The New S&P, and Earth's Fate

If potential ecological disaster could be neatly framed as a set of giant investment opportunities, then we save our species and make the investors a lot wealthier.

That's why I like Socolow and Pacala's (S&P) increasingly-famous conceptualization of how to save the world -- their concept that we need to prevent seven billion tons of CO2 from being emitted by 2054 or else we'll be sending offspring to the dungeons of the Dark Ages. (Google search "Socolow and Pacala & wedges" for the whole article.)

A new book on the topic -- Hell and High Water -- aroused the same manic concern and opportunism that Field Notes from a Catastrophe ignited within me last year.

Below are a few ways of the ways we can save one billions tons of CO2 from being emitted by 2054 -- though remember we need seven (more like eight or nine at this point), and we have to start immediately. Anyone can see that each "wedge" of a billion tons of CO2 creates enormous investment opportunities.

• Increase fuel economy for 2 billion cars from 30 to 60 mpg.
• Cut carbon emissions by one-fourth in buildings and appliances for 2054
• Produce twice today's coal power output at 60% instead of 40% efficiency (compared wtih 32% today)
• Replace 1400 Gigawatt 50%-efficient coal plants with gas plants (four times the current production of gas-based power
• Add 700 gigawatts of nuclear power (twice the current capacity)
  
• Add 2 million one-megawatt-peak windmills (50x the current capacity)
• Add 2000 gigawatt-peak photovoltaic (700x the current capacity)
• Decrease tropical deforestation to zero instead of today's rapid deforestation, and double the number of new tree plantings globally.
  

Following is a schematic diagram of the seven wedges -- or seven billions tons of CO2 we need to prevent from being emitted in order to hopefully stave-off irreversible ecological catastrophe. (Again, the figure now is probably north of eight billion tons, because of delay and "creeping normalcy" whereby we think everything is okay because the environment doesn't seem that much worse than we can remember in past times.)