** 24th book of 2021: Global Warming Factfulness **
Global warming is a vast problem, but not intractably complex. We emit about: 52 billion tons of carbon / year. The only way to stop global warming is to bring this number to zero. The problem can be broken up into 5 sectors, and while we are making progress in #2 and #4, we do not have good solutions for the rest.
- Making things is 31%
- Electricity is 27%
- Growing things is 19%
- Getting Around is 16%
- Keeping warm/cool is 7%
In each sector, the ‘green premium’ can be defined as the difference between a net-zero solution and the current carbon positive solution - this green premium describes how far away our current economy is from net zero. In some areas, the green premium will be so high, that carbon capture will be more effective. Only governments will be able to implement the programs necessary to close the gap between net-zero / net-negative solutions and what the market currently offers. Gate’s book reads like the understand work for a business presentation, but this is the language that I speak, and I feel much more equipped to think about climate change pragmatically than I was before reading.