Post by cjm on Jan 19, 2015 16:48:04 GMT
www.thegwpf.org/andrew-montford-unintended-consequences-of-climate-change-policy/
5
Conclusions
he UK government’s policies are predicated on their being an ethical way –
indeed the only ethical way – of tackling the hypothetical problem of global
warming. How do these ethics square with the damage being done?
As this review of some of these policies has demonstrated, the market-
fixing approach adopted has had many consequences that one hopes none
of its architects intended. As rainforests are cleared to make way for biofuels,
their inhabitants evicted from their ancestral lands, as land is diverted from
food to energy production, as hunger grips the poorest and most vulnerable
people of the world, as havoc is wrought on the country side and its wildlife, as
money is handed to big business,as the old and less well-off worry about their
ability to pay their energy bills,those whose work has been behind the change
in approach to climate change must surely have pause for thought. Was this
destruction and poisoning of the natural world,this trampling of human rights
the legacy they want to leave the world? Is this really the only ethical way to
deal with the question of global warming? Is it even ethical at all?
As we saw at the start of this report, there are other approaches to inter-
generational equity that would lead to profoundly different policy responses,
responses that would avoid the damage being visited upon the poor of the
world and improving the lives of everyone. With all the unintended conse-
quences of government policy on view, and with new, lower estimates of the
likely extent of global warming now appearing every year,
the time is ripe for a reassessment. A public debate on the damage being done
by climate change policy is long overdue.
5
Conclusions
he UK government’s policies are predicated on their being an ethical way –
indeed the only ethical way – of tackling the hypothetical problem of global
warming. How do these ethics square with the damage being done?
As this review of some of these policies has demonstrated, the market-
fixing approach adopted has had many consequences that one hopes none
of its architects intended. As rainforests are cleared to make way for biofuels,
their inhabitants evicted from their ancestral lands, as land is diverted from
food to energy production, as hunger grips the poorest and most vulnerable
people of the world, as havoc is wrought on the country side and its wildlife, as
money is handed to big business,as the old and less well-off worry about their
ability to pay their energy bills,those whose work has been behind the change
in approach to climate change must surely have pause for thought. Was this
destruction and poisoning of the natural world,this trampling of human rights
the legacy they want to leave the world? Is this really the only ethical way to
deal with the question of global warming? Is it even ethical at all?
As we saw at the start of this report, there are other approaches to inter-
generational equity that would lead to profoundly different policy responses,
responses that would avoid the damage being visited upon the poor of the
world and improving the lives of everyone. With all the unintended conse-
quences of government policy on view, and with new, lower estimates of the
likely extent of global warming now appearing every year,
the time is ripe for a reassessment. A public debate on the damage being done
by climate change policy is long overdue.