I have enjoyed discussions and disagreements with Mike Pelizzari in the past, and eventually we sometimes come to some agreement where we have disagreed. Last month Mike related some "good news" which seemed to dispell the perception that doomsday is coming soon for humans due to climate change, and that nuclear power can solve what genuine concerns we have.
I focus my essay on two of the statistics that Mike cited. First, his report that only .6% of the world is occupied by human settlement seems to come from a UN Food and Agriculture Organization database produced in 2014, which gave that exact figure. This was defined as artificial cover. This does not include cropland, however, which when added brings the total to about 13%. http://www.curiousmeerkat.co.uk/questions/much-land-earth-inhabited
The Our World in Data report from 2019 by Hannah Ritchie and Max Roser https://ourworldindata.org/team put the percentage of built-up land at 1% of the Earth’s habitable land, while 50% is used for agriculture, over ¾ of which is used for livestock. Only 18% of the food in calories is produced from this grazing land as opposed to 82% from the less than ¼ the size for genuine cropland. The meerkat paper referenced above goes on to point out that only 10% of habitable land is wilderness, with the other 90% located within 48 hours of a major city. The Ritchie/Roser report did show that our use of land for agriculture is getting more efficient, so that the area used is not markedly increasing. Maybe soon we’ll learn how to control the weeds without using poison.
The second question Mike raised is whether fires are increasing. This seems to depend on which parts of the world and which study you look at, and which parts of the study. The BBC says fire has not increased worldwide over 4 areas they studied since 2002. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-49515462 The Royal Society concluded that the increase in fires is less than what is perceived, and yet they posted a graph showing global area burned has almost tripled since 1990. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4874420
Fires have increased since 1980 in the United States. https://www.iii.org/fact-statistic/facts-statistics-wildfires Closer to home, in California The Atlantic reports an 800 percent increase in summer forest fires, and that this increase has been constant, showing that the forests have not changed because of forest practices over this time, but that the heat has increased. https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/07/climate-change-500-percent-increase-california-wildfires/594016/ Reuters reports that the Arctic is warming faster than the rest of the world this year, which influences the climate overall. "Average temperatures in the region were more than 5 degrees Celsius (about 9°F) above normal and more than a degree higher than the two previous warmest Junes." Record temperatues over 100 F have been recorded. https://www.insurancejournal.com/news/international/2020/07/07/574608.htm
Similar controversy surrounds the claims of many climate scientists about the increased level of storms, floods and droughts due to global warming. The consensus I have seen tells me that these dangers are increasing, and will increase further. I can’t fully answer all the questions about our energy and ecological path forward in one essay here. My conclusion agrees with United Nations University, which wrote "The very long timespan likely to be involved in correcting the faults in the nuclear industry, together with the problems surrounding nuclear waste, clearly suggest that the viability of nuclear as the quick fix that we need for climate change is questionable." https://ourworld.unu.edu/en/is-nuclear-power-the-answer-to-climate-change
Renewable energy is on a roll, slowed down only by the group of ignorant and greedy rulers in power in many countries today. But imagine every house and office with rooftop solar, and all business and industry connected to an upgraded grid with wind and solar farms in the most suitable areas worldwide, backed by the kind of batteries being developed by Tesla company today and the salt batteries that work so well for improved concentrated solar power plants in Blythe CA and in western Nevada. https://www.seia.org/initiatives/concentrating-solar-power Nuclear energy no doubt may play a larger role eventually in this energy mix, and some people talk about "free energy" as well as other kinds of renewables. Human inventive energy is unbounded if we celebrate and support it and not cling to old ways just because they are convenient and profitable in the short run.
It still takes energy and resources to create all this equipment, just as it does to explore and drill for oil and gas. But once built, they supply power for 30 years or more with no emissions. Renewable energy thus saves something like 10 times the carbon footprint and other pollution resulting from use of fossil fuels. Imagine all of our needed raw materials supplied from recycling plants, including used solar panels, windmills and batteries, and with ever-better metals being mined with ever-better methods.
Renewable energy is just a part of the greater spiritual, artistic, human and ecological renaissance and new golden age we can unfold together to set our souls free. Once we get competent national leadership again in the USA, Latin America, Australia, the Middle East, the UK, even China and Russia, this green energy revolution will take off and transform our world into the green garden that Joni Mitchell sang that we’ve got to get ourselves back to in 1969.
Woodstock by Joni Mitchell
Union of Concerned Scientists on the Benefits of renewable energy