Want to Stop Global Warming?
Stop Coal.
SANTA FE (September 28, 2007) – Today, at the conclusion of Climate Week, Architecture 2030 delivered the ‘silver bullet’ for solving the global warming crisis in a full-page ad in The New York Times. According to Edward Mazria, founder of Architecture 2030, the only way to stop global warming is to stop coal.
• We must stop burning coal or we don’t make it.
• Coal is the only fossil fuel that can push the planet to dangerous climate change, resulting in irreversible glacial melt and sea level rise.
• We can meet our energy needs without coal.
• The Department of Labor and Social Security Administration have paid out $42.3 billion for the Black Lung Program.
With global reserves of oil and natural gas being depleted and their prices increasing, coal is the only fossil fuel plentiful and supposedly cheap enough to push the planet to 450 parts per million (ppm) CO2 in the atmosphere. Although many believe that coal is necessary to meet our increasing energy needs, Mazria asserts that these needs can be met without coal.
At 450 ppm atmospheric CO2, scientists project dangerous climate change with potentially irreversible glacial melt and sea level rise. We are currently at 385 ppm, and are increasing atmospheric concentrations of CO2 at approximately 2 ppm annually. At this growth rate, we will reach 450 ppm in 2035.
Architecture 2030 is calling for an immediate moratorium on the 151 coal-fired power plants now under development in the US, and the phasing out of the more than 600 US coal plants currently in operation. This puts an immediate cap on coal plant emissions while allowing enough time to retrain coal workers for healthier jobs.
“Coal is not cheap,” Mazria emphasizes. The Department of Labor and Social Security Administration, for example, have made $42.3 billion in Black Lung Program payouts since 1971. This figure does not take into account administrative costs, other black lung programs, health and environmental costs or the billions in government funding provided to the coal industry.
Seventy-six percent of all electrical energy produced at coal plants is consumed by the Building Sector. The 2030 Challenge, officially launched by Architecture 2030 in January 2006, is a global initiative to reduce building energy use of new and renovated buildings by a minimum of 50%, which negates the need for new coal plants. “Renovating to 50% allows you to build new buildings at 50%, flattening out the sector’s CO2 emissions curve,” says Mazria. By reducing the energy use of new buildings an additional 10% every five years until 2030, and by using renewable energy, we ultimately negate the need for existing coal plants.
In the ad, Architecture 2030 also debunks the belief that reducing Energy Intensity (energy consumption per GDP) by 1% will have an effect on CO2 emissions and global warming. The US has reduced its Energy Intensity by 1.5% on average every year since 1980 while increasing its CO2 emissions by approx. 40%.
“By placing a moratorium on coal, we avert the worst consequences of climate change. If we begin now, we make it,” says Mazria. “If we wait, even for a few years, this window of opportunity is lost.”
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Reduced greenhouse gas emissions required to avoid dangerous increases in heat stress
A study led by a Purdue University researcher projects a 200 percent to 500 percent increase in the number of dangerously hot days in the Mediterranean by the end of the 21st century if the current rate of greenhouse gas emissions continues. The study found France would be subjected to the largest projected increase of high-temperature extremes.
The study also showed a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions could reduce the intensification of dangerously hot days projected in the scenario by up to 50 percent.
"Rare events today, like the 2003 heat wave in Europe, will become much more common as greenhouse gas concentrations increase," said Noah Diffenbaugh, the Purdue assistant professor of earth and atmospheric sciences who led the study. "The frequency at which that scale of event occurs at high greenhouse gas concentrations is staggering. Rare events become the norm, and the extreme events of the future are unprecedented in their severity." |
