Total emissions are still rising, but emissions per person have peaked. In 2012, the world topped out at 4.9 tonnes per person.
Per capita energy use [in the UK] has fallen by around 25% since the 1960s. Per capita emissions in the US and Germany have fallen by a third since the 1970s. They’ve more than halved in France, and fallen by almost two-thirds in Sweden.
Hannah Ritchie, Not the End of the World
Now those are tipping points!
They are much like Peak Coal in 2013, and Peak Carbon any year now, as soon as China can install enough power lines from its wind-and-sun-rich west to its cities, and get them to stop building coal-fired power plants. But in an online survey at Our World in Data only 19% of respondents knew about declining energy use.
So, can you reduce your personal emissions by more than 10,000 pounds? Well, yes, certainly in the First World, where a typical ICE car emits 4.6 tonnes of CO2 a year, and we can install solar panels, battery storage, induction cookers, heat pumps, and more. But not in societies without many cars or much electricity of any kind. Those societies, however, have the opportunity to develop by installing all of the above, plus wind and geothermal, for everybody, at much lower cost than putting in fossil fuels. And while they are at it, they can have schools with computers that support local languages; mobile phones; and broadband Internet for all.
There is of course bad climate news, especially disasters, which sells papers and attracts many eyeballs, but there is also a startling amount of good news that we can see only if we look past the headlines to the accumulated data.
Sir?
Fine so far. Now, what does the whole world have to do?
No secrets here. Only denial and lack of political will stand in our way. Other people are telling this same story.
x
What we must do immediately:
1) End the use of fossil fuels
2) Build massive amounts of solar & wind
3) Electrify everything
4) Localize
5) Conserve
5) Find solutions for the last hard stuff (planes, cement)
6) Stop cutting down forests
#ActOnClimate buff.ly/3r2I3Ee
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— Mike Hudema (@mikehudema.bsky.social) April 1, 2025 at 1:07 PM
What must we do to reduce our emissions? How do we get to net zero? Unfortunately there’s no silver bullet. To see how big the challenges are, we have to look at where our emissions come from.
Slices of the energy pie, 2024
Let’s look at the potential for each slice.
But first, let’s think about putting a price on carbon. Not bogus carbon capture. Not bogus offsets. A real price, with the money put into research and development or rebates to the poor so they don’t get hit hardest. I have talked at length about that, and about the experiments that demonstrate that it works, and will continue to report on it.
Renewables have gone from by far the most expensive source of energy to by far the cheapest, everywhere in the world. We just need to get on with it. Don’t let anybody try to scare you about investing trillions of dollars to save tens of trillions.
Using renewables to power industrial, commercial, and consumer heat pumps is a big and growing deal.
Nuclear power need not apply, although we don’t need to shut down working plants that have been fully paid for. We do need to harden some plants against flooding, including possible tsunamis, and against earthquakes and idiots. (See my tag #NoNewNukes on Bluesky.)
Switch to electric vehicles. They really are more climate-friendly.
This growth in electric vehicles means that the world has already passed peak petrol car.
Even with the US lagging. China leads the world in electric car production by a huge margin, which continues to grow. Norway has demonstrated how to decarbonize its car and small truck markets, with 88% of new cars sold being electrics. 18-wheelers have begun the transition, starting with low-mileage uses in seaports. Similarly for electric ships, starting with short distance ferries. Electric school buses not only save money, but greatly reduce childhood asthma. We still have work to do on alternative fuels (NOT corn ethanol), especially for aircraft, but they are coming along.
See also carless living, as in big cities with good public transportation. Subways have long been powered by electricity, and bus systems are rapidly converting to hybrids and all-electric buses. They are often much faster than driving in stalled traffic.
I keep posting news of low-carbon, zero carbon, even carbon-negative cement, iron, steel, and ammonia. Ritchie claims that we can’t get to zero-carbon cement, except possibly by capturing CO2 and putting it back into the cement in a way that binds it chemically, permanently. I believe that she is partly right and significantly wrong on this, and that we will fairly soon have real-world data on such production at scale.
A small slice, not addressed in the book. Energy-efficient buildings can certainly do something for us and for the environment, but not as much as some suppose. Get your electricity provider to do an energy audit of your home anyway. It will save you money.
Existing agricultural technology is wasteful and highly polluting, with a teraton of CO2 emissions predicted for the rest of this century. Agrivoltaics will help, but not enough. Not throwing away so much food will also help hugely..
Researchers estimate that if everyone were to adopt a more plant-based diet we could halve our emissions from food production.
The world produces enough food to feed everyone, twice over.
In some quarters, that’s a very hard, even impossible sell. So we aren’t really looking at half. But enough to matter.
For deforestation, see chapter 4 next week.
Not addressed in the book.
What are you doing about all of this? How about getting and sharing the facts, and prioritizing your concrete actions?
