Transition To Collective Impact Funding Project Report: Fill & Download for Free

Warren, more so than some other candidates, has spread addressing climate change across different planks of her platform rather than having it as a single plank. This is a reasonable approach up to a point, as climate solutions and impacts touch almost every aspect of the United States (and the world) and so inserting climate-related actions in most plans makes sense. However, it can make comparisons to more integrated and costed plans such as Yang’s difficult.As a reminder, global warming has several large areas of causation. Electrical generation, transportation, land use and industry all have greenhouse gas emissions. The US military is also seven times larger than the next seven largest military forces in the world combined, is estimated to be one of the single largest greenhouse gas sources in the world and has not been required to quantify its emissions, but has been pointing out the significant global security risks of climate change for over a decade. While dealing with the causes is critical, dealing with adaptation to the impacts is now important as well due to our delays in addressing this problem which has been clear since the 1970s. Finally, while accelerating drawdown of carbon from the atmosphere is of lower priority than stopping emitting greenhouse gases, any plan should address aspects of drawdown as well. These aspects of Warren’s plan need to be assessed to see if they are present and the approaches are reasonable.Table stakesThere are a couple of things which virtually every Democratic candidate agrees with. The first is that they all accept the science of human-caused global warming and resulting climate impacts, and the need to act on this serious, global issue. The second is a return to the Paris Accord, which Obama entered the USA into and Trump walked away from. The third is support for the Green New Deal, at least in principle, but implementation varies quite a bit. And the Paris Accord portion means that US military emissions would finally be reported, so that they could be tracked and reductions measured.Electrical generationWarren has a plan for this, Accelerating the Transition to Clean Energy. One of her first statements points to an industrial plan, which we’ll cover in depth later.I’ve proposed a historic $2 trillion investment in researching, developing, and manufacturing clean energy technology here in America so that we can lead the global effort to slash greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 and beyond.(Note: all quoted text is from Warren’s campaign documents unless otherwise stated.)But then there’s an interesting wrinkle, which is very Warren-esque. She rightly identifies that companies face two types of climate risks, the first being damage to their ability to execute due to the impacts of climate change and the second being actions which cause climate change and must, inevitably, transform or stop entirely. The fossil fuel industry is called out explicitly in that last one.My Climate Risk Disclosure plan addresses these problems by requiring companies to publicly disclose both of these types of climate-related risks.Yeah, this is an investment advisory component and Warren would have the Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) put standards around reporting. Among other things, companies that were major contributors to global warming would have to quantify and value that impact in submissions. All of this is to fundamentally shift investment and the ability to garner capital by these firms. It’s fundamentally bringing the climate into Wall Street and the markets.Many firms already to this, including many oil and gas firms. Many of their projections already assume a price on carbon, for example. But the disclosures are all over the map and whether they are accurate or merely greenwashing requires careful analysis of individual efforts. This policy would clarify that substantially.This is a sophisticated, excellent and hard to communicate plan. It’s wonky. The average voter doesn’t read SEC filings or invest millions in the stock market. It’s much less voter friendly as a proposal than many, which is probably its biggest weakness.That’s not the only plan which addresses electrical generation, however. In addition to the manufacturing plan covered in the next section, My plan for public lands includes references as well.I will set a goal of providing 10% of our overall electricity generation from renewable sources offshore or on public lands.This is matched by the elimination of new fossil fuel extraction on public lands.I will sign an executive order that says no more drilling — a total moratorium on all new fossil fuel leases, including for drilling offshore and on public lands.The combination will mean that at a stroke, public lands will be focused on low-emission, low-pollution wind and sun exploitation instead of fossil fuel exploitation. That’s a strong pairing of policy positions that are definitely good for the climate all over the world, and for the quality of the environment on public lands.That first pledge includes removing barriers to leasing for renewables firms and to sharing the income with the states and local communities. The combination is a strong one.IndustryAs Warren split her clean energy transition across two chunks of her platform, I’ll follow with her industrial plank, My Green Manufacturing Plan for America. It’s a much more voter-centric plan. The words ‘patriotism’, ‘jobs’, ‘American’ and the like are all over it. She invokes the WWII mobilization of manufacturing to fight global fascism and Kennedy’s Space Race. Pulse-stirring stuff.And the components of the plan mirror this. Her Green Apollo program would invest $400 billion in R&D for clean technologies and create a National Institutes of Clean Energy. Her Green Industrial Mobilization would provide $1.5 trillion for federal procurement of clean energy products at the federal level, but with a focus on promoting procurement of US clean energy products at all levels of government; bulk federal procurements would be tapped by state and municipal governments for lower-costs at those levels of government. Her Green Marshall Plan would be funded to the tune of $100 billion and promote American clean energy products and expertise globally, assisting other countries to advance without coal and gas. The plan also comes with a good slate of worker-protection clauses to ensure that people are paid fair wages and have access to collective bargaining.A key premise of this plan is that all intellectual capital and manufacturing jobs would stay in the USA and owned by the USA. The first part makes tremendous sense, but the second part is much more challenging.The USA remains a very strong manufacturer, but it’s heavily automated manufacturing and it’s only going to become more so. While this plan would increase knowledge and information workers in the United States, it won’t lead to a significant uptick in blue collar jobs because the products have to be globally competitive, and the way advanced economies compete with labor arbitrage economies is through automation. The ratio of labor to manufactured value has