NY Times looks at the price of carbon

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Posted on December 12, 2006
Filed Under Global warming/Climate change, Deep ecology, Greenhouse gas emissions, Ecological hope, Fossil fuel dependency, Environmental disasters, Earth spirituality

Fostering Ecological Hope

Today from Margaret Swedish:

When I finished the previous post just now, I picked up the NY Times Business section and found this article blaring from its front page.  I recommend it to you.  It is long and informative and very helpful in understanding different economic approaches to the problem of carbon emissions.  It does a good job of showing why a ‘cap and trade’ system is unlikely to work, why we need to look instead at taxes on emissions and mandatory reductions to raise funds to get us out of the crisis. 

It also points out that businesses themselves are beginning to realize that future costs of inaction are likely to be far higher than the costs of taking action now.  Some want to do what has been needed for a long, long time — put these costs into the price of energy production.  Businesses need to know the real costs of doing business in order to make the right decisions for their companies.

However, economics should not be the priority in determining what we need to do, and quickly.   As the Times states:

A global warming policy would be shaped first by science and social values, before economics.

We echo that loudly.  This is essential to the mission of the Spirituality and Ecological Hope project of which this blog is one instrument (see ‘About Margaret Swedish’).  We must start with values.  Policy and economics must be at the service of those values, not the other way around.

The article also notes that economists put the cost to the US for cutting carbon emissions over the next 50 years at about$120 billion per year — “about equal to the Bush administration’s tax cuts in 2001,” and “roughly the same amount spent on the Iraq and Afghanistan wars this year.”

You see how doable this is — if we had our priorities right.

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