Leadership And The Environment

499: What sets limits on pollution, part 2: some answers

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Synopsis

The notes I read from for this episode:I asked many questions on the last episode. The core ones were “why aren’t we switching to renewables and not polluting faster?” I know we can’t switch overnight, but what sets the pace? Do we know if the limits will go away, like we just need to build more factories, or maybe they won’t, like what led us to retract from supersonic flight? It worked in some ways, but not enough. A mix of social, business, engineering, and physics issues pulled us back.How much farther can advances go? Can we expect as great advances as the 747 compared to the Wright brothers’ first plane? How much of the solar power hitting the Earth can we effectively use?I point you to a paper called Pulling Back The Curtain On The Energy Transition Tale, which I link to in the notes. It’s not peer-reviewed, but shares all its sources. It looks at the limitations of renewable energy sources. What does it take to build solar and wind farms? How many do we have to build? How many can we? Things like that