Decarbonisation by 2040, where a country is run by 100% renewable energy, is a target for energy systems. If achieved by 2030, then so much the better.
It’s possible for energy to get to net zero without additional costs in the overall system, if done properly with good regulation and lots of large-scale long-duration storage. This will enable other sectors (e.g. cement, chemicals, plastics) which can’t decarbonise as cheaply or as “easily” to continue to emit some greenhouse gases while the economy as a whole meets its climate change target of decarbonisation by 2040.
And we need to hit our climate change targets to stop man-made climate change. Yes, the planet has warmed before by more, but never as fast – in a couple of hundred years this time round, compared to millions of years the previous times. And each previous time has been accompanied by mass extinctions worldwide. We’re currently at the start of a mass extinction event, and I really don’t want it to pick up speed while I am around.
Moreover, we think it is primarily economic aspiration that drives migration. In large part this is true, but environmental insecurity plays a significant role. A lot of migration from the Middle East and the Sahel Belt we can put down to encroaching deserts, which are driving up warfare, food scarcity and other instability. There are forecasts (admittedly, these are high-end projections long into the future) that, by 2100, up to three quarters of a billion people will suffer displacement by growing deserts and another quarter of a billion due to rising sea levels. That’s enough to overwhelm any country’s or continent’s border controls.
And that ignores those displaced by the increasing frequency of extreme climate events in America and world-wide. Increased migration accompanies a huge reduction in farmland in some areas (with some compensation elsewhere), hence in food, for the entire world. Even if the numbers are too high by a factor of 2 or 4, I really don’t want to risk that for my own selfish reasons, let alone in consideration of the humanitarian tragedies that this would entail world-wide.
