“Incredibly, we’re on track to 0.5C above pre-industrial by around 2050,” published in Medium on August 27, by Paul Pallaghy, is the sort of headline I would like to see true. Unfortunately, even while I chastise the doomers who claim that all is already lost in the climate fight, or that civilization itself will collapse by 2030, or that homo sapiens are part of the next wave of extinction, or other fill-in-the-blank check of unmitigated disaster, I’m also not a fan of Pollyannishness, right along side of the spell checker that apparently doesn’t care for this word either. The term of use is “Techno-Optimist” and I fear that this claim from the opposite end of the climate crisis prediction spectrum carries its own problems.

Here is how the case is put in Pallaghy’s article:

• We’re on target to be 80–90% carbon neutral by 2042
• We’ll avoid a 2C maximum temperature increase, hitting 1.5C in the mid-2030s
• We’ll drop down to 0.5C above pre-industrial temperatures by as soon as 2050, or around 2065 without any carbon capture

I mean, a guy can hope, but a guy can also convincingly assume that some assumptions are just too good to be true, and I’m not even arguing on the technical merits of what’s presented in this piece. The author is Doctor of Physics and an AI engineer to boot, so it is reasonable to think he can read tech specs. My argument is with his reading of the specifications of the human animal and the political history and social culture therein.

Questionable Assumption No. 1:

At the rate of electrification today we’re likely to hit 80–90% carbon neutral by 2042, thus leading to actual temperature and concentration drops in those mid-2030s.

Questionable Assumption No. 2:

So, I’m using the same physics as the IPCC, but I’m updating for the known renewable adoption rate of 2023.

You may note that the two assumptions I am questioning are actually each part and parcel of the other, which is that renewables will come into play sooner and in larger numbers than most people think.

The rate of renewables growth the author references has two problems, the first of which is the “hockey stick” growth projections for renewable energy. I don’t argue that there won’t be growth and massive growth at that with renewables, and I’m happy enough to throw in nuclear and energy storage growth, too. But potential green power production has many barriers to it, including political and business pushback, and for just one example, think of the huge sums the fossil fuel industry throws at influencing politicians and the public. I hope that there will be a revolution in the public’s awareness of and demands for quick and massive renewable energy rollout, but reading today’s headlines offers little to think this is guaranteed to happen quickly.

And then there are the supply chain and materials challenges and attendant labor requirements, where a lot of training/retraining is needed to support green energy buildout, but the economic reality is that we can’t even solve current nursing, teaching, and other significant labor shortfalls, never mind filling the sorts of new and expanded opportunities green energy demands. The solutions for addressing problems of labor are long known and easy to understand: better pay and better management. But today’s trends suggest that while solutions are understood, the willingness of businesses—indeed, the very culture of business—is not yet part of our fundamental reality.

As for green energy material and supply chains, the barriers to those solutions are international in scope and difficult, but even if/when these solutions are reached, the infrastructure for mining and refining and the buildout of manufacturing have intrinsically long timeframes, so the idea that green energy buildout leading to actual temperature and [Co2] concentration drops in those mid-2030s seems unlikely. If you are looking at the real world of competing power and authority structures, look no further than energy transmission lines, where plenty of already made green energy sources remain useless because the buildout of the necessary power transmission infrastructure to connect these power sources with the users of the power remains hog-tied with competing interests, and the permitting processes alone too often add ten years to the schedule for implementation.

It doesn’t matter if we’re using the same physics as the IPCC, but… updating for the known renewable adoption rate of 2023 if the implementable renewable adoption rate realistically falls short, despite abstract market projection. A lot can happen to help implement renewable energy more quickly, with just one example to be seen in the Rural Electrification Administration, the agency created by the 1936 act of Congress that brought electricity to large portions of the country; today this is called Rural Utilities Service, but I’m guessing it will take another act of Congress to give this (or some new agency) the power to build out the smart grid and its required new transmission infrastructure, and that means politics.

When it comes to projecting the potential of green energy to address greenhouse gas buildup and the associated climate consequences, we can’t just look at the technology and the physics such technology may support. We need to look at politics, which means we need to pay attention to our large cultural issues, which means that we need a change in what people prioritize and demand.

I sure as hell hope that this happens. But I am also sure as hell that this sort of shift is the hardest challenge, and paying attention to this aspect of climate crisis amelioration and the consequence on timelines isn’t cause for excessive optimism. We can make the change needed to lessen the consequences of climate change, but we can’t do it with our eyes closed to what this requires of us and our politics and culture.