shifted, and now an order of two more magnitude of manufacturing has to be created in order to deliver the same number of jobs, and fewer of those jobs are available to basic skilled and semi-skill trades. Yang’s Freedom Dividend, for comparison, is a much more future-oriented approach to deal with this Catch-22 but has it’s own cultural-fit problem.But that said, this is a salable plan to the people in the heartland who have seen the manufacturing economy hollowed out and want to get back to their well-paying shift work building the goods America and world uses. A lot of voters will like this regardless of its basis in reality.And the plan also addresses the reality that some jobs just aren’t coming back and in fact will go away faster. The fossil fuel industry jobs in oil, gas and coal are yesterday’s jobs and the workers there will have to transition. There’s support in the plan for these workers to change their vocations, but this is something that the Democratic Party has been trying to assist these communities with for a couple of decades; people resist change and are highly susceptible to political messages that they don’t have to and that the world will return to the way it was for them. Warren’s plan is weak here from a voting perspective even as it’s strong from a reality perspective for assisting these voters, but it’s a calculated risk.All of this is somewhat the equivalent of Trump’s promise to bring coal worker jobs back, frankly. It will appeal to a lot of the working class, if it’s communicated to them well, but won’t result in a lot of jobs for them unless manufacturing increases an extraordinary amount.The plan also tackles the $5 billion program for foreign arms sales and promotion programs for the US fossil fuel sector, if not the billions to tens of billions in US subsidies to the fossil fuel sector annually.TransportationThis is dealt with mostly diffusely and indirectly by the various policies, in fact Warren barely mentions this entire sector. There’s little to see from her for electric-vehicle or high-speed rail trains. But that doesn’t mean that the systemic changes Warren is introducing won’t have impacts.She does mention transportation in passing in her Green Manufacturing Plan:we should prioritize research that can be commercialized to help close the gap in hard-to-decarbonize sectors — such as aviation and shippingThat’s not a commitment to zero-emission vehicles. That’s not a commitment to electrification of transportation. That’s not a commitment to high-speed rail.Warren’s plan might be intended to include low-emission transportation in the $1.5 trillion of federal procurement, but that’s not what the words say.Warren’s investment filing disclosure would, in theory, impact this sector, if carbon were priced. But Warren’s published plans don’t say a thing about a tax (or fee, in Yang parlance) on carbon. An increasing price on carbon emissions would lead directly to SEC-mandated prospectuses that clearly laid out the implications for future revenue and profits, and hence market capitalization and investment.However, Warren, as with many of the other candidates, committed to a carbon tax at the CNN town hall. Expect more on this front soon enough.All-in-all, Warren’s plan more ignores transportation than not.Land UseWarren has not one, but two land-use plans. The first is targeted at farmers, and the second is targeted at public lands.My plan will make it economically feasible for farmers to be part of the climate change solution by increasing CSP’s payments for sustainable farming practices from around $1 billion today to $15 billion annually — and expanding the types of practices eligible for compensation — so that every farmer who wants to use their land to fight climate change can do so.This is a reasonable approach, leveraging an existing pathway. It pales in comparison to Yang’s $285 billion commitment, which is much more in line with the scale of the challenge, if lacking in detail. However, Warren’s approach is, as always, more structurally wonky, but perhaps in this case more voter friendly.This plan, like her manufacturing plan, has a context of returning decent-paying work to Americans. Her approach to this is strong supply management in agriculture — basically collective bargaining for farmers — allowing them to ensure that they can sell their products for more money than it takes to produce them. Ensuring a stronger annual profit reduces the incentives to cut corners for short-term gain, something that the agricultural industry is just as subject to as other industries.Beyond that, there is the public lands policy. As noted already, it prevents new oil and gas exploitation on these lands and prioritizes much lower impact wind and solar electrical generation.But that’s not all from a climate perspective. Warren’s approach would also re-protect all of the 2 million acres — an area 2/3rds the size of Connecticut — that Trump has removed from protection in his Administration. More teeth and money would be put into protecting public lands and for land and water conservation efforts. That has direct and long-term climate benefits, but mostly from not turning nature into paved plazas.The MilitaryWarren has already tabled legislation, the Defense Climate Resiliency and Readiness Act, to address the military’s role in global warming and its ability to deal with its impacts. And the military is a different beast than other contributors to global warming. It has to be ready to be anywhere in the world on short notice, operate in zones with heavily disrupted infrastructure and have major ships operate independently for extended periods of time. Powering this mandate with renewable and biofuel energy is impossible in the near term, and extremely difficult in the longer term.But the military has a steady state set of operations that can be addressed. The sharp end of the spear is hard to decarbonize, but it’s a huge logistical machine, and much of the logistics can be decarbonized. And so, the first target of Warren’s plan is that:the Pentagon should achieve net zero carbon emissions for all its non-combat bases and infrastructure by 2030.Base adaptation funding would be provided. Contractors that weren’t zero emissions would pay 1% of contracts that they receive for the business, and that money would go to climate adaptation resiliency. Funding would go to research for advanced energy storage and microgrid approaches so that forward bases could be set up and run without nearly as much diesel generation.Warren’s plan is wonky, somewhat hard to sell but solidWarren’s plan is far from having the highest price tag. The numbers only add up to $4 trillion, 20% under Yang’s already low-ball plan. But they have the merit of working in the spheres that are under federal mandate, putting the money dominantly into existing processes and programs that have proven track records and changing structural misalignments that create climate problems.Some of it can be sold to the American working class easily, specifically the manufacturing jobs and the farm profit stabilization, even if the approach to gaining those benefits won’t necessarily sit well with fiscal conservatives. Others are harder to explain to most voters, such