this post was submitted on 22 Aug 2023
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Which makes perfect sense when you consider that there's a deadline, we've gone a very long way in one direction and going all the way back to take another route would guarantee missing that deadline.
It's like you're taking your ship from China to Rotterdam, you're past the Suez canal, in the Mediterranean and now you decide to turn around and go around Africa after all. It really would be idiotic.
That decision wouldn't be idiotic if I actually wanted to go to Africa. It takes even longer to turn around from Rotterdam.
In my example, 'Rotterdam' is supposed to be the ultimate destination, so it would be equivalent to 'carbon neutrality'. Changing the destination to 'Africa' would be the equivalent to just building nuclear power plants for the sake of it, regardless of whether they help us reach carbon neutrality.
I think the ultimate destination should be carbon neutrality while maintaining a strong industrial base and high standard of living for everyone in the world. Humanity needs to engineer an energy surplus to undo the damage we've done, and when one of the richest countries is planning for "demand response", that doesn't really inspire much confidence.
Demand response just means making use of energy surplus. And we'll have lots of that during spring and summer in the northern hemisphere. Running carbon capture machines only when there's a surplus is a perfect example of demand response.