Environment & Energy
Related: About this forumKrugman: cost of CC mitigation is "trivial"
Joe Romm draws our attention to the third slice of the latest IPCC report on climate change, on the costs of mitigation; the panel finds that these costs arent that big a few percent of GDP even by the end of the century, which means only a trivial hit to the growth rate.
At one level this shouldnt be considered news. It has been apparent for quite a while that given the right incentives we could maintain economic growth even while greatly reducing greenhouse gas emissions. But there is, in fact, some news that greatly strengthens the case that saving the planet would be quite cheap.
First, a word about the general principle here. Actually, for once I get to play balanced journalist, and bash both left and right. For there are some people on the left who keep insisting that economic growth is incompatible with reduced emissions, and that therefore we have to turn our backs on growth. Such people have no power, and therefore dont do any real harm. Still, its worth pointing out that they have a much too narrow notion of what it means to have a growing economy. It doesnt necessarily mean more stuff! It could be better stuff, or more services and there are also choices to be made in how we produce and distribute stuff. There is absolutely no reason to believe in a one-for-one link between real GDP and greenhouse gases.
As a practical matter, the fallacies of the right are much more important indeed, they may destroy civilization. Whats notable about right-wing commentary on the economics of emission reduction is how people on that side suddenly seem to change their views about the effectiveness of markets. Normally they extol the magic of the marketplace, which can brush aside all limits; but somehow they simultaneously believe that markets would be totally unable to cope with a carbon tax or a cap-and-trade system. Scarce resources are no problem; limited rights to pollute are catastrophic. Its not hard to see the ulterior motives here, but its still peculiar.
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/
MannyGoldstein
(34,589 posts)Enough Firebagger claptrap from that one.
Demeter
(85,373 posts)and I know he's not a scientist...
Those are the kinds of things that eat your lunch, and dinner.
pscot
(21,024 posts)things that are going to eat our civilization. We're in the position of the guy suddenly confronted by a robber who waves a gun and shouts, "your money or your life". We don't have a lot of time to think over the proposition.
Demeter
(85,373 posts)I have no problem with going as green as is humanly possible, even at a cost to the 1%'s hoards. It's an unadulterated good: good policy, good economics, good public health and safety, good everything. Not going green will definitely eat our civilization, long before the climate does.
I am referring to the fact that the science of climate is still not well-defined, and there may be unknown actors and agents in the world's climate system that
a) make mitigation unnecessary
b) make mitigation impossible
c) completely obscure cause and effect
And I say the science is not well defined because it cannot create an experiment, let alone a repeatable and verifiable experiment. The data that they are working with is anything but complete, as well, so they could be jumping to premature or totally off-track conclusions.
Archeology and climate science have a lot in common...they use as scientific a method as possible to collect their information, but they are history, not science.
The2ndWheel
(7,947 posts)Won't be cheap getting out.