Carbon Policy; Intriguing article by Bryan Walsh 21 October 2013;
Excerpt below cited verbatim from Time, Science & Space: http://science.time.com/2013/10/21/why-we-dont-care-about-saving-our-grandchildren-from-climate-change/
You want to know what the biggest obstacle to dealing with climate change is? Simple: time. It will take decades before the carbon dioxide we emit now begins to have its full effect on the planet’s climate. And by the same token, it will take decades before we are able to enjoy the positive climate effects of reducing carbon-dioxide emissions now. (Even if we could stop emitting all CO₂ today, there’s already future warming that’s been baked into the system, thanks to past emission.) But we will feel the economic effects of either emitting or restricting CO₂ right now, in real time. While we can argue about the relative cost of reducing CO₂ emissions now — just as we can argue about the economic effects of climate change in the future — it should be clear that any attempt to restrict CO₂ emissions enough to make a dent in future climate change will cause some present-day economic pain. The global economy is still so dependent on relatively inexpensive fossil fuels that a quick transition to renewable sources would likely be costly in the short term. (See Naomi Klein’s 2011 piece in The Nation for a fairly clear-eyed view of what truly radical climate policy would mean.)
What that means, in effect, is that climate policy asks the present to sacrifice for the future. Human beings tend not to be very good at that kind of planning, even when their own future selves stand to benefit — a study this year found that...
Read entire article at: Study Shows That Human Beings Are Too Selfish to Fix Climate Change | TIME.com http://science.time.com/2013/10/21/why-we-dont-care-about-saving-our-grandchildren-from-climate-change/
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