Climate, changed
“In the many instances when I mentioned to friends or other journalists that I was writing an edition of this newsletter on climate change, I often got a quizzical response: In view of the overwhelming scientific consensus on the issue, what more was there really left to debate?
Quite a lot, as it turned out. For starters: Is it even politically and technologically possible for the United States to meet the Paris Agreement’s goal of zeroing out greenhouse gas emissions by 2050? And given that the United States has done more than any other country to contribute to climate change, what does it owe the rest of the world?
The challenge of decarbonization also raises profound questions about how our economic system may need to change in the coming years, in ways both large and small. Is Americans’ love of cars — even if they are replaced with electric ones — and gas stoves sustainable? To expedite the renewable energy transition, would a carbon tax suffice, or do we need a more sweeping industrial policy like the Green New Deal? On a planet with finite resources, might rich countries even need to shrink their economies?
As the costs of climate change mount — and they will, for the next few decades at least, no matter what we do now — attention is turning toward the urgency and limits of adapting to a hotter planet. Should humanity start to approach those limits, it will go looking with increasing desperation for technological solutions to the crisis, each of which courts factions of boosters and detractors: lab-grown meat, old-fashioned nuclear fission, nascent nuclear fusion — even turning the sky white.”
Bravo. Spencer Bokat-Lindell. Keep it up. You wrote: “The challenge of decarbonization also raises profound questions about how our economic system may need to change in the coming years, in ways both large and small. Is Americans’ love of cars — even if they are replaced with electric ones — and gas stoves sustainable? To expedite the renewable energy transition, would a carbon tax suffice, or do we need a more sweeping industrial policy like the Green New Deal? On a planet with finite resources, might rich countries even need to shrink their economies?” That last sentence might be key the the survival of homo sapiens and millions of other innocent species we are destroying with our now 8 billion humans. So there is plenty to work on. It is amazing how few economists grasp that GNP is no longer the right metric. Quality of life is closer to the right issue to measure. I recommend to you, “The Hidden Connections, A Sciencer for Sustainable Living” by Fritjof Capra, and the work of the sustainable economist, Herman Daly, the author of “No Growth Economics” David blogs at InconvenientNews.net
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