Thread: Climategate
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Old 12-21-2009, 08:43 AM   #459
Pastiche
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Western world (OECD) is about to slit its economic throat and bleeding heart liberals are standing up and cheering. The Great White Liberal Guilt strikes again.
I hate this kind of simplistic thinking. I work as an economist and I couldn't disagree with you more. Yes relatively to a business as usual scenario output wont be as high under a carbon constrained economy in the short and medium term. But the difference is between one and two percentage points in growth each year, it is not disastrous.

Factor in our reliance on natural capital for both wealth and welfare and there are very strong economic arguments to address climage change in a thoughtful and methodical manner. Does that mean stopping all emissions and growth immediately? No. It means making carbon intensive production expensive and engineering an economic restructuring. We have done that before. For example, there were loud arguments against abolishing slavery because of our economic growth. Dealing with climate change is not necessarily a moral issue like slavery, infact it's much more important.

In my mind your type of opinion is blind and dangerous. It's this idea that economic growth trumps all considerations in policy debates. Sure growth is important, but so are our natural life support systems like biodiversity.
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