Poor people suffer. Still today: Billions of poor people all over the planet. None of them wants to stay poor, running all of us further into the yet unresolved dilemma: The richer you become, the more you consume.
Hospitals, transport, fridges not only for food but also medicine, light, heating in winter, air condition in hot summers, potable water and all the goods we do not want to miss.
From bicycle to motor bike, to car, to bigger cars. Food from all over the world. More & cheaper goods from the other side of the planet. Fly-in vacations. Smartphones and the energy-eating cloud-farms.
Goods turning into waste, energy turning into CO2. The CO2-free technologies are still too little, their speed will save us, but not in-time (why is that?– find here).
Climate tipping point is supposed to be at 450ppm CO2, we are already over 415 ppm. Still 12 years to go, only! Some say even less than 10 years. And CO2 is not the only greenhouse gas.
Methane is minimum 25 more efficient in global warming than CO2. And waste dump-sites emit a lot of methane (more info here).
Ugly synergies: Ice will not reflect sunlight but melts when there is a sheet of plastic or dust lying on top of it. The effect of the Great Pacific garbage patch (what is this? - find here) still uncertain.
At WES, we are dedicated to solve the waste problem with our unique advanced HTCW-technology. And even more, to speed up CO2-removal without poor people staying poor and wealthy people to give up what they have.
Difficult? Indeed. Still possible? Yes!
(Titel: Al Gore – Nobel Lecture. NobelPrize.org. Nobel Media AB 2020. Sun. 7 Jun 2020.)
Is solar a solution? Yes. The only solution? Not yet (why?) Is wind? Yes and no. Is nuclear? Yes and no. Hydro-power, gas, geothermal, waste-to-energy, planting trees, laws and bans? Same. The current technologies are just not enough. You need them all, and 5 times more (why 5 times?). And if we stick to what we have, what we like, ignoring and/or turning down what we do not like? Continuing the same things all over? Expecting to be luckier than the dinosaurs? A major extinction event (the 6th in Earth’s history) already upon us (data here), with a situation quite similar to the 5th mass extinction? We cannot just cut energy. Billions of people on other continents will just not do it. We cannot make energy more expensive. People cannot afford anymore, and will not accept it. Industry will move to cheaper climate-dumping countries. The trilemma of poverty versus energy versus climate. Now, where is the bloody solutions? Here is just one, just one of many needed. Urgently – time is running short.