A Bonus For Halting Climate Change?

Long-time Environmentalist, Bill McKibben (Middlebury College) has reiterated the urgent need for the world to switch to renewables. Petrochemical emissions of 'greenhouse gases' are major drivers of damaging climate change. These emissions also produce 9 million deaths each year as a consequence of their detrimental effects on air quality/human health. With the invasion of the Ukraine, McKibben has now added the further imperative of stopping 'autocrats, dictators and thugs' (https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/feb/25/this-is-how-we-defeat-putin-and-other-petrostate-autocrats). McKibben points out that solar and windpower are currently the cheapest means of producing energy. Renewables are also available world-wide rather than being under the control of petrochemical companies and their state masters. Technology can move fast. McKibben notes that, in 1941, Ypsilanti, the world's largest industrial plant, was completed in only 6 months. Soon after, it was producing a B-24 bomber an hour. As McKibben says, a B-24 bomber is a much more complex product than a wind turbine. He admits that a transition to renewables is dependent on materials (like Nickel) for that process. He reminds people, however, that alternatives for 'essentials' were rapidly found by scientists in the Second World War. In deed, McKibben seems quite optimistic that the latest developments will be a further impetus for European and US energy generation to 'go green'. One has to say, however, that much of the political talk has been about the need to keep oil and gas flowing, as well as living costs down. Major change is clearly going to be resisted, tooth and nail, by petrochemical companies; an array of politicians; politically-appointed judges and sections of the media. It's certainly not certain that the necessary change will happen!