Sorry for the paucity of blogging — we’ve been have big meetings about the Future of Grist (I won’t give anything away, but suffice to say we gotta wear shades).
As some light Friday reading, try an article from Harvard Magazine called "Fueling Our Future" (and don’t miss the sidebar, "Is Nuclear Power Scaleable?"). It’s a tight, cogent, and fairly disheartening explanation of the sheer scope of what we need to do: reduce GHG emissions by 60 to 70 percent by 2050. And that’s just to stabilize climate temperature at already dangerously high levels.
Harvard prof Daniel Schrag, who’s featured in the piece, argues fairly convincingly that we’re going to be using a lot more coal for energy in the next several decades, and so there’s no way around finding reasonably clean ways to do it. His own scheme is to carry the CO2 out on ships and inject it into deep ocean waters where pressure and temperature will keep it down. Sounds like something to pin your future on, huh?
None of the people featured in the article are exactly thrilled about coal, or about nuclear, which they also endorse. They just view them as inevitable realities.
Read the piece and share your thoughts in comments.
