Stern Measures

[andygates]

I've been saying it for years, that the real world - the economic real world, the one with businesses and consumers and the vast ravening machine that is modern capitalism - doesn't give a damn about the environment. There is no spiritual, or moral, or aesthetic, or ethical motivator, because the capital system doesn't recognise those as inputs (except in the limited field of marketing).

To those of us who do give a damn, it was obvious from the start that massive climate change would have a massive economic impact. Now finally, the Stern review says the same thing using the big words that make economists listen. A 20% drop in GDP? That's scary. When pitched as WW2 or the Great Depression, that's very scary to just the people who do actually change things.

So maybe for a change I'm hopeful. Though there's still pathetic short-termism and one-upmanship to deal with, so not too hopeful; I'm too burned to be naieve any more.

Comments

What a 20% drop actually means

[despaer.livejournal.com]

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...

Re: What a 20% drop actually means

[andygates.livejournal.com]

But the disappearance of Bangladesh is always pitched as a humane/moral crisis with attendant reactionary "filty asylum seekers" froth. I suspect people will say that we should pull up the drawbridges, close off the tunnel and let the buggers hammer Europe's GDP, not ours.

Which is, of course, tosh, but it's electable tosh.