as her SEC disclosure policy.And others, something shared with most of the Democratic candidates, are just going to be a problem for major stakeholders such as Wall Street and the fossil fuel industry. On those files, the stakeholders are going to be choosing among evils, less than rooting for the nominee, or funding them. The military will prefer Warren to some other candidates, while Wall Street will likely favor others.Is it the best plan? At the end of the series I’m writing on the front-runners’ plans (plus Yang’s), I’m sure I’ll have an opinion.Note: my personal policy is to block and mute climate change and other science deniers. Yours should be too.Reading:Text - H.Res.109 - 116th Congress (2019-2020): Recognizing the duty of the Federal Government to create a Green New Deal.A New Farm EconomyAccelerating the Transition to Clean EnergyMy Green Manufacturing Plan for AmericaOur military can help lead the fight in combating climate changeMy plan for public landsMichael Barnard's answer to How would you summarize Andrew Yang's ideas in the CNN climate town hall?Andrew Yang's Freedom Dividend Is Only A Step Toward Elon Musk's Basic Income VisionUS Subsidizes Fossil Fuels To The Tune Of $4.6, $27.4, Or $649 Billion Annually, Depending On Source

Thanks Quora!How many non-citizens live in The United States? Time to Legalize Our 11 Million Undocumented Immigrants - Center for American ProgressDo Undocumented Immigrants Overuse Government Benefits? | Econofact Undocumented immigrants are not eligible to receive Social Security benefits even though many contribute to the system. Many undocumented immigrants work in the formal sector and contribute to the social security trust fund. Estimates suggest that up to $12 billion per year are contributed by undocumented immigrants and their employers. Most undocumented immigrants will never draw from the system. One hypothetical exception is that if the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program lasts long enough and participants pay into the system, they would eventually be eligible for benefits, but the first payouts in this hypothetical eventuality are nearly three decades away. Other immigrants who transition to legal status can also collect benefits based on their contribution history, even if some of their contributions were made while unauthorized.Do undocumented citizens use stolen social security accounts?1.4 million illegals working under stolen Social Security numbers: Audit Most illegal immigrants who pay taxes have stolen someone else’s legal identity, and the IRS doesn’t do a very good job of letting those American citizens and legal immigrants know they’re being impersonated, the tax agency’s inspector general said in a new report released Thursday.The theft creates major problems for the American citizens and legal foreign workers whose identities are stolen, and who have to deal with explaining money they never earned.But the IRS only manages to identify half of the potentially 1.4 million people likely affected by the fraud in 2015, the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration said in its report.Do we help our citizens retire securely after working for decades and paying increasing rates of social security over years and years. I remember each year it took longer and longer to pay my share of S.S. and FICA taxes.Was the original social security system predicted to fail as early as when it was passed into law? Yes.SOCIAL SECURITY, OR DE LEVEE DONE BUST ABSTRACTPublish date: March 1936Focuses on the significance of the Social Security Act which focuses on the old-age-benefit project which is an insurance system, designed to provide retirement annuities for all workers in the U.S. Terms and provisions of the old-age-benefit plan; Thoughts on the loopholes and problems of the legislation; Details of the European model of the Social Security system; Assessment of the unemployment exemptions; Impact of the compensation program to business.I would refer you to an old post for my answer. Tom Byron's answer to Do Trump supporters understand the unsavory consequences of their vote and continued support? Abortions and illegal immigrants and the voter base for democrats are all tied together. It is so obvious I can’t believe all of these scams continue!Original Question: Is that true that the US needs immigrants to pay into the social security? Wouldn’t they be ultimately drawing this program themselves while have contributed during fewer work years?

The comment says, “In the world of rising demand, what resources will be run out of?” but actually it is the other way around, we face peak demand rather than peak resources, for fossil fuels at least. There is plenty of most other resources as well. A few things that we can run out of but there are alternatives to most of them that we can transition to. If we continue the current rapid transition to renewables, Carbon Tracker is predicting a peak demand for all fossil fuels in the 2020s.N.B. I’ve done a video talking about this answer here:Others think this may happen later, BP and Shell have published reports with scenarios in them that correspond to what BP calls “Rapid transition” and Shell calls “Sky”. Both are rather similar.Shell’s scenario is Paris agreement compatible but only at the 2 C level to reach zero emissions by 2070. With that scenario they project that we will have a supply gap if they do not continue to invest in new oil fields.They do come to a smilar conclusion of a peak after 2025, for oil at least:For example, our Sky scenario shows that demand for oil starts to decline globally after 2025 but still grows in some countries, including India and China until the middle of the century.Shell energy transition report 2019BP predict oil consumption will level off around 2040 but that it will peak before then if we keep to within 2 C. BP Energy Outlook 2019 editionAFAIK BP and Shell are the only oil companies so far to publish forecasts that take account of the Paris objectives as a possible scenario.Whatever ones views on when we will peak with fossil fuels, we no longer think in terms of actually running out of oil or gas, because there is plenty of it. There is only enough conventional oil and gas for a little over half a century at current production but there is enough coal for 150 years and enough shale oil for 1300 years.The question rather is when we will reach peak demand as we transition to renewables. We have already reached peak demand for coal. That happened in 2014, there has been a rise again for the last couple of years but we haven’t returned to the 2014 peak. This shows that it’s nothing dire has to happen when you reach peak demand of any particular fossil fuel.However the politial climate has shifted so that we may well be able to target 1.5 C through the easiest path of zero emissions by 2050. Also renewables are falling in price far faster than was expected.If we have a 1.3% growth in energy demand and 17% growth in solar and wind then according to them, fossil fuels should peak by 2023.With global energy demand expected to grow at 1-1.5% and solar and wind at 15-20% a year, fossil fuel demand will peak between 2020 and 2027, most likely 2023 Fossil fuels will peak