An energy plan the Earth can live with*

The climate science, technology, and policy landscape we face today are hugely out of alignment.  While the climate science community has highlighted the critical need for immediate action towards a 1.5 degree C (or lower) global climate warming target [IPCC, 2018; USGCRP. 2018], and while energy and transportation technologies are moving rapidly to enable that tremendously challenging goal, the US stands as the sole denier of a path that requires immediate action.  Both large infrastructure choices and immediate daily decisions are needed.  Sadly, every delay in moving the US to a productive, proactive position, makes achieving these goals less likely, or more costly, or both.  Immediate, pro-environment and pro-business decisions are needed at the household, state, regional, national and global levels to put us on a sustainable path.   I highlight a set of energy, transportation, and land-use modeling tools and policy opportunities that are consistent with the needed 1.5 degree Celsius objective (Kittner, Lil & Kammen, 2017).  The critical role of decision-making is highlighted through a series of technical, policy, and social justice opportunities.  Recent events including the rise of a populist “Green New Deal” ethos, congressional debate over carbon pricing, and the role of environmental justice will be highlighted as critical, potentially 'last best chance' opportunities (Sunter, Castellanos & Kammen, 2019) for climate sanity and meaningful support of much needed action.

References:

Kittner, N., Lil, F., and Daniel M. Kammen (2017) “Energy storage deployment and innovation for the clean energy transition ”, Nature Energy, 2, 17125.

Sunter, Deborah, Castellanos, Sergio, and Daniel M Kammen (2019) “Disparities in rooftop photovoltaics deployment in the United States by race and ethnicity,“ Nature Sustainability.DOI: 10.1038/s41893-018-0204-z