Real progress means cutting the carbon cord

As the world scrambles to avert a climate catastrophe, the need to dissociate economic growth from carbon emissions has become an even more pressing question for policy- and decision-makers. 

The good news is that more studies are coming out proving that it could be very cheap or even free to cut carbon, grow the economy, create jobs, and save our planet.

Conventional economists and purveyors of climate change denialism have been telling us for decades that if we cut carbon emissions, we will be racing toward economic bankruptcy or disaster. They claim that economic development could not be weaned from carbon addiction. This logic also resides in the so-called right to development (aka as right to pollute) often used by governments to justify measures to avoid cutting their own carbon emissions. 

The climate emergency and the increasing resonance of green development alternatives are proving these naysayers wrong. Apologists for climate despair remain stuck in a Dickensian fantasy set some time around the Industrial Revolution. Their denials of climate change and lies about renewable energy being a tree-huggers’ hoax, prove that they are dangerously out of touch with modernity and reality. Perhaps more inconveniently for them, the reality of climate change threatens to overturn the fossil fuel-dependent ideological base on which their political and financial fortunes depend.

‘Climate revolution’

The truth is that the age of renewable energy has arrived. It is green, it is effective, it is efficient, it is lucrative, it is safe, and it is thriving, growing dramatically all this time. The costs of solar power alone have gone down by around 50% since 2010. (READ: UN chief at climate summit: Let’s make climate history)

We are witnessing the advent of a global energy revolution where renewables represent future progress. Renewable energy is the fastest growing energy sector in the world today with US$243 billion invested in renewable energy in 2010 alone, up 30% from 2009.

Around 2.3 to 3.5 million people around the world are estimated to be working either directly in renewables (construction, manufacturing, installing, operating, and maintenance), or indirectly in supplier industries. Solar PV could generate up to 3.7 million jobs in the world by 2020 and more than 5 million by 2050. Green is the new gold.

More importantly, limiting carbon emissions does not necessarily translate to negative economic growth. Carefully crafted and appropriate policies to limit emissions, like carbon taxes or honest cap-and-trade schemes, can be quite cheap for many countries.

Why is this? Because of something called “co-benefits.” These are the short- and medium-term benefits that accrue above and beyond the benefit of reducing catastrophic climate change such as benefits for health, congestion, security, and innovation. The biggest co-benefits involve public health savings. Simply put, dirty energy projects, like coal plants, kill and make people sick. 

The World Health Organization reported that in 2012 outdoor air pollution caused 3.7 million premature deaths. The culprits are primarily emissions from transport, industry and power generation. Coal-fired power plants cause a host of cancers, heart attacks, strokes, respiratory ailments, and more. When people are sick because of coal pollution, their medical bills go up and productivity goes down. Take away emissions and these problems improve, as do reductions in pollution-related deaths. (READ: NGOs: UN Climate Summit not enough to change climate course)

More benefits

A recent International Monetary Fund (IMF) paper laid out “co-benefits” of carbon pricing, which is a key measure to help our world quit carbon. The IMF researchers found that for the top 20 emitting countries, pricing CO2 emissions was in their own national interests due to domestic co-benefits, completely apart from global climate benefits. Average national benefits justify a significant carbon price at $57.5 per ton of CO2 for 2010, largely because of health co-benefits of slashing coal plants and reductions in automobile-related externalities. 

It is clear that with co-benefits, governments can already start taking action as carbon mitigation lies in their immediate national and economic interests. Carbon pricing can even generate a “double dividend” if the revenue it generates goes to creating other stimuli for the economy. 

The New Climate Economy report, endorsed by The Global Commission on the Economy and Climate chaired by former Mexican President Felipe Calderón, contains similar findings. This report posits that 50% to 90% of actions needed to keep global warming within a 2°C pathway are compatible with development, equitable growth, and improved living standards.

With such new reports and new data emerging, we must all say goodbye to the outdated misconception that there is a rigid trade-off between low-carbon policy and growth and views of economies as static, unchanging and efficient.

We must seize reform opportunities, reduce market failures and rigidities, allocate resources efficiently, promote green growth, and price carbon with ambitious and coherent policies that will enable emerging economies like those in Southeast Asia, to become global leaders on the path to a bright, environmentally sound future. – Rappler.com 

Von Hernandez is the Executive Director of Greenpeace Southeast Asia. 

Etelle Higonnet is Research Manager for Greenpeace Southeast Asia.

Power plant smoke image from Shutterstock.