The Changing Economic Paradigm
Permanent Link:

Material Information

Title:
The Changing Economic Paradigm Climate Change and the Florida Keys Background Paper 3
Publication Date:
Language:
English

Notes

Scope and Content:
Greenhouse gas emissions constitute the greatest market failure the world has seen (Stern 2006, p 1; Stern 2009, pp 11‐13). This is an important reason why the macroeconomic policy model that guided the United States, Great Britain and other economies over thirty years is being reappraised. The neoclassical economic policy philosophy that became prominent in the 1970s asserted that free markets are self‐regulating and governments need not interfere with businesses pursuing their own self‐interest. This philosophy is being critically questioned as climate change starts to bite, because it allows major polluting industries to operate without proper environmental control. Dealing with climate change became progressively more urgent with the mounting evidence that previous climate projections which showed regular and steady rises in emissions did not tell the full story. From 2000 onwards (Cox et al. 2000)1 climate models have contained positive feedback loops incorporating events that can trigger potentially catastrophic change in the global climate – events that have already become visible such as the melting sea‐ice, ice caps and thawing permafrost in the Arctic. There are many references in the recent literature to worst‐case scenarios of only a few years ago being exceeded, none more authoritative than NASA’s James Hansen and his colleagues (Hansen et al. 2008 is a good example). Hansen only fairly recently criticized his fellow scientists for being reticent when evidence still had a tiny element of uncertainty (Hansen 2007); however, there was no reticence in the synthesis report from the climate change conference of scientists in Copenhagen, Denmark, in March 2009 (Richardson et al. 2009). Its six key messages are stark, uncompromising, and call for urgent action. The book Six Degrees by Mark Lynas (2008) provides a well‐researched, readable, and frightening overview of what a warming world might mean to humankind. A recent Australian book (Spratt and Sutton, Climate Code Red, 2008) makes a powerful call for emergency action, publicly endorsed by Jim Hansen and other prominent experts.

Record Information

Source Institution:
Florida International University
Rights Management:
Please contact the owning institution for licensing and permissions. It is the user's responsibility to ensure use does not violate any third party rights.

dpSobek Membership

Aggregations:
Sea Level Rise