Rethinking Climate Change

The UN climate panel still doesn’t understand technology – and it matters

April 1, 2022 / By

With the Sixth Assessment Report of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) being released, it’s important to revisit the climate scenarios that are its centerpiece. These scenarios form the basis of the climate science community’s modeling and projections, which in turn affects governance and investment decisions across the world. Trillions of dollars …

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Rethinking the Jevons Paradox: Why more clean energy efficiency is good for the environment

March 31, 2022 / By

  “What about the Jevons Paradox?” This is a common refrain in environmental discourse. It’s another way of asking, “won’t new technology always just create more problems than it solves?” William Stanley Jevons was an English economist and mathematician who noticed in 1865 that, paradoxically, the consumption of coal actually increased when technological progress improved …

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How to Achieve Rapid, Cheap Energy Decarbonization Using the RethinkX Clean Energy U-Curve

March 31, 2022 / By

We are witnessing the start of the most profound disruption of the energy sector in over a century. Like others throughout history, this disruption is the result of a convergence of several key technologies – namely, solar photovoltaics, onshore wind power, and lithium-ion batteries (SWB). A 100% SWB energy system is possible as soon as …

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Restoring Our Faith in Progress: Part 2 – How Science Justifies Optimism

March 31, 2022 / By

This is part 2 of a series. See part 1 on ‘How Prosperity Solves Problems’ Understandable despair    The trouble with climate change – as I explained in Part 1 of this series – is that the incumbent authorities to which the public looks for guidance, including most especially the scientific community, have failed to provide …

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How Kevin Bacon Can Save the Planet and Regenerate the Earth

March 31, 2022 / By

Decision-makers at the COP26 UN climate summit might do well to remind themselves of a game called ‘Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon’. Because only by understanding the interconnection of the world’s problems can we recognize how they can be rapidly solved by addressing them systemically at the root. Invented in the 1990s by three college …

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The Next Economy: Why the growth and degrowth debate misses the point

March 29, 2022 / By

During COP 26, as he was on route to the G20 summit, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson had an extraordinary message. Civilization could collapse “like the Roman empire”, he warned, “unless we get this right in tackling climate change.”   “Humanity, civilization and society can go backwards as well as forwards and when they start to …

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The fastest route to net zero is not a carbon tax: it’s ending the $6 trillion/year fossil fuel bailout

March 31, 2022 / By

Global business groups are calling on governments to pursue an international strategy on carbon pricing at the COP26 UN climate summit. While well-intentioned, the reality is we don’t need carbon pricing to create a level-playing field in global markets. We just need to end trillions of dollars of subsidies to the coal, oil and gas …

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Restoring Our Faith in Human Progress: Part 1 – How Prosperity Solves Problems

March 31, 2022 / By

OK, Doomer…  Doom and gloom are everywhere, and not just because of what the COVID-19 pandemic has done to societies and economies across the globe over the last 18 months. A deeper contagion of pessimism has been spreading as well. The belief that we are doomed by climate change, and that all other human progress …

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The Great Land Liberation and the opportunity for reforestation

March 30, 2022 / By

Over 100 world leaders have pledged to end, and even reverse, deforestation by 2030 at the COP26 UN climate summit. And over 30 of the world’s biggest financial companies have promised to end investment linked to deforestation. But in 2014, a similar ‘landmark’ agreement was reached – and this didn’t slow deforestation at all. Part …

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The 9 Profound Implications of Rethinking Climate Change

March 30, 2022 / By

Technology disruptions already underway in the energy, transportation, and food sectors have extraordinary implications for climate change. These three disruptions alone, driven by just eight technologies, can directly eliminate over 90% of net greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions worldwide within 15 years. Our previous research has shown that these disruptions are inevitable. Solar, wind, and batteries …

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