Knowing and Making

Given the low political chances of any effective climate change reform coming out of Congress in the next few years, I was pleased (and surprised) to see this projection  from the US Department of Energy: ...the level of carbon dioxide emissions in the United States will remain below the rate of 2005 for the next 15 years even if no new restrictions are imposed. That's stunning. And gives us hope that ordinary supply and demand might do at least part of what politicians can't seem to: reducing demand by increasing the price of carbon.

From Freakonomics ... Economists estimate that the costs of reducing carbon emissions are likely to be upwards of $1 trillion per year....These cost estimates are obviously highly speculative, but the true cost of reducing carbon emissions is likely to be within two orders of magnitude of this number. Only two orders of magnitude? In other words, the costs will be somewhere between $10 billion and $100 trillion per year. That is, the same as the difference between a hundred and a million dollars; or dividing the cost out between everyone on the planet, choose between a $1.50 newspaper or a $15,000 car; or if the developed world pays for it all, you can either spend $10 on a glass of wine or give up your entire $100,000 annual salary. So: to prevent global warming by reducing carbon emissions, every human being will either have to work for an extra 15 minutes once a year, or give up their entire income FOREVER . Well, I'm glad we've got the scale of the issue clear...time ...