Global climate policy hasn’t made much difference on energy transitions. That is the conclusion of a new paper by Suzuki et al. They write:
Climate policies are often assumed to have significant impacts on the nature and speed of energy transitions. To investigate this hypothesis, we develop an approach to categorise, trace, and compare energy transitions across countries and time periods.
We apply this approach to analyse electricity transitions in the G7 and the EU between 1960 and 2022, specifically examining whether and how climate policies altered the transitions beyond historical trends. Additionally, we conduct a feasibility analysis of the required transition in these countries by 2035 to keep the global temperature increase below 1.5°C.
We find that climate policies have so far had limited impacts: while they may have influenced the choice of deployed technologies and the type of transitions, they have not accelerated the growth of low-carbon technologies or hastened the decline of fossil fuels.
Instead, electricity transitions in the G7 and the EU have strongly correlated with the changes in electricity demand throughout the last six decades. In contrast, meeting the 1.5°C target requires unprecedented supply-centred transitions by 2035 where all G7 countries and the EU must expand low-carbon electricity five times faster and reduce fossil fuels two times faster on average compared to the rates in 2015–2020. This highlights the insufficiency of incremental changes and the need for a radically stronger effort to meet the climate target.
In the real world, a plurality of those surveyed rejected a carbon tax.
For the study, the researchers surveyed 21,000 people in 17 European countries with the help of a survey institute, questioning them about their opinion on the introduction of a tax on fossil fuels…
In concrete numbers, initial support for the introduction of the tax was around 28%. In the group that received the climate information prompt, this figure rose to around 40%, with 35% rejecting the tax.
In the groups that were reminded of Covid-19 and the Russian invasion, support fell again to 30%, with rejection at 45%.
Absolutely, we sapient beings on this planet are NOT going to handle the perils of fossil fuel burning democratically, rationally, nor “optimally” in any but the most Lokian capricious sense.
We are going to handle it via denial and vituperative demagoguery on all sides, economic bottlenecks and ecological destruction, increasingly brutal power plays costing ever more lives, stupidly predictable and terrifyingly unpredictable emergent systemic problems, brutal breakdowns, and… finally gritty reemergence with narrow options.
However, the essence of rational ethical civil decisionmaking is the (often difficult and requiring conscious discipline) subordination of short term desire convenience and habit to long term obdurate necessity.
Actually, no, I don’t. I don’t think there is any scenario in which we stop or reduce or mitigate the heating of the planet. The only question is: how long do we have?
However, I did grow up in a Puritanical family that grounded me in the subordination of satisfaction of immediate animal desires to long term goals, well being, and happiness, both individually and communally.
It can be done.
Politics, of course, grows ever more difficult as the number of humans involved increases. Worse, politics becomes ugly when it centers ostentation and wealth over well-being, as Aristotle noted long long ago,
The poll results show that even the average person understands there are competing demands for resources, and climate change is not a ring to rule them all.
In addition to ‘selfish’ demands there are many ways to spend money to make things better – improved medical services and public health to name an obvious example. Money could be spend on simple stoves for the third world to replace indoor fire cooking. Air conditioning is quite efficacious in reducing heat strokes and deaths.
Climate change rules and regulations are needed to make all these improvenments of medical services and public health. Climate change is the cause of most problems in the world, and is the most important effort for the world to work on to mitigate world wide problems.
Ignorant. Love how these guys get a Ph.D. to be ignorant.
There are 47k authors in the US that do not sell books. They try to sell books. It is very competitive with lot of people piling on their version of crapola.
But hasn’t energy demand been significantly impacted by Climate Policies that induced increased energy efficiency in everything for light bulbs to refrigerators? And haven’t you made a habit of providing news stories about how Climate Policies promoting renewable energy have significantly increased electricity prices in places like Germany? And shouldn’t higher prices reduce demand? Doesn’t all this mean that Climate policies have had a significant impact on electricity use?
There are no crises except in the minds of the crisis mongers. Climate changes, humans adapt. Did Malthus, an early crisis monger, get it right? Consensus is not the foundation of the Scientific Method. Elections are consensus.
