Quote:
Originally Posted by Pastiche
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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Western, first world countries, generally, are the most efficient users of energy and, generally, the most stringent in terms of environmental regulatory requirements placed on industry, all occurring while they typically have the highest labour costs.
The least efficient users of energy, the countries with the cheapest labour costs by far and the countries with the least regard for environmental considerations, tend to be emerging economies like India and China.
So, really, the plan here seems to be to reward the biggest polluters with the cheapest cost structures while penalizing the most efficient economies operating with the most stringent environmental regulatory structures but narrowest profit margins.
It's just never going to work on that basis.
No one should be surprised when you have a moment like Copenhagen, where mutual interests are hard to find and compromise yields only a weak, pointless memorandum.
China is now the largest CO2 emmiter on the planet but apparently unwilling to bear the responsibility that record demands.
Unless countries like China and India, in using their natural advantage of cheap labour as a margin buffer, are willing to do their part, then this whole exercise is rather pointless.
Another thing that strikes me . . . . . back in the 60's and 70's, the Thames was essentially dead and the Cuyahoga River running through Cleveland caught fire, among a horde of environmental disasters, massive air pollution was hovering over major cities, etc, etc . . . . .
http://www.ohiohistorycentral.org/entry.php?rec=1642
Those kinds of things spawned a host of environmental regulations in first world countries as the public finally said enough was enough and began electing politicians willing to do something about it.
Meanwhile, the recent picture below shows Shanghai at mid-day and rivers throughout Asia are dying. A big black cloud of air pollution, deadly in scope, swathed Asia just a few years ago for something like three weeks.
It just seems these countries are going to be catching up to the first world in more ways than one, not just in industrial base but also in the human costs associated with it.
As such, we may need to wait for those Cuyahoga River moments in China or India before anything can be done on a global basis.
Cowperson