Renewable Energy Is Critical To Stopping Global Warming

Global warming is being caused by several large-scale human activities. In addition to burning fossil fuels for energy, for example, large-scale deforestation for livestock production is a major problem. It’s true that renewable energy alone can’t stop global warming, but anyone arguing that renewable energy is pointless because it can’t stop the problem alone is missing the point. Renewable energy is one of the most important solutions to global warming and should be pursued as strongly and quickly as possible if we want to have any hope of stopping catastrophic climate change.

Many of the world’s countries will be running on clean, renewable energy by the middle of this century. Experts have predicted that approximately 100% could do so by 2050. “Mark Z. Jacobson, the famed professor at the Stanford School of Earth, Energy, and Environmental Sciences, and 26 of his colleagues have compiled a report that shows exactly how 139 nations could transition to 100% renewable energy by 2050 without throwing millions of people out of work. In fact, they contend that the changeover would actually spur job growth while dramatically reducing carbon emissions.”

If these nations would follow the roadmap and install the technology to make the transition happen, tens of millions of jobs would be created.
While the job boost may be a major reason to be happy about such a transition, however, and low-cost renewable energy will mean lower energy costs than if we didn’t have solar and wind power, the core impetus for renewable energy’s development and growth today is to help stop global warming.

Climate Change

Climate change is happening, despite the verbiage and rhetoric of the deniers. Some of the key indicators it is occurring have been presented on the US EPA website: “Average temperatures have risen across the contiguous 48 states since 1901, with an increased rate of warming over the past 30 years. Eight of the top 10 warmest years on record have occurred since 1998. Average global temperatures show a similar trend, and all of the top 10 warmest years on record worldwide have occurred since 1998.”

Another important indicator related to increasing the heat on the planet is in the water. “Ocean surface temperatures increased around the world during the 20th century. Even with some year-to-year variation, the overall increase is clear, and sea surface temperatures have been consistently higher during the past three decades than at any other time since reliable observations began in the late 1800s.”

These are just two of several indicators. Climate change deniers point to some arbitrary statistics as supposed proof that the overall warming isn’t happening, like pointing out narrow areas where there is still sea ice, but they are only focused on the outliers, not the overall trend. The rate of sea ice melting is the fastest its been in 1500 years. In 2016, more coral died in the Great Barrier Reef than in any previous year. And there are numerous other signals that warming is not only occurring but is already significantly disturbing the climate and world we’re used to. The overuse of fossil fuels is a primary contributor to climate change, and this fact has been confirmed based on theory and empirical evidence thousands of times over. 

The Renewable Energy Transition

Germany has been a global leader in the development of solar and wind power, and yet even with its commitment to them, climate change emissions have not dropped that much. The reason for this situation is that the country needs far more renewable energy to replace its current over-reliance on coal. However, it’s not because the renewable energy installed isn’t working. Rather, it’s that Germany chose to phase out nuclear energy quickly rather than phasing out fossil fuels more quickly. Renewable energy has largely been replacing low-emission nuclear energy.
Although Germany has grown its renewable energy production dramatically over the last 12 years or so, there still isn’t enough of it, so coal power plants there continue to burn huge amounts of coal and spew out foul air pollution. Parts of Germany have already achieved a rate of 100% renewable energy.

The next step

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