What will it take to keep the planet habitable?
According to some eco-warriors, all that’s necessary is to end capitalism—the one economic system that has lifted billions from poverty and suffering.
The latest United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report led Eric Holthaus, a Grist writer, to tweet enthusiastically, “The world’s top scientists just gave rigorous backing to systematically dismantle capitalism as a key requirement to maintaining civilization and a habitable planet.”
The sentiment is not new. Three years ago, while pushing for the Paris Climate Accord, U.N. climate official Christiana Figueres described the strategy this way:
“This is the first time in the history of mankind that we are setting ourselves the task of intentionally, within a defined period of time, to change the economic development model that has been reigning for at least 150 years, since the Industrial Revolution.”
To accomplish such a feat, the new report proposes an energy tax of epic proportions. It claims that, to keep warming in check, by 2030 we’ll need to impose a tax of between $135 and $5,500 on every ton of carbon emitted.
And that’s just for starters. By the end of the century, the authors say, we’ll have to jack the tax up to as much as $27,000 per ton.
How would that play out in the real world, where conventional carbon-emitting fuels currently generate about 80 percent of all energy consumed? Carbon taxes of the magnitude suggested in the report would bankrupt families and businesses and trigger a global economic disaster.
Read the full story from The Daily Signal
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