In my recent conversation with an energy industry spokesperson she stated the following and asked a question: 

The world is energy-hungry and right now much of the energy we consume comes from fossil fuels. So if we could separate fossil fuels from the emissions issue, wouldn’t that be a desirable outcome?”

My response was “Absolutely but how can we separate the two?”

This is a tough question to solve because the primary source of global-warming emissions is human activity that generates greenhouse gasses (GHGs). It’s these GHGs that is our problem and the principal purpose of government climate policies to date has been to try to stop adding them to the atmosphere. At the same time, the global economy that provides jobs, food, shelter and other primary needs craves the energy that comes from the fossil fuels that produce the GHGs. So separating the two isn’t easy. And doing so is something we have never considered until global warming became a thing in the late 20th century. Up until then, our progress was measured by the continuous rise in the gross domestic product (GDP), a monetary measure of human economic success. In the face of the worst outcomes that our planet is currently and in future will deliver, a rethinking of how we measure success is long overdue.