Daniel Lyons’s letter of July 15 responds to Pat Hynes’s column of July 8 advocating ending the use of all fossil fuels, by quoting a report by Vaclav Smil describing the enormous technical, economic, and political challenges which make a rapid transition away from fossil fuel use impossible. Smil’s report was published by the Fraser Institute, which Wikipedia says is a nonprofit organization which ceased disclosing its corporate donors in the 1980s, but also says that Fraser has received major donations from Charles and David Koch and ExxonMobil, all interested in promoting fossil fuels.
Per Upton Sinclair, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” Mr. Lyons says the costs of getting to Net Zero by 2050 are too high. I reply: what are the costs of not getting there? He says such a task is “wasteful.” What about the cost of subsidies to support fossil fuels? He says any reduction in CO2 in the U.S. would be dwarfed by the increased emissions from China and India. I don’t know about India, but China is engaged in a massive transformation of its grid to solar electricity, and last year 48% of all cars sold in China were electric (compared with 10% in the U.S.).
Last month Al Gore gave a TED Talk entitled “Why Climate ‘Realists’ Are Dead Wrong” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ztx0Bch3h9s). The good news begins at the 11:49 mark, when Gore describes the exponential growth of renewable energy worldwide, notes that the present $4.4 trillion in fossil fuel subsidies worldwide could fund the switch to green energy worldwide, and states that we have the technological and economic capacity to do so. All we lack is the political will, largely because many of our politicians receive money from the fossil fuel industry.
George Kriebel
Northampton