Don’t Ban Fossil Fuels: Absolutism In Climate Change Policy Is A Vice
By Michael Lynch
One aspect of the debate over climate change policy centers on calls to ban the usage of fossil fuels, which is popular in some quarters but extremely questionable as effective policy. As Roland Geyer pointed out in the Guardian recently, the world has used up most of its carbon budget if it wants to meet the target of keeping global warming to 1.5 degrees C. Therefore, a ban would only partially reduce GHG emissions and at an exorbitant costs.
And among the emissions targets and goal, a number of cities are turning to bans on cars, or at least gasoline powered cars, and natural gas heating in buildings. Utilities wanting to switch to natural gas run into opposition on the grounds that reducing emissions is not enough, they must be completely eliminated.
This is reminiscent of nothing so much as those nuclear power protestors in the 1970s who insisted that no level of radiation was safe and therefore nuclear power plants, which emit minute amounts, should be banned. Most abandoned that argument upon discovering that radiation is omnipresent, and impossible to avoid: power plant emissions would make a negligible difference.
https://co2coalition.org/2021/03/24/dont-ban-fossil-fuels-absolutism-in-climate-change-policy-is-a-vice/
