Muhammad Nauval Ar Rauf

16022279

Forget geoengineering. We need to stop burning fossil fuels. Right now

by Rebecca Solnit

Pie-in-the-sky fantasies of carbon capture and geoengineering are a way for decision-
makers to delay taking real action. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)
reports, one of which dropped this week, are formidably researched and profoundly important,
but they mostly reinforce what we already know: human-produced greenhouse gases are
rapidly and disastrously changing the planet, and unless we rapidly taper off burning fossil
fuels, a dire future awaits.

The message is far from hopeless – “Mainstreaming effective and equitable climate
action will not only reduce losses and damages for nature and people, it will also provide wider
benefits,” said the IPCC chair, Hoesung Lee, in the press release. “This Synthesis Report
underscores the urgency of taking more ambitious action and shows that, if we act now, we can
still secure a liveable sustainable future for all.”

Fossil fuels kill more people than Covid. Why are we so blind to the harms of oil and
gas? But “act now” means taking dramatic measures to change how we do most things,
especially produce energy. The people who should be treating this like the colossal emergency
it is keep finding ways to delay and dilute a meaningful response. Fossil fuel is hugely
profitable to some of the most powerful individuals and institutions on Earth, and they
influence and even control a lot of other people.

To say that is grim, but there’s also a kind of comedy in the ways they keep trying to
come up with rationales to not do the one key thing that climate organizers, policy experts,
activists and scientists have long told them they must do: stop funding fossil fuels, stop their
extraction, stop their burning and speed the transition away from their use.

As perhaps the most powerful person to swim against their tide, the United Nations
secretary general, António Guterres, said yesterday, we must move toward “net-zero electricity
generation by 2035 for all developed economies and 2040 for the rest of the world” and
establish “a global phase-down of existing oil and gas production compatible with the 2050
global net-zero target”. All the other actions that help the climate – including protecting forests
and wild lands, rethinking farming, food, transportation and urban design – matter, but there is
no substitute or workaround for exiting the age of fossil fuel.

The IPCC tells us that “[e]very increment of global warming will intensify multiple and
concurrent hazards. Deep, rapid, and sustained reductions in greenhouse gas emissions would
lead to a discernible slowdown in global warming within about two decades, and also to
discernible changes in atmospheric composition within a few years.” Later in the report, the
scientists declare, “Projected CO2 emissions from existing fossil fuel infrastructure without
additional abatement would exceed the remaining carbon budget for 1.5C.” That translates to:
what we’re already extracting and using is already too much to keep to the temperature
threshold set in Paris.

As climate communicator Ketan Joshi put it on Twitter, “People who make decisions
about the pace of climate action and fossil fuel reliance are not behaving like they’re pulling
the lever on the next few thousand years of Earth.”

They come up with endlessly creative ways to continue extracting and using fossil fuel.
One of their favorites is to make commitments that can be punted off to the future, which is
why one recent climate slogan is “delay is the new denial”. Another is to pretend that they are
somehow still looking for a good solution and once they find it they will be very happy to use
it. A holy grail, a hail Mary pass, a magic bullet, a miracle cure – or just a distracting tennis
ball that too many journalists, like golden retrievers, are happy to chase.

That was clear when Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory announced its nuclear-
weapons-related fusion breakthrough last winter, which the Bulletin of the Atomic Physicists
noted had “at best, a distant and tangential connection to power production”. But many news
stories latched on to it as if we were waiting for some miraculous solution when the solutions
already exist and just need to be scaled up. It was as if they were selling us a dream of a lifeboat
eventually reaching our shipwreck when viable lifeboats are all around us.

Dr Jonathan Foley, who heads Project Drawdown, joked that “fusion is here now. Look
up in the sky.” The sun gives us far more energy than we can ever possibly use, now that solar
panels let us convert some of that to electricity.
 Among the worst of the excuses for not doing the one thing we must do is carbon
capture, which has absolutely not worked at any scale that means anything and shows no sign
of so doing on a meaningful scale in the near future. But while it is dangled as a possibility, it
creates a justification to keep burning fossil fuel. So does geoengineering, which along with
posing many kinds of disruptions is a way to compensate for continued emissions from burning
things rather than stop burning them. These centralized hi-tech solutions seem to appeal to
technocrats and beneficiaries of large corporations and centralized power, who perhaps don’t
like or don’t comprehend the decentralization of power coming from sun and wind.

