Tuesday, December 15, 2020

Net-Zero Carbon at Costs Comparable to Present Spending?


This is the sort of thing a prudent economist or advocate looks for: ways to solve a pressing problem without sacrificing economic growth, firm profitability or consumer welfare. If you have ever modeled your own personal carbon footprint, you realize how difficult a task that is, and the sacrifices that--with present technology--must be made to reduce a footprint by just 30 percent. 

Long story made short, I found I could only hope to achieve a 30-percent carbon footprint reduction by completely avoiding use of an automobile or flying on airplanes. The former would significantly affect daily life, as I live out in the American West, with lowish density and longish distances.

The latter would severely limit my business functions. 

What we need are ways to reduce carbon output without crashing the economy, whole industries and individual firms. 

We also cannot tell people to be cold in the winder, hot in the summer and to avoid many conveniences of modern life. Sure, there are spiritual values to be reaped by reducing much of our consumption. But that has to be voluntary: cheerfully undertaken and not experienced as an imposition.

This is helpful in all those respects, it seems. 

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