« Too Big To Jail | Main | Gallup's Underemployment Rate Is 18.1% »

12/01/2011

Comments

Feed You can follow this conversation by subscribing to the comment feed for this post.

Ao

Dave, I think you make a similar mistake in your reasoning (extrapolation): that emissions will track growth. It is entirely possible that GDP flatlines and then starts decreasing while total emissions stay the same or even increase.

How? In our desperation to run the global economy on any source of energy we can find, we'll gladly tap dirty sources: tar sands, shale gas, shale oil, etc. Each of which will fail to provide us the level of energy we need to continue GDP growth, but which also produce much more CO2/CH4/... than their counterparts per unit net energy delivered. (Compare tar sands to onshore oil or conventional gas to shale gas or low-grade coal to anthracite.)

The comments to this entry are closed.