The decision-makers here often seem like a patient who, when told by a doctor to stop
doing something (smoking, say, or maybe mainlining drain cleaner), tries to bargain. All the
vitamins and wheatgrass juice on Earth won’t make toxic waste into something nontoxic, and
all these excuses and delays and workarounds and nonexistent solutions don’t replace what the
IPCC tells us: stop burning fossil fuel.

Move fast. Step it up. Now. Which brings us back to something that climate organizers
have told us for a long time and the new report brings home. We know what to do, and we have
the solutions we need to do it, so the biggest problems are political. They’re banks, politicians,
financiers and the fossil fuel industry itself. We don’t need any magic technology to defeat
them, just massive civil society willpower set in motion.

Argument Analysis
1. Introduction
a. Hook
Pie-in-the-sky fantasies of carbon capture and geoengineering are a way for
decision-makers to delay taking real action.
b. Bridging
“The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports, one of which
dropped this week, are formidably researched and profoundly important, but they
mostly reinforce what we already know…” → Invoking Authority
c. Thesis Statement/Claim
“…human-produced greenhouse gases are rapidly and disastrously changing the
planet, and unless we rapidly taper off burning fossil fuels, a dire future awaits.”
2. Body
Paragraph 1
a. Argument 1 (Topic Sentence)
The message is far from hopeless. (refers to the introduction paragraph)
b. Supporting Sentences/Backing
“Mainstreaming effective and equitable climate action will not only reduce losses
and damages for nature and people, it will also provide wider benefits,” said the
IPCC chair, Hoesung Lee, in the press release. → Invoking Authority
c. Concluding Sentences
“This Synthesis Report underscores the urgency of taking more ambitious action
and shows that, if we act now, we can still secure a liveable sustainable future for
all.”

Paragraph 2
a. Argument 2
Fossil fuels kill more people than Covid.
b. Supporting Sentences/Backing
Why are we so blind to the harms of oil and gas? But “act now” means taking
dramatic measures to change how we do most things, especially produce energy.
The people who should be treating this like the colossal emergency it is keep finding
ways to delay and dilute a meaningful response.
c. Concluding Sentences
Fossil fuel is hugely profitable to some of the most powerful individuals and
institutions on Earth, and they influence and even control a lot of other people.

Paragraph 3
a. Argument 3
To say that is grim, but there’s also a kind of comedy in the ways they keep trying
to come up with rationales to not do the one key thing that climate organizers, policy
experts, activists and scientists have long told them they must do: stop funding fossil
fuels, stop their extraction, stop their burning and speed the transition away from
their use.
b. Supporting Sentences/Backing
 “…one key thing that climate organizers, policy experts, activists and scientists
have long told them they must do: stop funding fossil fuels, stop their extraction,
stop their burning and speed the transition away from their use.” → Invoking
Authority
c. Concluding Sentences
-

Paragraph 4
a. Argument 4
As perhaps the most powerful person to swim against their tide, the United Nations
secretary general, António Guterres, said yesterday, we must move toward “net-
zero electricity generation by 2035 for all developed economies and 2040 for the
rest of the world” and establish “a global phase-down of existing oil and gas
production compatible with the 2050 global net-zero target”.
b. Supporting Sentences/Backing
“…the United Nations secretary general, António Guterres, said yesterday, we must
move toward “net-zero electricity generation by 2035 for all developed economies
and 2040 for the rest of the world” and establish “a global phase-down of existing
oil and gas production compatible with the 2050 global net-zero target”. →
Invoking Authority
c. Concluding Sentences
All the other actions that help the climate – including protecting forests and wild
lands, rethinking farming, food, transportation and urban design – matter, but there
is no substitute or workaround for exiting the age of fossil fuel.

Paragraph 5
a. Argument 5
The IPCC tells us that “[e]very increment of global warming will intensify multiple
and concurrent hazards. Deep, rapid, and sustained reductions in greenhouse gas
emissions would lead to a discernible slowdown in global warming within about
two decades, and also to discernible changes in atmospheric composition within a
few years.”
b. Supporting Sentences/Backing
 Later in the report, the scientists declare, “Projected CO2 emissions from existing
fossil fuel infrastructure without additional abatement would exceed the remaining
carbon budget for 1.5C.” → Asserting Fact, Invoking Authority
c. Concluding Sentences
That translates to: what we’re already extracting and using is already too much to
keep to the temperature threshold set in Paris.

