Also good news!

In my last post, I described a new discovery that will use sunlight to provide all the biofuel we'll need for air and sea travel, both of which aren't really amenable to solar panels as a source of power.  In this post I want to report the very significant progress in the development of batteries which will make electrical vehicles (EV's) practical.  As the diagram below shows this has resulted in exponential increase in EV's.

Electric Vehicles Are The Comeback Story Of The Century

What makes the EV story particularly miraculous is that electric cars were first invented in the 1830s. The first rechargeable batteries date to 1859. By the 1890s, EVs were outselling gasoline cars ten to one, and by the turn of the century, there were almost twice as many EVs on the road as gasoline cars.

Yet by the 1910s, nearly all electric car makers halted production. They were driven out by Henry Ford’s motorized mass production techniques, the discovery of vast amounts of oil, improved roads (which allowed the longer travel that EVs weren’t suited for), and advances in gas-powered cars like the electric starter.

And yet a century later, advanced battery costs are plummeting, electric vehicle sales are soaring, and EVs’ continued exponential success is all but certain thanks to steadily improving technology and government policies worldwide driven by humanity’s existential need to decarbonize the transportation sector ASAP. And it’s not just electric cars that have hit their inflection point, but electrified vehicles of all sizes, including buses.

Next we will need the carbon tax to make electricity generated by solar energy compete with oil and coal.

And we will need to work on an even greater source of GHG's:

• Agriculture. Domestic livestock such as cattle, buffalo, sheep, goats, and camels produce large amounts of CH4 as part of their normal digestive process. Also, when animals' manure is stored or managed in lagoons or holding tanks, CH4 is produced. Because humans raise these animals for food, the emissions are considered human-related. Globally, the Agriculture sector is the primary source of CH4 emissions. For more information, see the Inventory of U.S. Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Sinks Agriculture chapter.

If we want an inhabitable world, we will need biofuels, electric cars, and to stop eating beef.