Reply #2: Those 15 wedges [View All]

[GliderGuider]

* 1 wedge of vehicle efficiency — all cars 60 mpg, with no increase in miles traveled per vehicle.
* 1 of wind for power — one million large (2 MW peak) wind turbines
* 1 of wind for vehicles –another 2000 GW wind. Most cars must be plug-in hybrids or pure electric vehicles.
* 3 of concentrated solar thermal – ~5000 GW peak.
* 3 of efficiency — one each for buildings, industry, and cogeneration/heat-recovery for a total of 15 to 20 million GW-hrs.
* 1 of coal with carbon capture and storage — 800 GW of coal with CCS
* 1 of nuclear power — 700 GW plus 10 Yucca mountains for storage
* 1 of solar photovoltaics — 2000 GW peak
* 1 of cellulosic biofuels — using one-sixth of the world’s cropland .
* 2 of forestry — End all tropical deforestation. Plant new trees over an area the size of the continental U.S.
* 1 of soils — Apply no-till farming to all existing croplands.

That should do the trick. And yes, the scale is staggering.

Writing like this is primarily useful for demonstrating just how how monumentally tight a corner humanity has backed itself into. All this effort and treasure is to be spent alleviating just one of the half-dozen or so intersecting problems humanity is facing. Not to mention that James Hansen is now saying that even stabilizing CO2 at 450 ppm won't be enough.

We will need to implement these 15 wedges while at the same time coping with a destabilized economic system, shrinking fossil fuel supplies, and rocketing fuel and food prices. It's not just scale and lack of political will that's going to put speed bumps in front of this grand humanitarian project.

Is it any wonder that people like me say we need to start thinking a little further outside the box? IMO it would be an easier project to lay the groundwork for a complete transformation of human culture than to try and keep 9 billion people happily chugging along in this caricature of a post-carbon technotopia.