Paragraph 6
a. Argument 6
Climate communicator Ketan Joshi put it on Twitter.
b. Supporting Sentences/Backing
“People who make decisions about the pace of climate action and fossil fuel reliance
are not behaving like they’re pulling the lever on the next few thousand years of
Earth.” → Invoking Authority
c. Concluding Sentences
-

Paragraph 7
a. Argument 7
They come up with endlessly creative ways to continue extracting and using fossil
fuel.
b. Supporting Sentences/Backing
One of their favorites is to make commitments that can be punted off to the future,
which is why one recent climate slogan is “delay is the new denial”. Another is to
pretend that they are somehow still looking for a good solution and once they find
it they will be very happy to use it. → Arguing by Example
c. Concluding Sentences
A holy grail, a hail Mary pass, a magic bullet, a miracle cure – or just a distracting
tennis ball that too many journalists, like golden retrievers, are happy to chase.

Paragraph 8
a. Argument 8
That was clear when Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory announced its
nuclear-weapons-related fusion breakthrough last winter, which the Bulletin of the
 Atomic Physicists noted had “at best, a distant and tangential connection to power
production”. → Counter Argument
b. Supporting Sentences/Backing
But many news stories latched on to it as if we were waiting for some miraculous
solution when the solutions already exist and just need to be scaled up. →
Refutation
c. Concluding Sentences
It was as if they were selling us a dream of a lifeboat eventually reaching our
shipwreck when viable lifeboats are all around us. → Use of Analogy

Paragraph 9
a. Argument 9
Dr Jonathan Foley, who heads Project Drawdown joked about fusion.
b. Supporting Sentences/Backing
“Fusion is here now. Look up in the sky.”.
c. Concluding Sentences
The sun gives us far more energy than we can ever possibly use, now that solar
panels let us convert some of that to electricity.

Paragraph 10
a. Argument 10
Among the worst of the excuses for not doing the one thing we must do is carbon
capture, which has absolutely not worked at any scale that means anything and
shows no sign of so doing on a meaningful scale in the near future. → Counter
Argument, Arguing by Example
b. Supporting Sentences/Backing
But while it is dangled as a possibility, it creates a justification to keep burning
fossil fuel. So does geoengineering, which along with posing many kinds of
disruptions is a way to compensate for continued emissions from burning things
rather than stop burning them. → Refutation
c. Concluding Sentences
These centralized hi-tech solutions seem to appeal to technocrats and beneficiaries
of large corporations and centralized power, who perhaps don’t like or don’t
comprehend the decentralization of power coming from sun and wind.
 Paragraph 11
a. Argument 11
The decision-makers here often seem like a patient who, when told by a doctor to
stop doing something (smoking, say, or maybe mainlining drain cleaner), tries to
bargain. → Use of Analogy
b. Supporting Sentences/Backing
All the vitamins and wheatgrass juice on Earth won’t make toxic waste into
something nontoxic, and all these excuses and delays and workarounds and
nonexistent solutions don’t replace what the IPCC tells us: stop burning fossil fuel.
→ Arguing by Analogy
c. Concluding Sentences
“…and all these excuses and delays and workarounds and nonexistent solutions
don’t replace what the IPCC tells us: stop burning fossil fuel.”

3. Conclusion
Move fast. Step it up. Now. Which brings us back to something that climate
organizers have told us for a long time and the new report brings home. We know what
to do, and we have the solutions we need to do it, so the biggest problems are political.
They’re banks, politicians, financiers and the fossil fuel industry itself. We don’t need
any magic technology to defeat them, just massive civil society willpower set in motion.

It can be concluded that the author uses invoking authority as the type of
backing the most in their text, where it can be seen that the author quotes and cites many
statements from verified institution and credible people as the majority of the
supporting statements used in their argumentative text.
Summary

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) recently released a report

stating that human-produced greenhouse gases are rapidly changing the planet, and unless
fossil fuel burning is reduced, a dire future awaits. The report highlights the need for taking
dramatic measures to change how we produce energy and move towards net-zero electricity
generation. However, the fossil fuel industry keeps finding ways to delay and dilute a
meaningful response. Excuses like carbon capture and geoengineering create a justification to
keep burning fossil fuel, and there is no substitute or workaround for exiting the age of fossil
fuel. The biggest problems are political, and civil society willpower needs to be set in motion
to defeat them.