Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by Consultant32452 2592 days ago
The world is building and deploying solar panels at break-neck speeds. Electric cars and other pollution reduction measures are coming online.

I'm well aware of the risks from existing coal burning plants, new plants being built in China/India/etc, shipping, feedback loops with stored CO2 in the ocean, all of it.

It's nice to imagine that the world can turn on a dime, but it can't. The global "situation" is going to get worse before it gets better, but the proverbial ball is rolling in the right direction.

1 comments

> The world is building and deploying solar panels at break-neck speeds.

It doesn't matter how many solar panels are deployed[1] What matters is how many gasoline cars, coal plants, and gas plants are going dark.

Net-over-net, they aren't.

[1] And this decade of break-neck speeds got us to... 2% solar deployment. We may hit 5% in another decade - and we need to get emissions to net zero in six years, if we want to avoid catastrophe.

Some amount of catastrophe is baked in. Coal is bad, but there's a lot of places in the world where coal + global warming is better than no coal without global warming. And some of those simultaneously have precarious economic situations and nuclear weapons. We're only going to nudge them so hard. Honestly, I'm impressed with how well it's going. I suppose we have a different perspective on what we think is actually achievable from a geopolitical standpoint.