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The Best Science Writing Online 2012
Showcasing more than fifty of the most provocative, original, and significant online essays from 2011, The Best Science Writing Online 2012 will change the way...
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[Below is the original script. But a few changes may have been made during the recording of this audio podcast.]
For the first time in decades, the amount of goods traded around the world is projected to decline this year. So is the money earned by people producing those goods. As governments rush to shore up faltering economies, is it a luxury to invest in environmental improvements--or a necessity?
Judging by the stimulus package, the Obama administration is thinking necessity. The final bill includes more than $90 billion for things like retrofitting old buildings to be more energy efficient and building new high-speed train lines.
The plan is to create at least five million "green" jobs to replace those lost in manufacturing and elsewhere—from installers of solar panels to sorters at recycling plants.
That's exactly what the entire globe needs, according to a new report from the United Nations Environmental Programme. A global green new deal would lower fossil-fuel dependence and energy costs as well as create new jobs, among other things.
Ultimately, the goal should be to expedite economic recovery, alleviate poverty and lay the foundation for a sustainable economy, according to economist Edward Barbier who wrote the report. That way we might rebound from an economic crisis precisely by avoiding environmental ones: energy insecurity, water scarcity and, of course, climate change.
—David Biello
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4 Comments
Add CommentSorting trash by hand is an unhealthy inefficient task. Any badly sorted item will cause a whole sorted skip to go to land-fill.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe answer is simple : Print a 'recycling bar-code' on all items and component parts. In this way recycling can be automated and made very efficient, especially where chemicals or liquids are concerned.
And it will create jobs...
Just imagine if even a fraction of the $1 Trillion spent of recent wars had been put into clean energy research?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisReagan set the US back by 40 years when he killed energy credits and removed solar panels from the White House. If that had not happened we could be much more like Denmark - weened from mid-east oil.
Its never too late and we shold jump in with both feet NOW!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHere is how to do this better. We can have a stimulus that costs almost nothing to the taxpayer, in fact paid a lot by Iran, Russia, oil dictators!! And cut CO2 as a bonus
How is start up loans for RE companies and energy eff ones. Let most anyone with a good business plan through the SBA get start up loans to build or install windgenerators, solar CSP unit, CHP, small lightweight, aero 3 wheel EV's, etc. Then loans to buy, install, etc these.
Loans for home, building eff upgrades from windows, insulation, etc are next. This would put construction, material workers back to work.
All these can be paid for in energy savings in 5 yrs so no new income costs either. This will create about 3 million jobs directly and probably 6 million indirectly of people supporting them.
Next is a fossil fuel tax to pay their full cost of the direct, indirect subsidies we already pay in our income tax, health care, etc. it's time those who make, benefit from those costs to pay them It should be a $1.50/gal on oil and about double the price of coal.
But you say a tax will kill the economy. Not if it's put in over 2 yrs at 4% each month and loans given to buy more eff cars, etc to cut people's costs. Switching trucks, semi's to NG is very cost effective now being under 50% of the cost of diesel/gasoline. This can in 5 yrs cut imported oil needs.
The beauty of this is oil, coal will drop in price making Iran, Russia, oil dictators pay most of the oil tax, coal is only 25% of your electric bill so it won't go up much.
But new, more eff cars, trucks, EV's, PHEV's and mass transit will create more new jobs too.
The fossil fuel tax revenue, 1/3 would go to a tax cut so those people paying it have the extra money needed if they continue to use the same amount or better, use less and have extra income, the more likely outcome. 1/3 to to help switching to more eff cars, trucks, homes, buildings and 1/3 to balance the budget fossil fuels have been a large part in making.
So this program would have a net increase of about 8-10 million jobs of both direct and supporting those who have the new jobs, solve our imported oil problem, let us leave the Persian gulf between the 2 are about $1T/yr in a few yrs if we don't, stop subsidizing our enemies, oil/coal corporations and balance the budget.. All at little cost to the gov, in fact get rid of our debt on our children and make our country strong again.
Or we will be broke, at war, our enemies strong and we will be weak. To me it's the only real patriotic way to go.
What's missing from this discussion is a frank answer to this question: how is infinite growth in the economy possible in our finite ecosystem ? Some economists such as Julian Simon argued that because it's impossible measure the last bit of every physical resource, we should just regard resources as infinite and carry on. That's insane (and quite wrong, pick a coarse-grained unit of measurement , follow math rules about rounding decimals, and one can definitely put a number on the total amount for any resource).
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe only economic model I've ever seen that is in harmony with science, and intellectually honest, is the Steady State Economy model championed by World Bank economist Herman E. Daly and others. If we are to have any success at getting through this century with something like our current standard of living and no ecological collapse, we'd best adopt an SSE model for our economy. Probably the single best website on this is the Center for the Advancement of the Steady State Economy, at steadystate.org. They can spell it out in much better detail than I can here.