We may win the race to decarbonise energy, he argues, but add in soil loss, plunging crop yields, etc – and it’s quite a different challenge.
Some extracts from the summary of the paper hopefully to tempt readers to tackle
We may win the race to decarbonise energy, he argues, but add in soil loss, plunging crop yields, etc – and it’s quite a different challenge.
Some extracts from the summary of the paper hopefully to tempt readers to tackle the full 35 pages. This is one long read worth the time.
“Technology, in my opinion, will in one sense win. If we were able to look ahead40 years, I’m confident that there would be a decent sufficiency of cheap green energy on the planet. In 80 years perhaps it’s likely we would have full decarbonization. Lack of green energy will not be the issue that brings us down. If only that were the end of the story.”
“With climate change, there are two separate effects on agriculture. One is immediate: the increased droughts, the increased floods, and the increased temperature reduce quite measurably the productivity of a year’s harvest. Then there’s the long-term, permanent effect: the most dependable outcome of increased temperature is increased water vapor in the atmosphere, currently up over 4% from the old normal. This has led to a substantial increase in heavy downpours. It is precisely the heavy downpours that cause soil erosion. ….It is the one or two great downpours every few years that cause the trouble. We’re losing perhaps 1% of our collective global soil a year. We are losing about a half a percent of our arable land a year….It is calculated that there are only 30 to 70 good harvest years left depending on your location.”
Investors will also be interested in the thoughts on a portfolio likely to work best, and on divestment: the long and widely held view that any form of divestment is guaranteed to ruin performance ….is completely inaccurate.”
Image: a diagram from the paper