Quote:
Originally Posted by Tinordi
Environmental consequences. Most new and cogent studies looking at the economic cost are agreeing that over the long-term of transitioning to clean energy will have lower net costs. It's a pretty standard finding that low-carbon development pathways are cheaper, especially with high energy efficiency deployment and the massive reduction in renewable costs.
Initially the costs appear high because the transition means that actual people, such as folks in Calgary working in oil and gas lose their jobs. For loss averse people, which we all are, those costs are highly multiplied. But if you look at costs over the coming 3 decades low carbon does appear to be cheaper and economic growth assumptions rosier. It's just the initial shocks, which are not trivial, that are the prisms by which people perceive.
Edit: But one finding is abundantly clear, not doing anything about climate, even with high initial costs, will bring very high costs in the coming decades/generations. That's my point, we have known systemic issues such as demographics, and unknown systemic issues that are potentially even worse like climate change that are going to put immense strain on public budgets. We need new paradigms to begin to address them. But there will be blood, no matter what.
|
It's patently ridiculous to believe that there are any costs associated with Alberta being a couple degrees warmer. In fact, we will probably be better off economically in a warmer climate. These "costs" you propose are imaginary. Otherwise anywhere with a climate 2 degrees warmer than Alberta would be suffering. They are not.