Unfortunately although Stern's figure looks spectacular it won't actually mean anybody having to amend their behaviour. This 20% drop will take place between now and, say, 2080. This gives 74 years of approx 3% growth (222%) for it to be lost in. All that will happen is that the western democracy style economies will keep their interest rates a little lower to stimulate economic growth.
There is plenty of carbon we have not yet started to dig up and burn in the form of the tar sands in Canada and the USA and god knows what buried under Siberia so fossil fuels won't go away, they will just get more expensive.
What Stern or his equivalent needs to concentrate on is the prospect of countries like Bangladesh disappearing. As in completely gone and over 100M people looking for somewhere to live. This will happen if they melt all the ice sheets (which is unlikely in the next 70 years) and will happen to some extent if the Greenland ice sheet melts (which is looking increasingly likely). And if you displace 100 million people in that region of the world then there will be real economic effects, not just a few 10ths of a percent per year off world GDP growth.
Of course, what would really help is not having to get planning permission to attach a windmill to your house and having some of the gigantic fossil fuel tax take getting recycled into subsidising solar panels on business and private properties. But there lies another discussion...
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
timeasmymeasure
What a 20% drop actually means
Date: 2006-10-31 08:54 pm (UTC)There is plenty of carbon we have not yet started to dig up and burn in the form of the tar sands in Canada and the USA and god knows what buried under Siberia so fossil fuels won't go away, they will just get more expensive.
What Stern or his equivalent needs to concentrate on is the prospect of countries like Bangladesh disappearing. As in completely gone and over 100M people looking for somewhere to live. This will happen if they melt all the ice sheets (which is unlikely in the next 70 years) and will happen to some extent if the Greenland ice sheet melts (which is looking increasingly likely). And if you displace 100 million people in that region of the world then there will be real economic effects, not just a few 10ths of a percent per year off world GDP growth.
Of course, what would really help is not having to get planning permission to attach a windmill to your house and having some of the gigantic fossil fuel tax take getting recycled into subsidising solar panels on business and private properties. But there lies another discussion...