qed’s blog

Kohler in today’s Crikey reckons Oz has gone into panic over Prof Garnaut’s little report. Tim Flannery agrees with the good prof’s prescription but one suspects that very few will come out to publicly back the measures. Simply put, the future of our economic system is rather severely constrained if carbon emissions are taken into consideration. Everyone with a vested interest in this system, which is almost everyone these days, is going to take a hit and not just once but on an ongoing basis. The problem is fundamental to our capitalist model.

Unfortunately for us now, today’s economies have been build on a high carbon polluting base. In the past this has been at no cost to the polluters, but there was a consequence which we are seeing now as climate change. At the root of the mantra of unlimited economic growth is a rather naive notion, that is that we can have continuous growth in a world of finite resources. Pollution is an example whereby the polluters gain some economic value out of a common asset, the ecological health of the planet. In terms of balance sheets, clean water and fresh air have no monetary value, hence no business has to deal with the cost of pollution except perhaps in the most extreme case (think Exxon) and even then there is a good argument to say that no amount of money will return the affected area to its original unpolluted state.

Gore, Garnaut and Flannery are just stating the obvious, something that in a sense is well known and has been for a long time. Changing a few light bulbs or ticking a green energy box on your money electricity bill is about 25 years too late. The challenge is rather difficult because we have avoided dealing with the fundamental issues for a long time, and thanks to the recent neo-conservative resurgence it could even be argued that we are even less able to deal with the problems than we might otherwise have been. The pleadings by vested interests to continue for business as usual will be especially difficult for government to deal with since governments around the globe have become much more wedded to the interests of big business. It is quite likely that if any concrete action is taken to deal with the problem of carbon, the burden will fall to those who are less able to pay. A cynic might suggest that the current crop of politicians will merely be the fall guys for a raft of very unpopular decisions that might reduce our carbon footprint but will do so in a way that lets the big end of town of the hook.

However unpopular such decisions might be, the unfortunate bottom line is that unless there is international consensus and unilateral action by all countries then in reality the world is faced with a very uncertain future. Try figuring that into a company ledger.