not so bad”. And then for years they were told “It will cost too much to fix it”. I lived in Pittsburgh and can tell stories. I remember that the EPA didn’t come into existence until 1970! (Richard Nixon!!) after a century of pollution of the water, air, ground. It’s a perfect replica of those saying “Don’t worry about it.” I’m sure life on Venus is lovely now.
I agree with those upthread who say “don’t doom and gloom the whole thing” and I would frame it as an opportunity to reduce costs and make lives better. As Dr Bob noted, 80% of energy comes from fossil fuels, and that is constant over 30 or 40 years, maybe longer. That’s because we have an endless appetite for energy: when it’s cheap we use more - we have wall warts doing nothing and (absent regulation) giant cars and trucks with terrible mileage and electric space heaters and diesel trucks and data centers so we can make funny videos and … You can look at the Arab embargo of the 1970’s to see what happens when energy becomes expensive. (We still used a lot, but it at least bent the curve temporarily.)
So I would lay off the scary stuff, while keeping it alive just not foremost. I would simply champion CHEAPER alternative energy: river, wind, ocean, solar, nuclear, and so on. I’d frame it as JOBS, I’d call it a “manufacturing crisis”, I’d start eliminating farm subsidies in favor of renewable energy subsidies (and cast a wide net on that), and I’d do a bunch of other things designed to make renewables cheaper (and better: see: batteries over the past 10 years), see EVs.
I’d get a bunch of smarties in a room and say “Fix the damn nuclear issue, figure out how to make them cheap and fast”. I’d tariff solar & wind from China and use it to subsidize American production, in the same way we tax gasoline and use it to pay for highways.
There are lots of things which could be done, but the “disaster” approach has failed; the smart way to do it is to make it happen anyway, by turning the ocean liner of commerce in a direction we want.
FDR said “lend your neighbor a hose” when getting Lend Lease passed; a bigger bunch of malarkey we haven’t seen until recently, but it worked. Make the issue “cheap electric” not “boiling oceans.” Get it done!
The problem with most of that is that it doesn’t really solve the problem.
Subsidizing a product doesn’t make it cheaper to the country. It just makes it cheaper to the consumer, by shifting some of the cost away from the consumer to the government. There can be some advantages to doing that, but because you’re not actually lowering the cost of energy you end up with the same general problem that causes voters to sour on climate policies: they cost a lot of money.
Similarly, tariffing solar and wind from China doesn’t make solar and wind less expensive; it makes them more expensive, even if that production gets replaced by production in the U.S. That’s an example of the “everything bagel” criticism of progressive policy. If the priority is to reduce emissions, then you should be happy to import as much cheap solar and wind materials from China as possible; but if you start loading up other priorities (“we also want to create American jobs”) then you get much less efficient at achieving the goal of reducing emissions.
As for nuclear, there’s almost certainly a whole bunch of rooms with a whole bunch of smarties already trying to “fix” the nuclear issue and make cheap and fast nuclear reactors. They just haven’t been successful at it. Paying for more rooms of more smarties might help that along, or it might just replace some of the existing smarties.
But can “cheap electric” actually solve the problem, though? As a general matter, finding a new or cheaper energy source has not historically led us to stop using the then-existing energy sources very much. Mass commercial production of natural gas didn’t get us to stop burning oil; mass commercial production of oil didn’t get us to stop burning coal; mass commercial production of coal didn’t get us to stop burning wood; etc. In 2024, we produced more electricity from renewable sources (about 10,000 Twh) than we produced from all fossil fuel sources in 1985 - and we also burned twice as much fossil fuel as we did in 1985.
There’s nothing wrong with trying to have cheap renewable sources of electricity, of course. And a technological breakthrough that made such things possible would be very beneficial to mankind. But I don’t think we can assume that adding a cheaper renewable technology to the mix is necessarily going to lead to large reductions in emissions.
Its not as difficult as you imagine. Its actually rather easy. The way to get the cost of nuclear power down is to start building power plants. And then keep building them. Keep the same construction organization in place, and have standard designs, so the construction managers can take their experience from one project to the next. That way, the organization gets better and more efficient with each project.
France’s EDF and Framatome showed how to do that back in the 1970s and 80s, and now France gets around 70% of its electricity from nuclear power, and has some of the lowest carbon electricity in Europe (Much of the other 30% comes from wind, hydro, and other clean sources).
China is currently showing how to do it. China has around 28 plants in construction right now, and many more planned. The cost per kilowatt is around $2500, which is quite low compared to the recently completed Vogtle 3 and 4.
BEIJING, April 28 (Reuters) - China’s State Council has approved the construction of 10 new nuclear generating units, according to a report from government-backed media The Paper late on Sunday, which estimated the total outlay at 200 billion yuan ($27.44 billion).
That continues the pace of expansion of the past few years, with 10-11 units having been approved annually in 2022-2024.
The newly approved projects, which all use domestic technologies, represent expansions at five operational nuclear power plants: Fangchenggang in Guangxi, Sanmen in Fujian, Haiyang in Shandong, Xiapu in Chongqing, and Taishan in Guangdong.
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Companies in the US will probably never be able to get costs as low as China. But we can certainly get them lower than Vogtle 3 and 4. But it will take some commitment.
Many years ago, I taught myself how to juggle. At first, I was terrible at it. I couldn’t keep three balls going for even a few seconds before dropping one of them. But with practice, I eventually got better and better. After a while, I was juggling 4 balls at once, for pretty much as long as I wanted. The more you do something, the better you get at it.
I think we are out of luck. Like addicted smokers, we are going to minimize the long term risks of climate change until after we receive the cancer/heart disease/ emphysema diagnosis.
