Thread by @dwallacewells

Climate change is much bigger than the U.S., and addressing it much more complicated than electing a new president. But on the eve of the inauguration, a thread to show just what a different world the new president is inheriting. (1/x) nymag.com/intelligencer/…

"The price of solar energy has fallen ninefold over the past decade, as has the price of lithium batteries, critical to the growth of electric cars."

"The costs of utility-scale batteries, which could solve the “intermittency” (i.e., cloudy day) problem of renewables and help power whole cities in relatively short order, have fallen 70 percent since just 2015."

"Wind power is 40 percent cheaper than it was a decade ago, with offshore wind experiencing an even steeper decline."

"Overall, renewable energy is less expensive than dirty energy almost everywhere on the planet, and in many places it is simply cheaper to build new renewable capacity than to continue running the old fossil-fuel infrastructure."

"Oil demand and carbon emissions may both have peaked this year. Eighty percent of coal plants planned in Asia’s developing countries have been shelved."

In the fall, the U.K. pledged to ban nonelectrics by 2030—a once-unthinkable law coming both too slow and much more quickly than seemed possible not very long ago. Similar plans are now in place in 16 other countries, plus Massachusetts and California."

"Canada recently raised its tax on carbon sixfold. Italy cut its power-sector emissions 65 percent between 2012 and 2019, and Denmark is now aiming to reduce its overall emissions 70 percent by 2030. The U.K. is aiming for 78% by 2035."

"In the midst of the pandemic, new net-zero pledges, far more ambitious than those offered at Paris, were independently made by Japan, South Korea, the E.U., and, most significant, China, the world’s biggest emitter."

"China’s promise is so ambitious it has inspired one wave of debate among experts about whether it is even feasible — given that it would require, for instance, roughly twice as much renewable power to be installed every year for the next decade as Germany has today..."

"...and another debate about whether it has revived the possibility of that 1.5-degree target, with economic historian @adam_tooze writing, just after Xi Jinping’s surprise announcement in September, that it single-handedly “redefined the future prospects for humanity.”

"Together, the new net-zero pledges may have subtracted a full half-degree from ultimate warming. Add Biden’s campaign pledge of net zero by 2050, and you’ve got about two-thirds of global emissions at least nominally committed to firm, aggressive timelines to zero."

"These are all just paper promises, of course, and the history of climate action is littered with the receipts of similar ones uncashed."

"Plot the growth of carbon in the atmosphere against the sequence of climate-action conferences and a distressing pattern emerges...

"The World Meteorological Conference of 1979, the U.N. framework of 1992, the Kyoto protocol of 1997, the Copenhagen accord of 2009, and the 2015 Paris accords, all tracking an uninterrupted trajectory upward for carbon..."

"...from a 'safe' level under 350 parts per million, past 400, to 414 today, and pointing upward from there. Before the industrial revolution, humans had never known an atmosphere with even 300 parts per million."

"Inevitably now, within a few years, the concentration will reach levels not seen since 3.3 million years ago, when sea levels were 60 feet higher. And for all their momentum, renewables still only make up 10 percent of global electricity production."

"But alarmists have to take the good news where they find it. Given how long we’ve waited to move, what counts now as a best-case outcome remains grim. It also appears, miraculously, within reach." (x/x)