in the 2020s as renewables supply all growth in energy demand - Carbon Tracker InitiativeCarbon Tracker warn about the risk to investors“The 2020s will be the decade of fossil fuel demand peaks, as one bastion after another is stormed and overwhelmed by the rising renewable tide. This will inevitably lead to trillions of dollars of stranded assets across the corporate sector and hit petro-states that fail to reinvent themselves.”Fossil fuels will peak in the 2020s as renewables supply all growth in energy demand - Carbon Tracker InitiativeSee also 2020 Vision: why you should see the fossil fuel peak coming - Carbon Tracker InitiativeIt’s not just them warning about this, it’s mainstream. Mark Carney, governer of the bank of England, François Villeroy de Galhau, governor of Banque de France, and Frank Elderson, chair of the Network for Greening the Financial System wrote an op e.d for the Guardian warning about this.Their op ed presents a strongly worded message taht companies and industires that fail to adjust to the new world of CO2 emission reductions will cease to exist.To help with the transition and protect industry and investors from the risks they have created a Network for Greening the Financial System (NGFS).The impact of climate change has compelled governments to act. Catalysed by the Paris agreement, governments around the world are putting policies in place to limit the global rise in temperatures to 2C, and preferably as close to 1.5C as possible. The actions undertaken by individual countries will deliver a collective transition to a low-carbon economy. But this transition brings its own risks. Carbon emissions have to decline by 45% from 2010 levels over the next decade in order to reach net zero by 2050. This requires a massive reallocation of capital. If some companies and industries fail to adjust to this new world, they will fail to exist.The prime responsibility for climate policy will continue to sit with governments. And the private sector will determine the success of the adjustment. But as financial policymakers and prudential supervisors, we cannot ignore the obvious risks before our eyes.That is why 34 central banks and supervisors – representing five continents, half of global greenhouse gas emissions and the supervision of two-thirds of the global systemically important banks and insurers – joined forces in 2017 to create a coalition of the willing: the Network for Greening the Financial System (NGFS).The financial sector must be at the heart of tackling climate changeFor details:Press Release: The NGFS publishes an overview of climate-related impact assessments on financial stability and announces new members and observersOil companies particularly are under increasing pressure from their shareholders to work on plans compatible with the Paris agreement to keep temperature rises well below 2 C.Most oil giants still fighting shareholder pressure to address climateIn the short term, one of the top priorities is to reduce Flaring emissions which produce methane, a potent short lived gas. This is relatively easy to fix, and the Zero Routine Flaring by 2030 is endorsed by 32 governments and 36 oil and gas companies.Long term the oil companies are amongst the companies that most need to diversify and transition to stay in business. And their shareholders also know that.They have started to invest in renewables but so far the invesments, though relatively large, billions of dollars, are only a small fraction of their total investments in new oil field prospecting and such like.Oil giants face shareholder pressure on climate emissions, greenhouse gas targets | DW | 20.05.2019Many have also joined the Oil and Gas climate change initiative.Our Members - OGCI - Oil and Gas Climate InitiativeThey are working to reduce methane flaring, and increase carbon capture and storage and utilization.Policy & Strategy pageOTHER RESOURCESI will cover other resources at the end of this answer. But in short, Lithium is not the problem it is made out to be, as there are alternative sources already being developed, Molybdenum is an issue but it can be solved. Antinomy can be replaced with other flame retardants. Water is not a problem, there is plenty of it, and we can always make more with desalination for desert regions, we can also export it. There are many local issues such as making sure that India and China get decent water supplies from the Himalayas, but these can be solved.PLENTY OF FOSSIL FUELS IN THE GROUNDAlthough we are not going to use them, I’ll do a quick look at the amount of coal, oil, and gas in our reseves. About 140 years worth of coal, 53 years for conventional oil and gas, 1300 years for shale oil:Coal first:Global Energy & CO2 Status Report: CoalAs of 2016. the world was using 7.8 billion tonnes of coal a year.CoalThe world coal association estimates that there are 1.1 trillion tonnes of coal reserves worldwide.Where is coal found?That’s enough for 140 years of coal.Oil demand has already peaked in the middle East and is more or less stable in Europe and AfricaGlobal Energy & CO2 Status Report: OilThere are deep reserves of oil that cost more and more to extract, and meanwhile the cost of renewables are falling rapidly, so it’s a case of diminishing returns.In 2015 world oil production was 4.461 billion tons a year. Shale oil amounts to 6,050 billion tons. That’s enough for over 1,300 years of current production.There are 239 billion tons of recoverable conventional oil, enough for 53 years of production at current rates.OilNatural gas demand continues to rise.Global Energy & CO2 Status Report: GasProven natural gas reserves are 187.1 trillion cubic metres. Annual production 3.5386 trillion . That is equivalent to 53 years of production.GasSo we have enough conventional oil and gas at full production rate like now for another 53 years and long before then we should have transitioned to nearly all renewables. As for shale oil, nearly all of those 6,050 billion barrels of oil need to stay in the ground to stay within 1.5 C of global warming.STRONG GROWTH IN RENEWABLESRenewables are growing strongly. Currently they represent 45% of world electtricity generation growth.25% of global power is now produced by renewables.TCEP: Renewable powerGlobal Energy & CO2 Status Report: RenewablesThis shows current forecasts - we need to increase renewables fasterTCEP: Renewable powerRAPID PRICE DROP FOR RENEWABLESHowever the cost of renewables is falling rapidly. This is for the UK, 50 - 60 degrees North and even here the cost of solar -PV power generation has reached the same levels as the most efficient fossil fuels and is predicted to fall below them in the next few years. Onshore wind is also equal or below the best fossil fuels.The price drop for solar is especially remarkable, a drop from 2012 to 2022 from 27 to 4 cents per kilowatt hours.Before 2015, only four years ago, solar power couldn't compete even with the most expensive of fossil fuels without government subsidies.RENEWABLES GROWING FASTER THAN ANY OTHER FUEL IN HISTORYRenewables are penertrating the global energy system more rapidly than any fuel in history according to BP.They do two a number of scenarios to guide their policy planning.The Rapid Transition (RT) is a 45% fall in emissions by 2040 while Energy Transition (ET) is what happens if we do nothing to combat climate change, emission grow but slowly because of growing population and increasing industrialization but offset by increasing natural transition to renewables.Their RT is roughly equivalent to the 2 C Paris goal.However the UN and many countries are moving to target 1.5 C, and also want to follow the easiest route to get there. We may not achieve that right away with our 2020 pledges, but we have until 2030 to increase pledges to acheive it. If this is done, then it will be a more rapid transition than BP’s RT, a 45% reduction by 2030.It’s looking increasingly likely that we do this, with the UN calling for that as the target and UK already aiming for it, and other countries likely to soon, many of the smaller countries do already. You an expect the growth to be faster even than for their RT if we succeed in this.With the “Rapid transition” then the oil (green) peaks well before 2040:For details see BP Energy Outlook 2019 editionBut if we target 1.5 C then the transition will be faster than their Rapid Transition.As I said in the intro the Shell Sky scenario sees oil peak by 2025 (Shell energy transition report 2019). Carbon Tracker has all fossil fuels peak in the early 2020s.PEAK OF CO2 EMISSIONSCO2 emissions continue to rise but we are expected to reach peak CO2 emissions soon.Tracking Clean Energy ProgressMany countries have already reached peak CO2 emissions.In 2018 emissions continued to rise in China ( 2.5%) and India (4.8%), though per capita emissions in India remain at only 40% of global average.They rose by a small amount in the US but remain at around the 1990 levels.They fell in Europe by 1.3%, in Japan, and Mexico,Global Energy & CO2 Status Report: CO2 emissionsThe UK emissions are rapidly falling, on tarck for an 80% reduction by 2050, but with its recent commitment to zero emissions by 2050 then this line will dip down even faster.However China is the key to world emissions. It is rapidly industrializing and for the time being it is increasing emissions because it uses coal fueled power staions.HHere the height of the graph shows the per capita emissions, horizontal axis is population, the area sows total emisisons ,China has largest area of all. Worldwide CO₂ emissions for 2016China and India are amongst the most affected, and are strongly motivated to do their darnest to address climate change, and are showing by action that this is a top priority for them.China is currently targeting a 20% non fossil share by 2030, and there were reports that it is expected to target 35% of electricity from renewables by 2030 according to drafts for its next plan, the “Renewable Portfolio Standard”.The world's largest solar farm, from space The 850-megawatt Longyangxia Dam Solar Park. It is built right next to a big hydropower dam - because then in the day when the sun is shining the power comes from the solar powers and the dam ramps down.At night then the dam then releases the water it held back during the day. This more than doubles the power output from the hydro electric and because the hydro can store power until it’s needed, like a giant battery, this means there is no curtailment - it never produces more power than is needed.China together with France also made a series of pledges on 29th June 2019They agreed to on the importance of zero emissions, to update their pledges in 2020 as a progression beyond the current pledges, the importance of maintaining biodiversity, and the need to fully fund and support the $100 billion Green Climate change fund and advanced technology transfer to developing countries to help them mitigate climate change as well as adapt to it.Carbon brief's comment on this is here: China pledges to strengthen climate planAnother study finds that China is already on its way to peak emissions earlier than it pledged to (its current pledge is to peak before 2030). This was based on a study of its cities. Bejing peaked in 2007.This study found that the decarbonization of Chinese cities depends on their GDP, that as the GDP increases, decarbonization is easier (a pattern found in other countries too).If the country as a whole progresses in the same way as the cities, China's emissions may peak between at 13–16 gigatons of CO₂ per year between 2021 and 2025, approximately 5–10 years ahead of the current Paris target of 2030.That study is here China’s CO2 peak before 2030 implied from characteristics and growth of citiesCarbon Brief's comments on that study are here: China’s emissions ‘could peak 10 years earlier than Paris climate pledge’RAPID TRANSITION FROM COAL TO RENEWABLESThe number of completed coal fired pants has dropped by more than half since 2015.Global 'collapse' in number of new coal-fired power plantsThis shows how the currently operated coal-fired power plants will decline if used at the current average rate for average 40 years lifespanDetails in Boom and Bust 2019 TRACKING THE GLOBAL COAL PLANT PIPELINEThe world has to follow the solid black line to stay within 1.5 C by the easiest route. But that’s not a problem. Renewables are already competitive with coal. The main problem China and India face is that Renewables have a very high start up cost and then pay back over their lifetime with very low running cost.Also the start up cost for a new renewables plant keeps decreasing year on year, so if you postpone construction by a few years you save millions of dollars on the cost of your power plant and it is more competitive economically.The new coal fired power plants cost less to build and are more expensive to run. So it is natural for them to build many of them early on as they transition to renewables and then not use them to capacity. It’s not as silly as it seems. They can also use carbon capture and storage with coal fired plants.For details see:New study does NOT conclude that we have too many fossil fuel power plants and vehicles to stay within 1.5°CCLOSE TO PEAK CHILDWe are already close to peak child, for five year olds and 15 year olds, the same number of children in the world more or less in 2019 as in 2009.When will the world reach 'peak child'?Our population continues to grow due to remarkable increases in life expectancy.Increase from 52.568 in 1960 to 72.223 in 2017 or 19.655 years world life expectancy at birth increase in 57 years.Life expectancy at birth, total (years)Life ExpectancyA lot of that increse is due to reduced infant mortality but the life expectancy at all ages is also increasing, for instance for England and Wales, which has good data:More graphs hereLife ExpectancyEXPECTED TO LEVEL OFF AROUND 2100 - OR PERHAPS EARLIER, BY 2050This shows how though the population continues to increase, the growth rate is plummeting and we are expected to level off around 2100.Chart from: World Population GrowthBy region, the population is expected to peak in Asia long before 2100, around 2050:Chart from: World Population GrowthJapan’s population peaked in 2010 and is now decreasing as fast as it increased, down to 1960 levels.Here is a page about the Aging of Japan - Wikipedia - it is already decreasing. Reduced by well over a million from a high of 128.06 million in 