Jean-Marc Jancovici, a well-known French climatologist and author of the French million-selling graphic novel “World Without End”, said that 100% renewable energy cannot replace fossil fuels to support the contemporary industrial world, globalization and continued economic growth. , even that renewable energy can remain cheap is an unproven assumption.
Jancovici believes that globalization is essentially made up of ships, trucks, planes and computers, all of which rely on fossil fuels. Maintaining all this in a renewable-only world is a bold assumption, made even more difficult to believe that such a shift would be compatible with maintaining growth in real economic output.
Nuclear energy is an effective way to mitigate economic shocks and has zero chance of maintaining the 1.5 degree warming control target
The most controversial thing for environmentalists is that Jancovici believes that nuclear energy is an “emergency parachute” that can reduce the risk of “social collapse”, so it can be regarded as an effective way to effectively alleviate economic shocks.
Despite years of sluggishness since the disastrous Fukushima incident, nuclear power has generally regained favor. French President Emmanuel Macron recently announced his intention to build 6 more next-generation EPR pressurized water reactors to add to France’s original 58 huge reactor fleet.
At the 28th United Nations Climate Summit (Cop28), 22 countries pledged to triple their nuclear energy capacity by 2050. Jancovici says that while it’s a good idea, reducing energy use will require a huge effort, and nuclear energy alone won’t save the industrial world.
He expressed sympathy for politicians such as President Macron who continue to preach “green growth” because they can’t actually promise anything else because they have no alternatives. Neither France nor the UK has a Plan B for dealing with a global structural recession.
Jancovici made a shocking statement: Unless a comet hits the earth, a full-scale nuclear war breaks out, or a new infectious disease more harmful than the new coronavirus emerges, the possibility of keeping global warming within 1.5 degrees Celsius is zero. He derided the latest “historic” Cop28 climate deal as a game-changing proposal. The agreement is not legally binding because there is no “world boss” to enforce the promise.
He continued to analyze that in order to achieve the goal of maintaining a minimum temperature rise of 1.5 degrees, simple arithmetic can calculate that global emissions must immediately begin to reduce at an annual rate of 7% to 8%, and then starting next year it must first “Get rid of India”.
Because India accounts for exactly 7% of global carbon emissions, for the plan to work, India’s annual carbon emissions must disappear within the next year. Two-thirds of Europe’s annual carbon emissions must also disappear within the next year. All this must be done at this pace to be possible. But even if the warming control target is set at 2 degrees, we will need an additional Covid attack every year to keep global energy conservation and carbon reduction on track.
Commercial aviation was born with the emergence of oil, and will die with the disappearance of oil.
Jancovici pointed out that since the first oil crisis in 1974, we have always hoped for sustained economic recovery and growth. Instead, we have accumulated debt over the past 50 years. In Europe, the real economy is already in decline. So when politicians like President Macron say economic growth will return, in reality economic growth has been slowing across Europe since 2007. As for energy conservation and carbon reduction in Europe, it is all because we have been subject to restrictions on fossil fuels since 2008.
Jancovici, 61, is a charismatic climatologist who pioneered the concept of carbon footprints in France and serves as an adviser to the government’s climate committee. According to his assessment, in order to save energy and reduce carbon emissions, a person can only afford four long-distance flights in his lifetime. Even he was surprised when 41% of French people said they would consider complying with the rule.
However, his assessment was recently criticized as “desperate” by Airbus CEO Guillaume Faury, who insisted that energy-saving alternatives will soon be available, while confirming that the world’s commercial aviation fleet will double in the next 20 years.
Jancovici countered that Faury’s statement was a calculation, not a suggestion. Democratic commercial airlines were born with the emergence of oil, but they will also die with the disappearance of oil because there is no scalable replacement. “We will eventually find an alternative, but it won’t be an alternative to four billion passengers a year,” he vowed.
(First image source: shutterstock)
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2024-01-14 23:49:29
