Destroying Coal Plants is the Only Way to Solve the Climate Crisis
I recently posted on a Harvard panel that tried to lay out strategies for acting in time on climate change. Well, just down the road at MIT, graduate student Michael Hogan’s research has that even those measures already being taken will prove ineffective, or, worse, counterproductive to combating global warming. Now, to be sure, Hogan isn’t some 25 year old kid, he’s a 28-year veteran of the energy industry, who has started and run several energy companies. And Hogan says the country’s climate problems start and end with coal plants, which account for 80 percent of carbon dioxide produced from electricity generation, and nearly a third of overall emissions. Because funds are being poured into already developed technologies, like land-based wind power, which is unlikely to displace coal as a major power supplier, less money is available to research potential game-changers like solar thermal and off-shore wind. Additionally, Hogan says that no particular model will solve the whole problem, and the only way to reduce our need for coal power is to embrace a cocktail solution, deploying the new technologies each when and where they will be most useful and efficient. “We have to bet on all the horses,” Hogan says. Watch Jim Moriarty talk about the relationship between development and environmentalism, and the impact of economic incentives to going green.
