[MCN] Update on the Great Carbon Price Debate: Nice work : Concluding paragraphs

[Lance Olsen]

What Role Should Carbon Pricing Play In Addressing Climate Change? <https://news.google.com/articles/CAIiEHQa0uAwQpFnMmVqo-NLAo0qFQgEKg0IACoGCAowrqkBMKBFMKGBAg?hl=en-US&gl=US&ceid=US%3Aen>
As the U.S. and Europe are in the midst of unprecedented summer heatwaves, forcing the toll that climate change and carbon emissions take to the forefront, ...
Forbes <https://news.google.com/publications/CAAqBggKMK6pATCgRQ?hl=en-US&gl=US&ceid=US%3Aen>
2 days ago

Concluding paragraphs

Market-driven approaches—such as cap and trade or a carbon tax—do have their place:  Although the “invisible hand of the market” should not first among climate efforts, she says, “carbon pricing has a vital role to play in a clean energy transition.”

The CPR brief echoes that thought, noting that because carbon pricing deals only with the question of carbon reduction, it “misses the wide range of other considerations relevant to a clean transition.”

The answer, according to Kaswan, lies in a combination of both carbon pricing and broader policy solutions: “You have the tax humming along in the background, but then you have the policies that are going to help you move in the direction of reducing the payments [imposed by a tax or cap and trade],” she said.

“We need to have reductions and requirements,” Kaswan adds, “but we also need to provide some assistance to industries that may face significant transition costs.”

While these initiatives such as carbon pricing are important, according to Kaswan, it is most effective to group them with a broad outline for tackling climate change across sectors: “If we look at the public, people are more attracted to a vision of green transition,” she says. “It is more inspiring—it gives more of a sense that we are moving toward something.”


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“I just want it to be clear that the mainstream environmental movement has been asking very little of people for decades” said Bea Ruiz, also an organizer with the U.S. national [ Extinction Rebellion ] team. “There’s no element of, ‘We are in an emergency. We all need to do more than what we’re doing’.”

“We’re trying to put out there what’s necessary, not what people think is politically possible. And then we’re trying to be part of helping to change what’s politically possible through direct action,” Ruiz said. “We are really, literally, almost out of time, and if we don’t make the reductions that are needed based on the science, we’re going to be in serious trouble. We can’t negotiate with reality.”

Extinction Rebellion’s radical philosophy
July 22 2019
https://thinkprogress.org/the-radical-philosophy-of-extinction-rebellion-5857d3955b57/
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A recent Ambio article by some heavyweights in climate sets out the situation well enough. 

A team including the likes of Will Steffen, Paul Crutzen, Veerabhadren Ramathan, Johan Rockstrom, Marten Scheffer and Hans Joachim Schellnhuber begin the abstract of their article by saying “Over the past century, the total material wealth of humanity has been enhanced …”  

They end it saying,“we risk driving the Earth System onto a trajectory toward more hostile states from which we cannot easily return.”

Their analysis is echoed across the scientists side of the situation. But it doesn’t take a scientist to get the drift of what’s going on. 

Liam Denning is former investment banker, former editor of one of the Wall Street Journal’s most closely read columns —Heard on the Street — and a former columnist for Financial Times. Writing about the Green New Deal for Bloomberg, Denning has come to the conclusion that, “We have built our standard of living on forms of energy that we now know pose a threat to our very existence,” and that, “this is a conversation that is long overdue — and necessarily begins with a shout, not a whisper.”

https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/02/14/heat-and-the-end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it/




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