Besides Spending, What is Our Climate Plan Exactly?

For those of you who are interested in climate change and what our realistic options for addressing it might be, I have an assignment for you.

Relax, it's an easy one, and it will most certainly open your eyes. It certainly opened mine.

Project Drawdown, a non-profit environmental organization founded in 2014, has developed a list of potential solutions and their potential emissions impacts, categorized by sectors:?food/agriculture, electricity, buildings, land sinks, coastal/ocean sinks, engineered sinks, and health/education.?They created 2 scenarios:?one for a 2 degrees C temperature rise by 2100, and a second for a 1.5 degrees C rise, then prioritized those items based on the most anticipated emissions savings.?

These lists are comprehensive and give a very good summary of the options that could be available.?They focus primarily on emissions reduction, which have their own limitations, but form a fantastic starting point. Most of the scenarios include cost information, some of them include potential savings, and some include profit. While many of the top emissions reduction candidates have no cost information - which makes them very difficult to analyze and prioritize - it's still a great list. Let's start here.

So here is the assignment. First, go to ProjectDrawdown.org, and look through the various options available. Next, take all of their options and put them into a master list, with a column for emissions reductions (in G-tons), and then cost. Third, make another column that divides price by G-ton, and include that in the listing. Finally, sort the entire spreadsheet by the $/ton metric, lowest to highest, and you'll get a prioritized ranking of the potential solutions available. (I suggest you go by the cost numbers, because the financing and profit numbers can potentially include some climaccounting sleight-of-hand tricks that may make comparisons unfair).

Setting up that spreadsheet might take an hour or two, but it's worth it. When I did it, I got this list (pardon the formatting):

(Note: Items above were taken from Project Drawdown website; right column was calculated using shown costs divided by G-tons avoided).

Quite a list, isn't it? This is now a list of climate options, sorted from cheapest-to-highest-to-implement. It's a list of viable options, sorted by best bang for the buck. Now we can compare this list with what's actually being planned for and see which would be the best way to move forward.

Since energy decarbonization and carbon emissions keep getting all the press, let's see if those options make good energy policy.

So how many energy options are in the top 10 (as in cheapest savings/ton CO2)?

None.

How many energy options are in the top 20?

None.

How many energy options are in the top 30?

None.

The top energy item is Distributed Solar at #33, at a cost of $9.1/ton. That means there are 32 items that could be cheaper to implement and would have greater CO2 reductions than rooftop solar; other energy options are even lower than that.

What about electric vehicles? We're spending trillions to convert the world's transportation infrastructure towards EVs, in the hope that this will reduce enough carbon to save the planet. Surely this is a good spend, isn't it?

In this list, Electric Vehicles come in at #67, just below Hybrids at #66 - and this is out of a total number of 75 options.

EV spending, as rated by the CO2 reduction benefits it would receive per dollar spent, is at the bottom of the list of viable options. And yet, we're spending trillions to support this transition.

Maybe you don't like this and find fault with the analysis. Fantastic. I suggest you look through the list and formulate your own conclusions about it. Climate change is an important topic, and we need more and smarter brains on it.

Let's be honest here. We're being asked to spend trillions to reverse global temperatures, and we're being pummeled by so-called solutions from politically-motivated groups. We deserve transparency and a full, open discussion about what we're actually spending our money on and, most importantly, what results we should expect from those spends.

"A good start" isn't good enough anymore. We need real solutions and a real plan to attack climate change.