Name: Fossil fuel companies know how to stop global warming. Why don't they? | Myles Allen
Uploaded: 2020-12-05T18:27:34.000Z
Duration: 10 min 43 s
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Transcriber: TED Translators Admin Reviewer: Rhonda Jacobs

The fossil fuel industry knows how to stop causing global warming,

but they're waiting for somebody else to pay,

I was one of the authors of the 2018 IPCC report

I gave a lot of talks, including one to a meeting of young engineers

of one of the world's major oil and gas companies.

And at the end of the talk, I got the inevitable question,

"Do you personally believe there's any chance

of us limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees?"

IPCC reports are not really about personal opinions,

so I turned the question around and said,

"Well, if you had to fully decarbonize your product,

that is, dispose safely and permanently of one ton of carbon dioxide

for every ton generated by the oil and gas you sell,

"Would the same rules apply to everybody?" somebody asked,

Now, the management just looked at their shoes;

But the young engineers just shrugged and said,

"Yes, of course we would, like it's even a question."

about what those young engineers know how to do:

because it turns out to be essential to stopping global warming.

At a global level, climate change turns out to be surprisingly simple:

we need to stop dumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

And since about 85 percent of the carbon dioxide we currently emit

we need to stop fossil fuels from causing further global warming.

Well, it turns out there's really only two options.

The first option is, in effect, to ban fossil fuels.

No one allowed to extract, sell, or use fossil fuels

anywhere in the world on pain of a massive fine.

If that sounds unlikely, it's because it is.

of poor and emerging economies in the 2060s

Some people argue that if we work hard enough

we can drive down the cost of renewable energy so far

the people will stop using them of their own accord.

This kind of thinking is dangerously optimistic.

For one thing, renewable energy costs might not go down as fast as they hope.

nuclear energy was meant to be too cheap to meter in the 1970s,

we've no idea how low fossil fuel prices might fall

it's not enough for carbon-free alternatives to outcompete the big ones,

to stop fossil fuels from causing further global warming,

carbon-free alternatives would need to outcompete them all.

So the only real alternative to stop fossil fuels causing global warming

one ton of carbon dioxide has to be safely and permanently disposed of

for every ton generated by the continued use of fossil fuels.

so the responsibility has to lie with the companies

that are producing and selling the fossil fuels themselves.

The simplest option is to capture the carbon dioxide as it's generated

from the chimney of a power station, or blast furnace, or refinery.

You purify it, compress it, and re-inject it back underground.

If you inject it deep enough and into the right rock formations,

it stays there, just like the hydrocarbons it came from.

permanent storage has to mean tens of thousands of years at least,

which is why trying to mop up our fossil carbon emissions

For some applications like aviation fuel, for example,

we can't capture the carbon dioxide at source,

so we have to recapture it, take it back out of the atmosphere.

That can be done; there's companies already doing it,

And this points to the single most important reason

why recapturing and safe disposal of carbon dioxide

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Fossil fuel companies know how to stop global warming. Why don't they? | Myles Allen

permanent

effective

consume

atmosphere