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Trees and land absorbed almost no CO2 last year. Is nature’s carbon sink failing?
(www.theguardian.com)
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this post was submitted on 14 Oct 2024
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Government funding can answer all those questions if the will is there. The free market will not fix climate change without heavy intervention.
As per your example, there is nothing physically preventing a battery powered tractor or combine. A government could put out subsidies for manufacturers building these vehicles, the government could then subsidise farmers buying them, and perhaps remove existing subsidy on farmers refusing to decommission their older equipment.
The literal only things where there's not a money related solution to today is long range air travel, and some very specific industrial processes that require specific plastic polymers. Literally everything else has an alternative that can be either used immediately or built relatively quickly, if we decide to spend the money.
The amount of lithium batteries that would required with our current tech is just staggering. The ingredients of a lithium battery are not smiles and sunshine and giggles.
The energy required, despite the quantity of lithium (which wouldn't be available anyway) would just surge carbon output to later reduce it decades later. We can't capitalism our way out by making more things. Stopping making everything would actually help more, but would implode the planet's societies. Throttling energy use by AI and other expensive processes would do more, now. Pushing the use of public infrastructure, even busses, would do more now. Getting people to stop using cars would do more now. Forcing employers to require jobs that don't need a physical presence to all be work from home would do more now.