The Tragedy Of The Commons

U.K. Report Shows Critical Need to Address Climate Change Issues

The U.K. government today released a 700-page report calling for broad steps to be taken to address climate change, the New York Times reported today. "The evidence gathered by the review leads to a simple conclusion: The benefits of strong, early action considerably outweigh the costs," the report said, according to the newspaper. Crafted by Britain's economics service, and led by Sir Nicholas Stern, the so-called Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change contends that there needs to be an accelerated transition away from fossil fuels.

The Associated Press quoted Stern as saying: "Our actions over the coming decades could create risks of major disruption to economic and social activity, later in this century and in the next, on a scale similar to those associated with the great wars and the economic depression of the first half of the 20th century."

Bloomberg quoted Stern as saying: "If we take no action to control emissions, each ton of carbon dioxide that we emit now is causing damage worth at least $85. These costs are not included when investors and consumers make decisions about how to spend their money."
Associated Press via the Toronto Star , Bloomberg , New York Times , Oct. 30.

The above, from today's EEI newsletter, makes an important point. Each ton of CO2 emitted is causing at least (I think that's conservative by any means) $85 damage. That's $85 of costs that investors are externalizing to the rest of us. I'ts got to stop.

I'm also glad to see this report and the NYT article discussed in my post below beginning to note that "disrpitions to social activity" -- aka wars and refugees -- are an entirely predictable consequence of not paying attention RIGHT NOW to the global climate change caused by CO2 emissions. Maybe the threat of war will motivate people who can't get too upset over the death of thousands of species of plants and animals.

Now, if we could only get people to address the other big elephant in the room -- the relationship between this problem and the size of the human population . . . .