Mandatory cuts.

2640.

We understand why it is hard for leaders to make specific proposals because specific proposals will mean that somebody somewhere gets less energy than they were getting. The results as we do not have many attempts to specify what we need to do to reach the goal of a 45% reduction in fossil fuel use by 2030. Unfortunately, it is already clear that cutting fossil fuel use by 55% by 2030 is not gonna come close to solving our climate problems, so much worse are they than we imagined even a year ago. But it's a place to start. So here is the proposal:

We simply cut fossil fuel use by 10% per year two 2030. How to do it? It means that organizations distributing fossil fuels must cut delivery to the next level down 10% less this year than last. I realize that starting this late in 2022 is going to be a shock but it is what we need, going bigger, even bigger than Roosevelt's  New Deal* but based on the same kind of strict regulation. This means a major effort at rationing through metering. This will force everyone to restructure their energy life. Painful. Scary. We did it at a smaller scale for WW2.

Cut in fossil fuel use from the year

2022  5%
2023   5%
2024   5%
2025   5%
2026   5%
2027   5%
2028  5%
2029  5%

Results in approx.  overall cuts from 2022 (the technocrats can make this an elegant display of data.)

2022  5%
2023   12 %
2024   18%
2025   25%%
2026   32%
2027   40 %
2028  48%
2029  55 %

of fossil fuel use in 2022, leaving 45 % of the 2022 use. Since everyone will try to get by, cutting this residual 45% will be the hardest.(assuming society remains as it is. No great disrupters. No war, no scaleable inventions.)

It is clear that this level of reduction is not adequate because the amount of CO2  that was in the air already in 2022 (measured in billions of tons) will continue to raise temperatures and climate turbulence.

We also must be working on many other issues, soil, ocean, species loss, and governance simultaneously.

But it is a start on actual steps that must be taken. Go big *.

• Stimulated by Brad DeLong's Slouching Toward Utopia