More Notes from Cheaper Faster Better: How we’ll win the climate war. by Tom Steyer, 2024.

Today, our world needs to change quickly and we need teams to make that happen. We need new technologies, new ways of creating energy, new ways to cut emissions of greenhouse gas. Then, we need to figure out how to deploy these new technologies worldwide, in countries with wildly different levels of infrastructure, prosperity, and political stability, all while facing relentless opposition from fossil fuels.

A summary of areas of concern with possible solutions is organized by: Energy provided as electrical for transportation, manufacturing, agriculture, and habital buildings.

1. Electricity generation. The great thing about all the power, if you ignore the fact that they're killing us, is that they're powerhouses of stored energy: For more than a century, we've turned that pent-up energy into heat and used that heat to create electricity. We need to create more electricity than ever as things that used to be powered by fossil fuels, like cars, are going to become electric; as the world population grows; and as more countries access the miracles of modern life. If we want to do this without destroying human society, as we know it, we need to create all that electricity in a way that doesn't rely on fossil fuel-generated heat. That means building up existing clean and renewable technologies like solar, wind, geothermal, and, if it can be done cleanly and safely, nuclear. It means trying to find new sources of energy and electricity, for example through nuclear fusion. It also means that we need to support all the things that get the electricity wherever it needs to go-better batteries, transmission lines, and power grids.

2. Transportation. Burning fossil fuels is one way to move vehicles from point A to point B. We need a better way. Electric cars, electric trucks, electric buses, and the charging networks needed to connect them to clean-energy grids will play a large role here. Making public transportation more efficient and reliable will help get cars and pollution associated with manufacturing them as well as driving them— Off the road as well. But other types of transportation are harder to electrify, especially passenger and cargo planes, because at the moment, any battery big enough to power them would be too heavy to get off the ground. Shipping whether by truck or boat is hard to electrify as well, for a similar reason: a big battery takes up space that could be occupied by cargo. That means we'll need to rely not just on new sources of electricity but on new battery technologies and new sources of fuel. (One possibility is green hydrogen. We need to move down the technology cost curve, but if we can make it work, it will be better, faster, cheaper, and cleaner than anything else out there).

3. Manufacturing. Let's say you buy an electric car and hook it up to a grid powered by renewable energy. That's zero greenhouse-gas pollution. But what about all the carbon and methane emitted when they were building that car? Or your phone? Or your clothing? Or basically anything else manufactured, which these days is almost everything? The basic problem is that manufacturing takes an enormous amount of energy, and in particular requires very high heat. We need to figure out how to make things using less heat, and how to generate heat without generating as many emissions.

4. Agriculture. As we feed a growing world wide population, the ways we raise plants and animals have to change. For example, nitrogen fertilizer-which didn't exist 120 years ago but today is considered essential to industrial farming— is a huge source of emissions because it's made using fossil fuels. There's also the problem of deforestation. When an acre of rain forest is cut down to clear land for a palm oil plantation or a cattle ranch, it's like wringing a giant sponge full of greenhouse gas into the air. We have to start producing the food we need without all the emissions.

See: The Burgeoning Global Food Trade is a Lifeline for Billions. Is it breaking the planet?
Science. Includes some rally astonishing photos. pdf

5. Buildings. Plumbing, Air conditioning, and Heating. Whether it's a house, an office, or any other type of modern structure, our buildings use an enormous amount of energy, and right now that means they create an enormous amount of greenhouse gas pollution. Even worse, most buildings leak. We need to make sure that what we're building today is net-zero emissions. But because it's estimated that in developed economies, about 80 percent of buildings in use today will still be in use in 2050, focusing on new construction alone isn't enough. We need to retrofit old buildings so that they waste less energy—and cost their owners less money in the process.

Over the years, as I made a lot of money, it didn't make me any smarter. It just meant I had more money.

Tom Steyer

 

If you want me in at the landing, ask me in on the takeoff.

George Shultz

 

Think about it!

How can the fossil fuel industry and supporters claim to be in favor of free markets, small government, and government hand outs; when they abandoned the principle of small government to attack clean energy by trying to shut down clean and green energies from the market with government regulations. And they themselves lobby for more tax breaks and handouts for expanding production and price supports to protect them from foreign markets.

Donald Trump can't claim to be "America First" while trying to keep cleaner, cheaper, safer energy out of Americans' hands. And you can't claim to be tough enough to stand up to countries like China while surrendering our competitive advantage in one of the world's fastest-growing industries. powerful conservative think tank abandoned the principle of small government to attack clean energy and support fossil fuel industries! Climate justice aligns with actions that are pro environment.