Featured News

The Sneaky Good News on Climate

Last updated on July 18th, 2023 at 01:26 pm

We’ve all heard the bad news.  The planet is heating up at breakneck speed. Unless we reach zero net carbon emissions by 2050, we are in for a world of hurt. But Lindsey Walter, a Climate and Energy expert at the think tank Third Way, says that if you look closely at all the numbers there’s actually a lot of good news that gets buried. “Getting to zero by 2050 is a lot more affordable than people might suspect, and the benefits far outweigh the costs.” This conversation has been condensed and edited for clarity.

Listen to the full conversation here:

Matt Robison: Joe Biden wants the US to achieve 100% clean energy and reach net zero emissions by 2050. Where does that target come from?

To get more stories like this, subscribe to our newsletter The Daily.

Lindsey Walter: The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is the group of leading scientists in the world on climate. They issued a report saying that reaching net zero emissions globally by 2050 is what’s required in order for us to stay below 1.5 degrees Celsius of global warming and avoid the worst impacts. The bad news is we’re already above one degree of warming.

Matt Robison: What would hitting this target mean for us here in the US?

Lindsey Walter: It means we have a lot of work to do. We’re the second largest emitter globally. We’re responsible for about 15% of global emissions and we only have 4.3% of the global population. So our share of emissions per person is pretty significant.

Net zero emissions by 2050 means we need to reduce emissions every single year by about 4%.  That’s really hard.  For example, we would have to take one in five gasoline passenger vehicles off the road in a given year.

Matt Robison: Now we’ve achieved that level of reduction before. But only in the Great Recession and the downturn caused by the global pandemic.  So is the challenge to get these kinds of reductions without severe impacts to the economy?

Lindsey Walter: Yes. And that’s a real challenge. But most of communication around climate change is all about the negative.  We rarely talk about the solutions. Last year, broadcast TV coverage on climate only mentioned solutions 29% of the time. But this is not all doom and gloom.  There are a lot of benefits too.

Matt Robison: So is your goal to lay out the roadmap of what it will look like to get to net zero by 2050?  And thereby help people see those benefits that this can work?

Lindsey Walter: That’s exactly right. We need to create a broad coalition of support for climate action. Maybe we can get some people on board with scare tactics, but that doesn’t work for everyone. So how can we bring more people to the table and have more communities see the real benefits of climate action?

Matt Robison: So when you looked at the future in a really detailed and sophisticated way, what did you find?

Lindsey Walter:  We looked at seven different ways that can get us to zero by 2050. It isn’t easy. In the next 10 years, we need to be deploying clean energy infrastructure at unprecedented rates. For example, we need to build wind and solar at a rate 50% higher than we’ve ever achieved . We have to add 10 to 30 times the number of zero emission vehicles. And we’re going have to rebuild our electric grid. It took us 150 years to build today’s grid. We have to basically do it all over again in the next 15.  So that’s sort of the bad news.

The good news is that there’s opportunity for every single state to play a role  and to benefit. The middle of the country is actually really well positioned to develop clean energy industries.  They can be the engine of this clean energy transition. The Northern and Southern Great Plains areas all the way down to the Southeast have such high quality resources that they have a lot of economic opportunity.

It’s also good news that this transition is affordable. It costs anywhere between 0.4 to 2.2% of GDP spent on our energy system. But historically, we have spent 5-10% of GDP on our energy.

Another piece of good news is that every single one of our scenarios uses natural gas. So we don’t have to get stuck on all-or-nothing political tradeoffs. Oil and gas producing states can play a role in this future both by producing new, renewable electricity resources and also through their natural gas industries.

Matt Robison: What does the US need to do to make this future a reality?

Lindsey Walter:  We’re going to need a combination of what we call push and pull policies. Some that are incentivizing clean energy and investing in innovation.  But also standards that require improvements in different sectors of the economy.  It’s the combination of these policies that work well together and get us on the path.

But the bottom line is that getting to zero by 2050 is a lot more affordable than people might suspect, and the economic benefits far outweigh the costs.

We share edited excerpts from the Great Ideas podcast every week that explain how policies work and present innovative solutions for problems. Please subscribe, and to hear Lindsey Walter’s other insights on getting to net zero, check out the full episode on Apple, Spotify, Google, Anchor, Breaker, Pocket, RadioPublic, or Stitcher

Recent Posts

Voter Fraud Found As Georgia GOP Vice Chair Illegally Voted 9 Times

A Georgia judge has ruled that vice chair of the state Republican Party voted illegally…

1 hour ago

Senator Warns It’s Critical to Declassify Info on ‘Grave Counterintelligence Threat’ Paul Manafort

After news that former Trump campaign chairman and convicted felon Paul Manafort might rejoin Donald…

5 hours ago

Joe Biden To Raise More Money Tonight Than Trump Raised All Month

President Biden is set to raise more money for his campaign in one night ($25…

6 hours ago

Biden And Harris Take Bold Action To Protect American Privacy And Rights From AI

Vice President Kamala Harris announced action by the Biden administration to protect the privacy and…

9 hours ago

Stephen Colbert Rips Apart The Trump Bible Con

Stephen Colbert took apart Trump's selling of Bibles con by pointing out Trump is charging…

15 hours ago

Larry David Destroys “Sociopath Little Baby” Donald Trump

Larry David had a lot to say when he was asked about Donald Trump, as…

16 hours ago