The Oil Drum

Dear Xeroid,

This simple, harsh, and depressing answer to your last rhetorical question, 'Does that mean we will get dangerous climate change because growth will be more important than climate change?' is 'yes, 'we' will choose growth above any other consideration, until the bitter end!'

Anything else is unthinkable and unrealistic, regardless of the consequences. Putting ameliorating climate change would mean reversing, at the very least, as a timid start, the last thirty odd years of Western and now global economic policy, the so-called Reagan-Thatcher 'revolution' which has become the socio-economic paradigm of our age. The presumed foundation of our wealth and prosperity, though the model is now beginning to falter and totter. Such a reversal will not be easy or occure overnight. Too many people, though a minority, have benefitted and have never been richer or more powerful. One is almost talking about a social revolution and the resistance to this type of change will be dedicated, and red in tooth and claw.