A promise to end all promises

Here we have seven politicians sitting down for their annual discussion, and coming up with the usual vague, and often meaningless, declarations about security, terrorism, economies, etc. Now this decarbonization pledge. Let’s be honest with ourselves, who believes very much of what a politician says, anyway? Now we are supposed to believe a promise to be kept 85 years hence. Some environmentalists may claim victory in this G7 decarbonization pledge, but they should be prepared to hold their breaths for the next 85 years and see how things work out. In my jaundiced view, this may be the political promise to end all political promises.

Who is going to know if eliminating fossil fuels by 2100 is successful or not, considering most people alive today won’t be around in the year 2100? Only clever politicians would promise something that they won’t even live to see. A lot can happen in 85 years, but the whole world would have to change, and the entire world economy would have to change with it. Realistic? Ask the government in 85 years.

Absolutely, the pledge is realistic. By 2100, Western civilization will have completely collapsed and therefore there will be zero emissions — unless you count wood smoke from open campfires. Seriously, this is a ludicrous claim. No one can possibly know what life will be like 85 years from now. This is like someone in 1930 predicting life in 2015. Maybe we will be living in caves or maybe we’ll have 100 million people living on Mars. This is a waste of time. Why even bother?

Technology obeys an exponential law: the more you have, the faster it changes. (Could anyone have predicted the effect of the Internet on our lives a mere 25 years ago?) Since the question of whether we shall still be using fossil fuels in 2100 is essentially a matter of technology, the mere assumption that we can make such predictions 85 years into the future is absurdly presumptuous. I would hesitate to make such predictions even five years into the future.

I think that full decarbonization by the end of this century is very possible. A technology is emerging which will make this goal achievable: Low Energy Nuclear Reactions (LENR). Italian/American engineer Andrea Rossi is developing the Energy Catalyzer (E-Cat), which produces abundant amounts of heat from common elements (nickel, hydrogen, lithium) without any kind of pollution or carbon emissions (no combustion is involved), or dangerous radiation or radioactive waste. Rossi’s technology has been verified by thirdparty testers and has so far been replicated by Russian and Chinese physicists. Within 12 months I expect we’ll see the commercial rollout.