Capturing Cerberus

Ultimately, solving the climate change problem and reclaiming a safe climate will require government action. Not just by the UK government but by governments all around the world.

The forum for trying to achieve this has, to date, been the United Nations, which means getting 194 nations to sign up. So far it has been an appalling failure. Agreements that have been reach are insufficient in their ambition in scope and timescale. Left to carry on as it has for the past 20 years, the UN will still be haggling while the flood waters lap the buildings of London, New York, Miami and the rest while the Maldives and swathes of Asia will be long gone.
More than 80% of the problem could be solved by action on the part of the US, Europe, Russia, India, China, Japan, Brazil and Indonesia. There are five policies that are key. All five are listed in the book and here is two of the most radical of them:

We must correct the accountancy error that has created the problem.
Fossil fuel is all-pervasive in modern society, but its use started after the ‘rules’ of business and accounting had already been set. The desire of economist to ignore the extra costs of its use and treat them as ‘externalities’ has been the longest running exercise in sweeping the dirt beneath the carpet in history. Carbon has to carry a price that reflects its true cost to global society.
The best way to do that would be to introduce fee and dividend; a scheme promoted by James Hansen as being the fairest and most effective way to reduce emissions and foster the transition to the post fossil fuel era. It is a carbon tax with 100 percent dividend. The tax is applied to oil, gas and coal at the mine or port of entry, and is It would ensure that unconventional fossil fuels, such as tar shale and tar sands, stay in the ground, unless an economic method of capturing their CO2 is developed. The key to its success lies in the entire tax being returned to the public, equal shares on a per capita basis (half shares for children up to a maximum of two child-shares per family), deposited monthly into bank accounts. The cost of goods using fossil fuels would rise and the cost of renewable energy would stay the same. People would have more money in their pockets to choose products and services than they would otherwise, and may now find choosing renewable goods more attractive. As demand for renewable goods rises, they enjoy economies of scale, making them even more attractive. Demand for fossil fuels would start to decline and society’s transition to a sustainable model would be achieved.

We need to adopt a new measure of progress.
As our lives are busy and complex, we like to try and simplify things to try to make them easier. We look for measures and signs to work out how things stand. Currently the two most important measures are inflation and output (gdp). ‘Redefining Progress’ is a US public policy think tank dedicated to sustainable economics. In 1995, they developed a Genuine Progress Indicator that includes all of the usual data on gdp, but then started adding or subtracting values for other items that contribute to how well a society is functioning. Primarily, it makes positive adjustments for factors such as income distribution (where international studies have found that narrower income distribution tend to promote general happiness in the population), the value of household and volunteer work, but makes negative adjustments for factors such as the costs of crime and pollution.
The great benefit of changing to a measure such as this is that we can continue to make progress – the number would continue to grow – but we would be making a positive impact on the planet, not a negative one.