On Sun, 20 May 2007, Michael Tobis wrote: >> Some people argue that there can't be an economics driven catastrophe, >> because renewables and efficiency are cheap enough already that a >> switch over a few decades would only mean slower growth. > > I don't think many people argue that.
John Quiggin does: http://scienceblogs.com/stoat/2007/05/help_me_here_defining_dangerou.php#comment-438132 ---- "Could we rule out the risk of economic collapse if we restricted out CO2 emissions (this is, I think, from JA)." Absolutely. Here's an easy way of getting an upper bound on the costs. Suppose we made a collective decision to replace all fossil fuels with solar (the most expensive of the renewables, but essentially unlimited in supply) by 2050, and had no technological progress, improvements in energy efficiency etc. Allowing for costs of storage and so on, solar might cost four times as much as the fossil fuel alternative. Since energy is about 5 per cent of output value, this would reduce income by 20 per cent. If the average growth rate to 2050 under BAU, this would reduce it to 1 per cent; a substantial slowdown, but still growth rather than decline, let alone collapse. Of course, this upper bound is way in excess of a realistic estimate. With a quadrupling of price, demand would certainly decline by at least 50 per cent, bringing the cost down to 10 per cent of income. Then there would be induced innovation and so on. And that's for complete elimination of fossil fuel consumption, which no-one is proposing. A cut by 50 per cent relative to BAU would be less than half as expensive by the low-hanging fruit principle. So, even with highly pessimistic assumptions, it's almost impossible to get a cost estimate higher than 5 per cent of income. ---- -W. William M Connolley | [EMAIL PROTECTED] | http://www.antarctica.ac.uk/met/wmc/ Climate Modeller, British Antarctic Survey | 07985 935400 -- This message (and any attachments) is for the recipient only. NERC is subject to the Freedom of Information Act 2000 and the contents of this email and any reply you make may be disclosed by NERC unless it is exempt from release under the Act. Any material supplied to NERC may be stored in an electronic records management system. --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Global Change ("globalchange") newsgroup. Global Change is a public, moderated venue for discussion of science, technology, economics and policy dimensions of global environmental change. Posts will be admitted to the list if and only if any moderator finds the submission to be constructive and/or interesting, on topic, and not gratuitously rude. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/globalchange -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
