US joins in other nations in swearing off coal power to clean the climate::The United States committed Saturday to the idea of phasing out coal power plants, joining 56 other nations in kicking the coal habit that’s a huge factor in global warming. U.S. Special Envoy John Kerry announced that America was joining the Powering Past Coal Alliance, which means the Biden Administration commits to building no new coal plants and phasing out existing plants. No date was given for when the existing plants would have to go, but other Biden regulatory actions and international commitments already in the works had meant no coal by 2035.
Thanks for sharing this graph. Please forgive my pessimism regarding the subject. I know a lot of progress is being made in the area of renewables and sometimes it still feels dire. Hopefully we can hasten that downward trend with coal.
Don’t worry, your pessimism isn’t totally misplaced. See that big “natural gas” line?
Natural gas is just a more palatable word for methane, and burning methane is still putting an enormous amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. But methane by itself is like 10x worse than CO2 and the EPA estimates as much as 10% of all methane for domestic use ends up in the atmosphere. Fun!
While methane is worse it’s worth noting that it doesn’t stay the atmosphere for as long; so if we stopped producing the fall off in warming would be a lot steeper; so theoretically if we assume that eventually renewables will take over there would be an optimal ratio between the longer term but less damaging CO2 and the more damaging but short term Methane. But all that is driven by economics not science so ¯_(ツ)_/¯
YES, methane stays in the atmosphere a shorter duration as methane, but most of it naturally breaks down into CO2 which then stays in the atmosphere just as long as all the other CO2. It is much worse than CO2 as a greenhouse gas.
It falls off, but it’s not like it’s gonna fall off to zero. It’ll react with oxygen in the atmosphere to form water and CO2—mostly CO2 by mass, because methane is about 3/4 carbon by mass.
Given the state of US politics, what are the odds a “commitment” like this will survive the next election cycle?
Depends on if enough people vote or inaction due to feelings of helplessness allow the far right to take over again :/
The far right consistently makes up like 30% of the country and whenever normal people don’t vote the far right wins and makes life even more shit for everybody.
Like yeah, don’t get me wrong, Democrats aren’t great, but they are miles and miles ahead of Republicans.
You know the answer…
Committed to the idea.
Heh. Wow.
LoL phase out coal. What is this? The 1990’s?
It will be phased out when it is more expensive than any other alternative. Not a single day earlier.
Solar and wind power are now cheaper than any power source ever in history.
edit: that was last year. Now it’s even cheaper.
And oil? And gas?
Pretty wild that we happen to live in a perfect little time period for capitalizing on dead plants and animals which have turned into energy sources over millenia. It’s also pretty wild how we’ve made a lot of things out of these dead plants and animals when it will be a bit of a wait until we get more of these dead plants and animals again.
We’re just like ants finding a sugar cube. But with more at stake in some ways.
At least it’s progress
I hope Germany wakes up
