08.30.2022
Fossil Fuels are the Greenest Energy Sources
Indur M. Goklany – August 30, 2022
Contrary to the claims of proponents of the Green New Deal and Net Zero, fossil fuels are the greenest fuels.
First, uniquely among energy sources, fossil fuel use emits CO2, which is the ultimate source of the elemental building block, carbon, found in all carbon-based life, i.e., virtually all life on Earth.
The increased amplitude of the seasonal cycle in atmospheric CO2 and satellite-borne instrumentation to measure solar-induced chlorophyll fluorescence from plants provide direct evidence that global photosynthetic activity (or Gross Primary Production, GPP, a measure of the change in global biomass) has increased over the past several decades (Frankenberg et al. 2011; Graven et al. 2013). Observed variations (Campbell et al. 2017) of atmospheric CO2 over the past two centuries are consistent with increasing primary productivity. Other satellite studies also show that the earth has been greening continually in recent decades (Zhu et al. 2016; Piao et al. 2020). Second, fossil fuel dependent technologies have increased agricultural yields directly or indirectly by at least 167% (Goklany 2021). This increase in agricultural productivity is due to the use of fossil-fuel-dependent technologies, specifically, nitrogen fertilizers, pesticides and carbon dioxide fertilization resulting from fossil fuel emissions. This has enabled human beings to meet their demands for food using less cropland, which then spares land for the rest of nature. Thus, in the absence of fossil fuels, at least 167% more land would have to be cultivated to maintain global food production at current levels. That would be equivalent to increasing current cropland from 12.2% of global land area (GLA) (FAO 2019) to 32.7%. But diversion of habitat (land) to agriculture is already deemed to be the greatest threat to global biodiversity. Fossil fuels have, therefore, not only increased productivity of already-converted habitat, they have forestalled conversion of at least an additional 20.4% of GLA.
Consequently, the world sustains 10 times more people today (7.97 billion) than at the start of the Industrial Revolution (786 million in 1750), while supporting more biomass.
Moreover, to compare the impacts of the various energy options on habitat, we should consider the physical footprint needed to produce an equivalent amount of energy via each option (solar, wind and the various fossil fuels). Second, for wind and solar to be viable substitutes for fossil fuel energy, they should be coupled with batteries to solve their intermittency problem which requires substantial amounts of metals and other materials that must be mined, smelted and refined which necessarily would disturb the land.
https://co2coalition.org/publications/fossil-fuels-are-the-greenest-energy-sources/
