{"id":41418,"date":"2018-12-07T16:02:39","date_gmt":"2018-12-07T21:02:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=41418"},"modified":"2018-12-07T16:02:39","modified_gmt":"2018-12-07T21:02:39","slug":"what-if-we-just-buy-off-big-fossil-fuel-a-novel-plan-to-mitigate-the-climate-calamity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=41418","title":{"rendered":"What If We Just Buy Off Big Fossil Fuel? A Novel Plan to Mitigate the Climate Calamity"},"content":{"rendered":"

What If We Just Buy Off Big Fossil Fuel? A Novel Plan to Mitigate the Climate Calamity<\/a><\/h3>\n
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Photo Source Food & Water Watch | CC BY 2.0<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

As the nations of the world are gathered in Poland to fret about the state of the climate, there\u2019s an unpleasant truth\u2014one might say an inconvenient truth\u2014that climate advocates have long refused to face: Big Fossil Fuel has beaten us.<\/p>\n

We\u2019ve done our damnedest to stop them from wrecking the climate, but they\u2019re nonetheless pulling carbon from the ground in wondrous quantities. It was once astonishing that in the U.S. alone they could extract 55 quadrillion BTUs worth of oil, gas, and coal each year, as they did from 1970 to 2005. (A new home furnace puts out about 50,000 BTUs.) But 55,000,000,000,000,000 BTUs looks almost quaint now. Big Carbon extracted<\/a> 60 quadrillion BTUs from U.S. soil in 2011, 70 quadrillion in 2015, and next year it\u2019s expected to be 75 quadrillion. No wonder the 40 billion tons in CO2<\/sub>-equivalent greenhouse gases that our species emitted<\/a> in 2001 became 45 billion in 2004, 50 billion in 2009, and 55 billion today. Climactivists have mostly preferred to ignore these ugly facts and focus instead on the impressive growth in renewable energy. And it is impressive<\/a>. But here\u2019s another somewhat inconvenient truth: We\u2019re not using the new renewables to replace fossil fuels. We\u2019re just using them to keep up with<\/a> new energy demands\u2014demands from our growing population and the newly consumptive lifestyles of once-poor peoples being lifted from their poverty. In short, Big Carbon is a juggernaut that we\u2019ve hardly checked.<\/p>\n

Sure, we\u2019ve won some important skirmishes. We\u2019ve gotten fracking banned<\/a> in New York, Maryland, and Vermont. We\u2019ve convinced big investors who control more than $7 trillion in assets<\/a> to divest the $400 billion or so<\/a> they once held in fossil fuels.<\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What If We Just Buy Off Big Fossil Fuel? A Novel Plan to Mitigate the Climate Calamity Photo Source Food & Water Watch | CC BY 2.0 As the nations of the world are gathered in Poland to fret about the state of the climate, there\u2019s an unpleasant truth\u2014one might say an inconvenient truth\u2014that climate […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[141,18124,5493,327,23397],"class_list":["post-41418","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","tag-climate-change","tag-climate-change-mitigation","tag-counterpunch","tag-fossil-fuel-industry","tag-steve-hendricks"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41418","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=41418"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41418\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41419,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41418\/revisions\/41419"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=41418"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=41418"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=41418"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}