Tuesday, December 20, 2011

Is renewable energy the best solution to tackle climate change?

The answer whether renewable energy is really the best solution to climate change isn't simple, in fact the right answer to this question would be both yes and no. Yes because only renewable energy has the potential to replace fossil fuels and with it reduce the amount of greenhouse gas emissions and no because transition to renewable energy is not going fast enough.

Time is extremely important factor in our fight against climate change because world is fast approaching the global temperature increase of 2 degrees Celsius seen by many scientists as the tipping point after which we will no longer be able to halt climate change.

The scientists say that if world fails to prevent temperature increase of 2 degrees Celsius we could be in for the worst possible climate change scenario with extreme weather events being the regular thing.

Our only chance to tackle climate change is to make massive cuts in global greenhouse gas emissions. The problem is that none of the world's biggest polluters such ac China and United States wants to oblige to major emission cuts because that would apparently be of great damage to their economies.

They are once again forgetting that climate change is not only doing big environmental but also big economic damage that is already measured in billions of dollars. What this means is that stopping climate change from running away with it also means preventing gigantic economic damage.

This predicted economic damage would be a combined result of huge biodiversity loss, reduced crops, damage done by frequent natural disasters such as hurricanes and flooding, etc.

There's a lot of talk about renewable energy these days but lot of talk doesn't also mean lot of action. Yes, it is true that global renewable energy capacity grows rapidly from the mathematical point of view but in real life renewable energy is at least half of decade away from being able to successfully replace fossil fuels as main energy source.

And there's a really huge doubt whether climate change will give us so much time to make the switch to renewables.

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