Is ‘Going all Electric’ Killing the Planet?
Going all electric — in a hurry — is the solution to our climate challenge, according to both experts and pundits. It sounds reasonable, the goal and the arguments are convincing. They also ignore reality. The climate challenge is not just about energy.
You knew that already, but it’s so easy to lose sight of the full picture when the world is completely preoccupied with energy in general and electric in particular. ‘WWS (Wind, Water, Solar) is going to save us’ is the mantra — which is undeniably true, but not alone: It’s not the whole truth. Presenting it as such is not useful, it’s dangerous.
Stanford-professor Mark Z. Jacobson is a strong voice behind WWS these days. His book titled 100% Clean, Renewable Energy and Storage for Everything (2020, Cambridge University Press) does a great job at explaining the challenges and how WWS can solve them in a sustainable and even profitable way. It has — deservedly — become something like a ‘WWS Bible’, a very valuable contribution to the fastest and most critical shift in history. It is also flawed because it fails to put WWS into an overall pollution/climate/resource context.
David Roberts is another ‘big name’ in this important shift. In 2017–4 years before Mark Jacobson’s book — his post The key to tackling climate change: electrify everything on Vox received wide acclaim…
