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.”

Students for Carbon Dividends is getting young conservatives talking about climate

Emily Collins used to believe global warming was an issue only liberals cared about. But after learning the science in a college course, she became convinced that conservatives should care about global warming, too.

Emily Collins now convinced that conservatives
 should also care about climate change.

So Collins, now a junior at Texas Christian University, joined an organization called Students for Carbon Dividends. The group is a national bipartisan coalition of students and student organizations that started earlier this year.

Collins liked the group’s focus on reducing carbon pollution by taxing it, and then distributing the revenue to all Americans.

Read the story from Yale Climate Connections - “Students for Carbon Dividends is getting young conservatives talking about climate.”

Certainty and uncertainty go hand in hand

Certainty is a rarity in science, but climate scientists are unequivocally convinced that climate change is the result of human activities.

A Reuters report from Oslo says that climate scientist are surer than ever that climate change is human induced, but are having unexpected difficulty in pinpointing when and where the certain difficulties will arise.

A Voice of America report headed: “Experts sure global warming manmade, but predictions elusive”, said that the uncertainty is frustrating government planners.