Thursday, December 11, 2014

Visions of the Year Zero

Part of the U.S.-China global warming deal is that we, the U.S., will have to contribute money to China and India to help finance their shift away from carbon. The first payment is apparently $10 billion. The United Nations' climate change spokeswoman, Christiana Figueres, dismissed the U.S. commitment of $10 billion as "a very, very small sum." What is needed to decarbonise the global economy, she said, is “$90 trillion over the next 15 years”.
90 trillion dollars! Who are these people and who do they talk to every day?
For some perspective, the total Gross Domestic Product of the WHOLE WORLD is 71 trillion dollars and the total world debt is $223.3 trillion. That is 313% of global gross domestic product.
So where, exactly, is the 90 trillion dollars to fix the carbon economy going to come from and what is the world going to look like when it does?
Pol Pot would be thrilled.

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