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Post by Hornblower on Oct 31, 2009 12:24:59 GMT 10
This article presents a rather interesting way of opposing carbon emission reduction schemes, such as the Copenhagen Accords etc. whatmatters.mckinseydigital.com/climate_change/why-kyoto-won-t-workBasically, what this guy is arguing is that the cost of cutting carbon emissions rapidly now is much too high; much better to invest smaller amounts in green tech and slowly change over throughout the century as the technology becomes more appropriate. Spend the money that is saved on directly targeting the harmful effects of global warming, and achieve better results than you would by cutting emissions. e.g. "By spending $3 billion annually on mosquito nets and medication, we could cut the incidence of malaria by roughly 50 percent in a decade. For the money spent saving 1 person via indirect climate policies, we could save 36,000 people by direct intervention." The article is quite narrow in the costs of global warming that it discusses, and I suspect a wider analysis taking into account complete biodiversity, distributions of impacts etc, would be somewhat different. Likewise, whether it is feasible to say the money could be directly transferred is not a foregone conclusion either. However, it certainly presents some statistically backed up arguments that could be used to build what I think could become quite a stron "Technological Development" type case.
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