Transition to Where, When?
“We are getting energy completely wrong and it’s made the environment worse.”
Eventually, we will transition because we have to. But not as fast as expected, and certainly not without pain.
Meanwhile, policy missteps by the US, EU, and California made the transition worse.
California’s 2020 Wildfires Negated Years of Emission Cuts
The Scientific American reports California’s 2020 Wildfires Negated Years of Emission Cuts
Carbon pollution from California’s 2020 wildfires erased 16 years of the state’s greenhouse gas emission cuts, according to a new UCLA study.
The fires were the state’s most destructive on record, burning 4.2 million acres, killing dozens of people and destroying thousands of homes. The study—published in Environmental Pollution—adds another statistic: the fires released roughly 127 million megatons of greenhouse gas emissions, or about twice California’s total emission cuts from 2003 to 2019.
“What happened in 2020 was basically like a new sector; a new sector of emissions just came out of nowhere,” said study co-author Amir Jina, a University of Chicago professor. The wildfire emissions were “almost as big as their main emission sector, which is transport.”
If those trees grow back over several decades, they could absorb the carbon released from the fires, he said. But that’s not guaranteed, he said, and in the meantime, those emissions will contribute to climate change.
California would have done far more for the environment by spending money to remove dead trees instead of all the gas taxes, environmental mandates, and other economic nonsense it did do.
And that does not even factor in the loss of property and lives.
Finally, it’s all irrelevant unless China and the developing nations turn away from coal.
I don’t agree with Jamie Dimon about much. But yeah, Dimon is right about this.
This post originated at MishTalk.Com.
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Mish
According to the UCLA study, greenhouse gas emissions generated
by California wildfires in a single year (2020) were more than double the
amount of carbon dioxide reductions over a 16-year period. Curious why they did
not attempt to estimate the greenhouse gas emissions from California wildfires
for the same 16-year period. This should be headline news and compel serious and
immediate discussions about how we allocate resources to protect our planet.