2010 to 126.71 million in 2018. Japan Population | 1950-2018 | Data | Chart | Calendar | Forecast | NewsGenerally worldwide, the most prosperous countries tend to have either very slow population growth or declines. For example, in Europe, nine countries report population declines, with Latvia having the steepest decline. That’s due to migration in part Latvia's rate of population decline still among EU's worstChina’s population is expected to fall rapidly with middle of the range estimates, down to mid 1980s levels by 2100, again like Japan falling as rapidly as it is currently rising.The main increase is in Africa and that’s projected to dominate the world population with a population greater than Asia with World Population Division projectionsOlder figures from 2014. Most of the population growth is in Africa by the end of the century by these figures, with everywhere else leveling off by then, the least developed countries are the ones that grow most rapidly, so that's a reflection of the situation in AfricaHowever, they project an increase of Nigeria’s population from 0.2 billion to not far off 0.8 billion, two thirds of the population of India in less than a third of its area. A population density much higher even than India How likely is that?Improvements in education, especially of women, lead to lower birth rates.If you factor that in then the population can peak anywhere from 2050 onwardsSee The human core of the shared socioeconomic pathways: Population scenarios by age, sex and level of education for all countries to 2100Future fertility and hence population growth will depend on female education.In the median assumptions scenario (SSP2) world population will peak around 2070.By 2100 world population ranges from 6.9 (SSP1) to 12.6 billion (SSP3).See The human core of the shared socioeconomic pathways: Population scenarios by age, sex and level of education for all countries to 2100OTHER RESOURCESSee alsoThis expands on some of that, and goes into other things such as resources and energy return on energy invested for fossil fuels compared to renewablesDebunked: Soon we won’t be able to feed everyone because the world population is growing so quicklySee also24 ways the world is getting better - good news journalists rarely shareWe can feed everyone through to 2100 and beyondNo Scientific Cliff Edge Of 12 Years To Save Planet (or 18 Months) - Can IPCC Challenge 'Deadlines Make Headlines' Misreporting?This debunks a myth about renewables - we have plenty of space for them, and they do not take away good agricultural land or land for conservation, not if done properly. Solar panels raised above the ground can be mixed with agriculture, they can be built on house roofs, on brown fields, on low conservation value areas of desert, or floating on canals, lakes and other waterways (especially useful in hot dry conditions as they help reduce water loss through evaporation).One particularly useful synergy comes from putting floating solar on hydro dams, where it also helps to reduce evaporation and can double the power output of the hydro without any curtailment because of the way the hydro can rapidly respond as peaking powerDo renewables for power generation take up more land area than fossil fuels? Well - not really!And if you are concerned by effects on wildlife, it’s true that there can be effects, but this just means they need careful siting. The concerns are real and they do need care, but they are based mainly on very early examples of each, built before the problems that could arise for such installations were fully understood.Wind farms and solar farms need to be sited carefully to protect wild birds, bats and insects - but biggest risk by far is … the domestic cat! Responsible for 63 extinctions, wind farms for 0 extinctionsWHAT ABOUT ENERGY RETURN ON ENERGY INVESTED (EROEI)?The days of easy to extract oil is over and the “Energy returned on energy invested” is going down. But renewables give a high return too, hydropower is most of all, over 100.Here are some estimates for the US from 2014. For solar photovoltaic, then it depends a lot on the type of solar panel used, the EROI is going down as they become more efficient and require less by way of materials to make the panel with many different technologies for them. As you can see, for the US, then photovoltaic is already better than shale oil (fracking) and wind turbines are right up their with oil and gas:From this paperHere an EROEI would mean you put as much energy into producing the power than you get out of it. For it to be worth doing normally you want to be putting in less energy than you get out. But this is a controversial way of measuring things. For instance it doesn’t include environmental impact, if you are getting more energy than you put in but what you are doing is impacting on other things then how much do you offset for that?It’s discussed by Carbon Brief hereEnergy return on investment - which fuels win? | Carbon BriefThe graphic they use there is from an article “The True cost of fossil fuels” from 2013 that is no longer available on the web for some reason. Broken url on the Scientific American website. Jstor entry here: THE TRUE COST OF Fossil Fuels and this is a higher resolution version of the extract they show:The image itself is here Renewable EnergyThough the article doesn’t exist any more even in the Wayback machine, the notes by the author Mason Inman on his graphic are available here:Behind the Numbers on Energy Return on InvestmentThere is no real hard limit to how much we can produce from renewables on Earth, we can supply power for many times our population from the Sahara desert alone. It’s a matter of how to do it in the most efficient, practical way possible.This image shows how much of the Sahara desert would be needed to supply all Earth’s electricity requirements if it was covered in solar panels. This is for 2005, and the power requirements from all forms of power would require five times this area:“The red squares represent the area that would be enough for solar power plants to produce a quantity of electricity consumed (as or 2005) by the world, the European Union (EU-25) and Germany (De). (Data provided by the German Aerospace Centre (DLR), 2005). To replace all energy consumption (not just electricity), areas about 5 times as large would suffice.” Fullneed.jpg - Wikimedia CommonsYou can also get renewables from space. Japan particularly is exploring this as it imports a lot of electricity, has very little by way of natural sources, and has space technologyJapan plan to set up vast thin film mirrors in space. It’s potentially economic because you can use flimsy mirrors that would blow apart in the lightest breeze on Earth.In space you can spread these micron thin flimsy mirrors spread out to capture all the sunlight falling on square kilometers of mirrors,to capture sunlight and focus it on a collector to convert to power and beam back to Earth .It would collect the power in Geostationary orbit and beam it back to Earth using either microwaves or laser light.Whatever method they use, they would use lots of small harmless beams and a pilot beam on the ground that the tiny microattennas in space focus on individually, to deliver the