The Economics of Enough_ How to Run the Economy as if the Future Matters - Diane Coyle [28]
THE CLIMATE CHANGE DILEMMA
Some, perhaps most, environmentalists would advocate less, not more, economic output in order to preserve the planet for the future. They rarely make a point of saying so in concrete terms in public, however. “Enough” might not have majority support and “Less” is downright unpopular. It would take a brave politician to run on a platform of shrinking the economy outright for the sake of the environment, including spelling out the consequences this would have for jobs and incomes.
Yet opinion polls suggest that in most countries the majority of people (albeit a declining majority in several cases) accept that the changing global climate due in large part to the buildup of emissions of carbon dioxide and other “greenhouse” gases (GHGs) poses a serious threat to future well-being. The central forecast of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPPC) published in 2007 was for a 0.2 degrees centigrade a decade increase in temperature, with the risks of a bigger rise. The UN’s latest report on climate change forecasts says the chances are increasing that the increase will lie at the upper end of the IPCC’s range of forecasts; and that some events previously expected to occur on a longer-term time horizons are already happening or set to happen far sooner. Recent increases in greenhouse gas concentrations have led scientists to predict a warming of between 1.3 and 4.3 degrees centigrade above preindustrial surface temperatures. This is sufficient for the experts to predict substantial and damaging changes in weather patterns, ecosystems, and water resources. The balance of risks, these experts say, is that the actual temperature change will be even greater.2
These forecasts mean it has become obvious to environmentalists that for growth to become remotely sustainable, big changes in the way we run the economy will be required, and in particular reduced consumption. Although governments’ stated targets for reductions in greenhouse gas emissions most likely will not be met, there has been a widespread shift toward policies recognizing environmental imperatives. To give just a few examples: in 1989 a landmark international treaty, the Montreal Protocol, successfully agreed to phase out chlorofluorocarbons, important greenhouse gases; the use of unleaded gasoline and/or diesel fuels has become almost universal; the EU announced in 2009 that it is phasing out incandescent light bulbs in member countries; power stations around much of the world have been subject to increasingly tough emissions targets or financial incentives for lower-carbon energy generation, including renewables.
The full list of policies would be a long one. But even among the majority of people who accept that the challenge exists and is urgent, the question of how to respond effectively, and by how much, is still controversial. The reason is that, at least according to environmental experts, much bigger changes in behavior in the future are going to be needed to limit the rise in global temperatures enough to have a hope of averting catastrophic changes in the climate and weather patterns. The steps taken so far are inadequate from this perspective. “We . . . find it hard to imagine making the massive changes that are now necessary to solve the crisis,” former vice president Al Gore said in his Nobel Prize acceptance speech. “We must quickly mobilize our civilization with the