FREE READ (PDF) Global Climate Change: The Pragmatist's Guide to Moving the Needle

Global Climate Change: The Pragmatist's Guide to Moving the Needle
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Climate change is transforming Earth. By the end of this century, it will likely be
approximately 2&#8451 warmer than it is today &12and it could turn out to be a lot
worse. Warming will cause great miseries, especially in some specific poor countries.
What can we do to help slow down global warming &12to move the needle?So far,
much climate activism has been ineffective. Individual carbon-footprint activism has
not and cannot greatly change the global climate trajectory. Nor does it matter much
what the worldwide social cost of carbon or the optimal level of a carbon tax should
be &12the subjects of much acrimonious debate &12simply because there is no world
government. Nor is it realistic to believe that international negotiations will lead to
major emission cuts. And even the painful economic sacrifices proposed by
international agreements could slow global warming by only about 0.3-0.5&#8451 by
2100.Moreover, expecting sustained painful sacrifices is unrealistic. Both activists and
skeptics alike have trouble coming to grips with reality. The activists who imagine
that important decision makers will accept significant local pain on behalf of broader
global climate objectives are as unrealistic as the skeptics who claim humanity would
not be better off with fewer fossil-fuel emissions. What ultimately matters is not what

the world ushould/u do, but what its important decision-makers uwill/u do.And just
who these decision-makers are might surprise readers. The OECD is no longer
important enough to be able to solve the world&17 climate problem. Non-OECD
countries will soon house more than four-fifths of the world&17 population and emit
more than three-quarters of the world&17 greenhouse gases. We shouldn&17t blame
them, either. Many are poor and merely want to offer their people the same modern
standards of living that we in the OECD have already been enjoying for decades.
Unfortunately, the dilemma remains that our collective worldwide problem cannot be
solved by &20blame games,&21 by guilt feelings in and goodwill by OECD countries,
by development aid, or by mandated emission reductions and belt-tightening.Not all
is lost. The most pressing task now is the uintelligent/u phasing out of fossil fuels. We
should subsidize research in all aspects of clean energy, particularly storage. When it
arrives, cheaper clean energy will displace most fossil fuels all over the world &12and
thus truly move the needle.Global Climate Change contains the authors&17 best
efforts to simplify and shed light on the relevant data primarily from an economics
perspective. It provides objective quantitative assessments of the issues with a focus
on common sense. It tells the unvarnished truth in the most accurate and objective
manner possible. It holds no cows sacred. Whether truths are inconvenient or
unwelcome is irrelevant. This book may well appeal to and offend readers of all
stripes. The authors welcome the debate.About the AuthorsIvo Welch is the J. Fred
Weston Professor of Economics and Finance and Bradford Cornell is Professor
Emeritus at the Anderson Graduate School of Management at UCLA. They have been
teaching a course based on this book at UCLA and UCSD for a few years now. Neither
has ever been supported by fossil-fuel or climate-activist organizations. For more
information, see http://climate-change.world/.