energy. If one of the microantennas for some reason malfunctions or the pilot beam gets disrupted, it’s harmless.Research on the Space Solar Power Systems (SSPS)NUCLEAR FUSIONThen Nuclear Fusion is a potential total game changer but we can’t predict this. It probably won’t be until the 2050s before we have the first fusion power stations, but still, it may make a big difference in the second half of the twentieth century.DEMOnstration Power Station - WikipediaThe ITER - the way to new energyITER ... and then what?They think they know how to make a commercial nuclear fusion power plant. This would be clean energy with no proliferation risk.They have to demonstrate that the fusion process works in the ITER first, and then about 20 years later they would have DEMO operational.DEMO will be operational around 20 years after high power burning plasmas are demonstrated in ITER Roadmap executive summary.It would start producing electricity about 20 years after the ITERRoadmap- EUROfusionOTHER NUCLEAR FUSIONThere are many other types of nuclear fusion being explored including laser fusion. One of the most interesting is the Polywell. It uses electrostatic confinement fusion. This is nuclear fusion that a hobbyist can quite literally do in their shed or garage if they are very knowledgeable. But it normally requires far more power than it outputs in fusion energy.A homemade IEC fusion reactor created by a high school student, William Jack, clearly showing the plasma and poissors emanating from it.The challenge is to make this energy efficient, and the Polywell design just possibly may be able to do it. The US Navy was interested in the design and put several millions of dollars of funding into it.Polywell - WikipediaIt has not quite got there yet, but it may still work.If it works then these could be very small cheap reactors small enough to power a village through nuclear fusion. A full scale reactor would be a few meters in diameter. Far smaller than the huge power stations of the ITER.Polywell Fusion An Almost There Cheap Clean Alternative EnergySo far none of these have quite panned out but it is possible for something like this to appear “from left field” as it were and transform the energy sector.WATERWe are not running out of water, we can’t. Desalination is already economic in places where there is water scarcity such as Israel.There is plenty of water, it’s a distribution issue with some already being exported, there are ways to do it and though there have been local conflicts over water supplies it’s not going to lead to major warsDebunked: Water warsAcceleration Of Himalayan Glacier Loss Is Due To Warming - Billion Need Climate Resilience On Rivers Like Yangte, Ganges & IndusHELIUMThere is plenty of helium just now because of reduced demand in the pandemic, fewer helium balloons and less industry.Helium shortage has ended, at least for nowThere are helium deposits, just that to date there has been plenty of helium as a biproduct of extracting fossil fuel. But if your aim is helium then there are places where it accumulates by itself not mixed up with fossil fuels, this was found in 2016:Huge underground helium reserve discovered in TanzaniaThese reserves will be useful when we have greatly reduced fossil fuel extraction later in the twenty first century.COBALT AND LITHIUMFor cobalt there is plenty of it but it doesn’t sell for a high enough price to be worth mining except in the Congo where it is a byproduct of copper mining. There are several new facilities planned there that will easily cope with the demand, the problem is the political stability of the region.In other places it is mixed with nickel rather than copper, and nickel isn’t valuable enough to mine in enough quantities to get enough cobalt. However nickel prices may well go up because of its value for batteries and if so more would be produced and cobalt supplies increase.Battery manufactureres are also looking at changing the Nickel :cobalt:manganese mix to 8:1:1 instead of 1:1:1 which increases energy density, while shortening battery life.The Truth About the Cobalt Crisis: It’s Not a Crisis, YetFor lithium, currently most of it comes from the Salar de Uyuni - WikipediaSalt production UyuniHowever there are other sources of it, in particular, extracting it from geothermal brines using a sorbent.A greener way to get lithium?There’s another process that is already in use for extracting lithium from waste water from waste water from shale oil mining and other oil and gas mining using an evaporation and crystallization system described here:Successful Independent Verification of the MGX Lithium Extraction TechnologyThis is already in commercial use.MGX Minerals advances rapid lithium extraction technology | MINING.comThis article doesn’t cover those latest developments, but gives an overview of Lithium production:How Does Lithium Mining Actually Work and Will We Have Enough?RARE EARTHS"Rare earth" minerals are not actually rare. They are similar in abudance to, say, copper. The main thing is the environmental cost of extracting them. The US has a rare earth plant itself that it mothballed and has re-opened recently and there are many other rare earth deposits around the world that could be used if China stopped exporting them, though the prices would likely go up because of the environmental regulations.Rare earth elements aren’t the secret weapon China thinks they areChina has more or less cornered the market and it would take a while to set up another equally large supplier if they stopped - it's the problem of the equipment and factory though not of the actual ore, and the environmental regulations.Seems unlikely that China will carry through with this, but if they do then it would lead to the US finding new suppliers for new equipment (equipment they already have would be okay), Seems Australia is next largest producer at present worldwide. Some mud off Japan's coast is an excellent future source.Asia Times | If China cuts rare earth supplies, what can the US do? | ArticleThe main risk is just of an increase in cost of rare Earths.OTHER MINERALSSome minerals at least are so abundant we can’t run out of them any time soon. Others we may need to conserve / recycle / find alternatives.What if we ran out of minerals?In some cases they may be harder and harder to extract. E.g. there is plenty of phosphorous, indeed, tectonic processes are moving as much phosphorous up to the surface as we are using up.In more detail, we have enough phosphate rock resources for 300 to 400 years and what's more tectonic processes are contnuously exposing more reserves than we use! If I understand right, at the end of those 3- 4 centuries we will have enough new reserves exposed by tectonic processes to keep going. No reason to run out ever as far as I can tell.Here are some experts saying there is no phosphorous crisis.Pedro Sanchez, director of the Agriculture and Food Security Center at the Earth Institute, does not believe there is a phosphorus shortage. “In my long 50-year career, “ he said, “once every decade, people say we are going to run out of phosphorus. Each time this is disproven. All the most reliable estimates show that we have enough phosphate rock resources to last between 