'Market forces' won't resolve climate change

In discussions about climate change, there's a certain constituency of economists and business leaders who say the market will fix the problem. If we let technology work its wonders, they say, eventually clean energy will prove sufficiently cheap and plentiful enough to make burning fossil fuels a thing of the past.

“We need a carbon tax, or we are going to keep using cheap fossil fuels until they kill us all.”

There's just one problem: The market won't. We have enormous remaining supplies of oil, gas, and coal because the technology of exploration and extraction has advanced along with solar and wind technology. We're nowhere near Peak Oil or Peak Gas—despite what some people were predicting a few years ago—and prices continue to plummet.

Read the Co-Exist story “We Can't Rely On Market Forces Alone To Fix Climate Change.”