Real
progress means cutting the carbon cord
Von Hernandez and Von Hernandez ;
Von Hernandez is the executive director of Greenpeace
Southeast Asia;
Etelle Higonnet is research
manager for Greenpeace Southeast Asia
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JAKARTA
POST, 07 Oktober 2014
As the
world scrambles to avert a climate catastrophe, the need to dissociate
economic growth from carbon emissions has become an even more pressing
question for policy and decision makers.
The good
news is that more studies are coming out proving that it could be very cheap
or even free to cut carbon, grow the economy, create jobs and save our
planet.
Conventional
economists and purveyors of climate change denialism have been telling us for
decades that if we cut carbon emissions, we will be racing towards economic
bankruptcy or disaster.
They
claim that economic development could not be weaned away from carbon
addiction. This logic also resides in the so-called right to development (aka
as right to pollute) often used by governments to justify measures to avoid
cutting their own carbon emissions.
The
climate emergency and the increasing resonance of green development
alternatives are proving these naysayers wrong.
Apologists
for climate despair remain stuck in a Dickensian fantasy set sometime around
the Industrial Revolution.
Their
denials of climate change and lies about renewable energy being a
tree-huggers’ hoax, prove that they are dangerously out of touch with
modernity and reality.
Perhaps
more inconveniently for them, the reality of climate change threatens to
overturn the fossil fuel-dependent ideological base on which their political
and financial fortunes depend.
The
truth is that the age of renewable energy has arrived. It is green, it is
effective, it is efficient, it is lucrative, it is safe and it is thriving,
growing dramatically all this time.
The
costs of solar power alone have gone down by around 50 percent since 2010.
We are
witnessing the advent of a global energy revolution where renewables
represent future progress. Renewable energy is the fastest growing energy
sector in the world today with US$243 billion invested in renewable energy in
2010 alone, up 30 percent from 2009.
Around
2.3 to 3.5 million people around the world are estimated to be working either
directly in renewables (construction, manufacturing, installing, operating
and maintenance), or indirectly in supplier industries. Solar photovoltaic
(PV) could generate up to 3.7 million jobs in the world by 2020 and more than
5 million by 2050. Green is the new gold.
More
importantly, limiting carbon emissions does not necessarily translate to negative
economic growth. Carefully crafted and appropriate policies to limit
emissions, like carbon taxes or honest cap-and-trade schemes, can be quite
cheap for many countries.
Why is
this? Because of something called “co-benefits”.
These
are the short- and medium-term benefits that accrue above and beyond the
benefit of reducing catastrophic climate change such as benefits for health,
congestion, security, and innovation. The biggest co-benefits involve public
health savings. Simply put, dirty energy projects, like coal plants, kill and
make people sick.
The
World Health Organization (WHO) reported that in 2012 outdoor air pollution
caused 3.7 million premature deaths. The culprits are primarily emissions
from transport, industry and power generation. Coal-fired power plants cause
a host of cancers, heart attacks, strokes, respiratory ailments and more.
When
people are sick because of coal pollution, their medical bills go up and
productivity goes down. Take away emissions and these problems improve, as do
reductions in pollution-related deaths.
A recent
International Monetary Fund (IMF) paper laid out “co-benefits” of carbon
pricing, which is a key measure to help our world quit carbon. The IMF
researchers found that for the top 20 emitting countries, pricing CO2
emissions was in their own national interests due to domestic co-benefits,
completely apart from global climate benefits.
Average
national benefits justify a significant carbon price at $57.5 per ton of CO2
for 2010 largely because of health co-benefits of slashing coal plants and
reductions in automobile related externalities.
It is
clear that with co-benefits, governments can already start taking action as
carbon mitigation lies in their immediate national and economic interests.
Carbon
pricing can even generate a “double dividend” if the revenue it generates
goes to creating other stimuli for the economy.
The New
Climate Economy report, endorsed by The Global Commission on the Economy and
Climate chaired by former Mexican president Felipe Calderón, contains similar
findings.
This
report posits that 50 percent to 90 percent of actions needed to keep global
warming within a 2°C pathway are compatible with development, equitable
growth, and improved living standards.
With
such new reports and new data emerging, we must all say goodbye to the
outdated misconception that there is a rigid trade-off between low-carbon
policy and growth and views of economies as static, unchanging and efficient.
We must seize reform opportunities, reduce market failures and
rigidities, allocate resources efficiently, promote green growth, and price
carbon with ambitious and coherent policies that will enable emerging
economies like those in Southeast Asia, to become global leaders on the path
to a bright, environmentally sound future. ●
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