300 and 400 more years.”In 2010, the International Fertilizer Development Center determined that phosphate rock reserves would last for several centuries. In 2011, the U.S. Geological Survey revised its estimates of phosphate rock reserves from the previous 17.63 billion tons to 71.65 billion tons in accordance with IFDC’s estimates. And, according to Sanchez, new research shows that the amount of phosphorus coming to the surface by tectonic uplift is in the same range as the amounts of phosphate rock we are extracting now.Phosphorus: Essential to Life—Are We Running Out?Animals excrete nearly the same amount of phosphorous they eat - and it can't be lost to the air, not much lost to oceans normally. It's mainly an issue because we move things around and we don't get as much returning to the land as was extracted so have to replace it using phosphates. With more recycling back to the ground, then we wouldn't need phosphate fertilizer.Also there is a lot we can do to reduce the amount of phosphorous that gets into waste and into the sea eventually as pollution that causes dead zones in the sea. That’s more of an issue than running out of it. There’s a lot of progress there - farmers tend to apply too much phosophorous and the excess washes away. If they analyse the ground and apply targeted amounts based on what is needed, they save money, less phosphate rock is used, and less gets washed off into the sea to cause algal blooms and dead zones and this is happening now that we have easy ways to rapidly measure the phosphate content in the field.But there is plenty of it.Phosphorus: Essential to Life—Are We Running Out?This article is by Theo Hankens who did a doctoral thesis on the subject, he identifies the top ten scarce minerals and roughly how long they would last at current rates of mining:An update on mineral depletion: do we need mining quotas?There antimony can easily be replaced by other flame retardants. The others can be recycled, but little of that is going on. Molybdenum is especially hard to replace by anything else (Elements in the spotlight: molybdenum ).Molybdenum can withstand much higher temperatures than steel, and is corosion resistant and is expected to be used much more in a greener future.It’s use is growing considerablyThis article suggests stockpiling molybdenum, to keep the price higher to encourage recycling.To achieve the necessary reduction in molybdenum extraction, primary molybdenum mines would need to be closed and some of the molybdenum produced as a by-product of the copper mining would need to be stockpiled for use by future generations. It should be noted that copper is also a relatively scarce mineral resource, and its extraction might also need to be reduced to become sustainable. As long as molybdenum production continues to exceed sustainable production, it is important to stockpile molybdenum, to avoid the price for molybdenum being so low that it hampers sufficient molybdenum recycling.Molybdenum resources: Their depletion and safeguarding for future generationsWe can also get them from seawaterWe already get magnesium from sea water. The Japanese at one time developed a way to get uranium from sea water at $140/lb when the market price was $120 /lb. It's a quarter of that price now so it's not economically viable at present.Singapore has looked into extracting metals from the brine that's left over after desalination. Every million litres of sea water produces 1,300 kg of magnesium, 900 kg of sulpur, 400 kg of calcium and 400 kg of potassium. which could in principle be recovered.Lithium can also be recovered from brines.Over 40 minerals and metals contained in seawater, their extraction likely to increase in the futureWe can also get resources from space too (though molybdenum is rare in space as well), space mining for some of the rarer metals such as platinum which would be worth the high costs of returning it, then later prices can go down as it gets easier to export materials from space to Earth.There is some evidence suggesting a possibility of vast reserves of platinum near the lunar south pole. If so then it would depend on how much platinum there is but some iron meteorites have very high percentages of platinum enough so that it could be worth exporting to Earth:From Wieczorek et al, the North and South poles are marked N and S. Notice the magnetic anomalies clustered around part of the rim of the South Pole Aitken Basin. This is thought to be the result of an impact by a 110 km diameter asteroid. Wieczorek et al hypothesize that the magnetic anomalies trace out the remains of the metal core of this asteroid. If so these could be rich ores, including iron, nickel, also platinum and other platinum group metals (gold, rhodium etc). See page 16 of Crawford's Lunar Resources: A ReviewDennis Wingo suggested in Moonrush that the platinum especially could be worth exporting to Earth for use for fuel cells, as an application that could be high value and yet need a lot of platinum.The Moon and asteroids have vast reserves of aluminium, titanium, thorium, potassium, phosphorous, rare earth elements, and many other materials that we could also use once we have low cost transport to / from the Moon.I know that probably seems far in the future today, but there are various advances that may make it much easier to travel to / from the Moon in as soon as a decade or two than it is today.This is from my Case For Moon First and focuses on the Moon:Thorium and KREEP (Potassium, phosphorus and rare earth elements), and some uraniumMetalsThey may well be an important part of the future resources mix but they are not required as we have plenty resources on Earth for everyone through to 2100.GDP - DOESN’T HAVE TO PEAKYou often get people saying that economic growth will have to stop on a finite planet, that our GDP has to peak. But others say there is no need at all for this.However you measure it we need to bring everyone up to the standards we expect in the West. We need to value nature services and biodiversity more as we do so.Maybe GDP is not everything but a future world where we have everyone in good living conditions, good health, nature working well, biodiversity preserved, energy produced using renewables worldwide, needs a big growth in world GDP from what we have now.This does not mean we need to use more and more resources. If it's a circular economy, recycling, reusing, increasing energy efficiency, then we can use less and less resources while continuing GDP growh.For more on this see mySustainable continuing economic growth on a finite planet - how is that possible?ySEE ALSO(this includes material from my MOON FIRST Why Humans on Mars Right Now Are Bad for Science )See also my answer to What is the impact of global warming on agriculture?Debunked: Soon we won’t be able to feed everyone because the world population is growing so quicklyWe can feed everyone through to 2100 and beyondNo Scientific Cliff Edge Of 12 Years To Save Planet (or 18 Months) - Can IPCC Challenge 'Deadlines Make Headlines' Misreporting?This Is How You Save A Million Threatened Species - And Make Biodiversity Great Again - The Solutions In The UN IPBES ReportDebunked - that we are in the middle of the sixth mass extinction