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

[skean.livejournal.com]

Optimisim shoptimism

[andygates.livejournal.com]

People don't like being told that they're being bad.

It's in people's nature to react with a variety of responses including denial, anger, assault, and ad-hominem rubbish. Look at the response to speed cameras.

And this does tell people to stop being quite so damn naughty. Of course they'll whinge and attack. They're people, that's what people do.

This is a golden opportunity for leaders to actually lead, rather than whoring for votes. Let's see what happens...

[ravenbait.livejournal.com]

When you do my job, you shrug this stuff off. No one will pay a blind bit of notice.

[andygates.livejournal.com]

I spose, but hey, I managed to nurture a little spark of optimism for, oh, eighteen hours there. That was nice. Now back to roasting marshmallows in the global furnace.

[carl42nz.livejournal.com]

People don't like being told they're wrong especially when they know it's wrong.
It's much easier to get emotional than it is to fix something,

As for "leaders" you don't get people to love you and vote you in by making them mad or sad and you don't to make policy if you get voted out.

And good stuff is expensive. Good leadership, fixing things properly. Proper maintainance takes effort. After all it is a battle against entropy.

"Taking the easy path is what makes both men and rivers crooked."

[carl42nz.livejournal.com]

While we're on it.
The government here is trying to sell people on the "glory" of a becoming a carbon neutral country. Apparantly it's going to make our products sell so much better in export markets, and somehow (they're a little vague on details) it's going to make the local economy much better. To help achieve this increase in local economy they're examining a set of incentives (fines and penalties) to encourage businesses to do better.

With the extra costs of compliance (and stiff penalties for production) I think only one sector is going to see any increase is business - everyone else will just be hit by lower profit, lower wage rises, lower spending power.

And the government wonders why no-one takes them seriously. They only just woke up this year to the fact that all the export produce is affected by carbon-miles from having to ship from the bottom of the fish-tank. And that they phased out the alternate fuel systems many years ago. Integity? Leadership Vision?

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.