Issue No5: The World Needs to Quickly Stop Using Fossil Fuels….Not So Fast!

Authors Note: to view the charts, read this article on a large screen if possible.

This is my final article in this series about the issues involved in transitioning off fossil fuels. I went into this fully knowing that the shift was going to be very difficult but discovered that I massively underestimated the challenges.

I’m going to summarize key findings that might surprise you and finish by providing you with a view of the future mix of energy sources as we generationally reduce the global role of fossil fuels.

I stated in Issue No1 that the term “climate change” is a silly oxymoron. The earth’s climate is always changing. Since its creation, the earth cycles between hot and cold periods on its own. Who or what is causing it has nothing to with this series.

Americans tend to view fossil fuel issues through our own prism and assume that they’re globally understood the same way. That’s an extremely flawed supposition. Here are few examples:

Coal

As I discussed in Issue No2, American readers would assume the global use of coal to be like the US, where it’s overwhelmingly used in generating electricity and quickly losing market share primarily to natural gas, another fossil fuel. The…