> Or at best we just replace coal with natural gas, and in which case who cares, our CO2 production is still going up?
The rate of change matters: every bit of carbon emitter now makes it worse, so any form of power less polluting than coal buys a little time to deal with the hard problems like heavy industrial processes which take more time to convert.
The big thing you’re leaving out is the growth curve on renewables, especially solar. We’re already seeing major economies (Germany, California) hitting periods of completely running their power grids on renewables, and as the cost goes down it’s going to be even less economically viable to burn coal. One of the big questions is who will figure out how to use peak overproduction effectively since that has the potential to make things like EVs even cheaper than the fossil fuel alternatives.
This is also why we need some kind of tax or an outright ban on proof of waste cryptocurrencies. Everything else will improve as cheap renewables become widespread but the whole point of something like bitcoin is to show that you’re wasting the most power, and that scales with production in a way nothing else does. Given the minimal economic impact, a ban would be most beneficial but a general carbon tax would be effective on a slower scale.
The rate of change matters: every bit of carbon emitter now makes it worse, so any form of power less polluting than coal buys a little time to deal with the hard problems like heavy industrial processes which take more time to convert.
The big thing you’re leaving out is the growth curve on renewables, especially solar. We’re already seeing major economies (Germany, California) hitting periods of completely running their power grids on renewables, and as the cost goes down it’s going to be even less economically viable to burn coal. One of the big questions is who will figure out how to use peak overproduction effectively since that has the potential to make things like EVs even cheaper than the fossil fuel alternatives.
This is also why we need some kind of tax or an outright ban on proof of waste cryptocurrencies. Everything else will improve as cheap renewables become widespread but the whole point of something like bitcoin is to show that you’re wasting the most power, and that scales with production in a way nothing else does. Given the minimal economic impact, a ban would be most beneficial but a general carbon tax would be effective on a slower scale.