Part Four / What We’ve Done About It

4.5 The Persistence of Fossil Fuels

All online sources accessed on

  1. smoke … today kills 8.7 million people every year Vohra, K., et al., ‘Global mortality from outdoor fine particle pollution generated by fossil fuel combustion: results from GEOS-Chem’, Environmental Research, 195, 2021: Article 110754, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envres.2021.110754.

  2. each time we double the amount of solar power on the planet Niranjan, A., ‘Falling solar panel prices spell sunny future for clean energy’, Deutsche Welle, 28 May 2020, https://www.dw.com/en/cheap-solar-energy-prices-explained/a-53590607.

    about 1.446 billion vehicles on the world’s roads Hedges & Company, ‘How Many Cars Are There in the World in 2021?’, 24 June 2021, https://hedgescompany.com/blog/2021/06/how-many-cars-are-there-in-the-world/.

    the US, has 282 million cars Carlier, M., ‘U.S. – Number of vehicles in operation’, Statista, 15 December 2021, https://www.statista.com/statistics/859950/vehicles-in-operation-by-quarter-united-states/.

  1. 90 per cent of them will get their first power from renewable sources ‘Renewables will give more people access to electricity than coal, says IEA’, Renewable and Appropriate Energy Laboratory, University of California, Berkeley, 19 October 2017, https://rael.berkeley.edu/2017/10/renewables-will-give-more-people-access-to-electricity-than-coal-says-iea/.