Going to Zero: Economics and Climate Change.

Our response to climate change can no longer be about the lack of urgency, or scientific limitations. Certainly, while some people remain to be convinced of the anthropogenic nature of climate change, on the substance of its existence, the majority are convinced. The only challenges preventing us doing something radical and transformative in the face of climate change, then, seem to be political and economic will.

We should ignore the question of political will for now. This reasoning will be elaborated on in due course, but put simply, politics often walks hand in hand with economics, and so by understanding the economic picture, we can consider the political picture in much more nuanced term. From the perspective of economics, there are roadmaps towards tomorrow, and compelling reasons to travel. It is here we should begin.

Let’s be clear, the scale of economic transformation to prevent the worse effects of man-made climate change will be huge. The governor of the Bank of England Mark Carney, for example, highlights some 30% of FTSE 100 companies will be directly impacted by climate change due to their close association with our present carbon energy system. As Durand (2018) notes, in order to keep emissions within the IPCC temperature target of a 2oC increase, fossil fuel companies will have to leave unused between two-thirds and four-fifths of their carbon-based energy reserves. In short, massive parts of these companies’ values will become, for the stake of our survival as a species, worthless.

Read the Medium story by Stuart Mills - “Going to Zero: Economics and Climate Change.”