Making America Carbon Neutral Could Cost $1 Trillion Annually

摘要

Democrats from Capitol Hill to the presidential campaign trail see climate change as a winning political issue, and they are competing to outdo one another with ambitious plans to halt the rise in planet-warming greenhouse gases in the atmosphere over as small as a 10-year period. But is that even possible? That could mean stop using vehicles powered by internal combustion engines, abandon most electricity produced by coal, and retrofit buildings that use natural gas for cooking and heating. New bio-based fuels for aviation and carbon-capture technology for cement factories and chemical refineries would be required. And people would probably be eating a lot more vegetarian hamburgers. Nobody thinks the shift will be easy—many doubt it is even possible—in large part because emissions are still on the rise, according to the Global Carbon Project, which collaborates with climate groups worldwide on research to quantify greenhouse gases. Global emissions were estimated to have risen 2.7 percent in 2018 from a year earlier, and 2.5 percent in the U.S., the group found.