Nabila Tabassum Chowdhury > Recent Status Updates

"But if much of the cost is borne by the richest in the rich countries and the planet benefits, we see no reason to shy away."

"The question is to frame the debate in a way that does not pitch the poor in poor countries against the poor in rich countries. A combination of taxes and regulations to curb emissions in rich countries and pay for a clean transition in poor countries may well reduce economic growth in the rich country, though of course we don’t know for sure, since we don’t know what causes growth."

"This would preserve the incentive to conserve energy, drive less or drive electric cars, but make it very clear that the less wealthy would not pay for it. Given that energy consumption is a matter of habit, the tax should also be announced well in advance to give people time to get ready for it."

"The government should structure the carbon tax in a revenue-neutral way, such that tax revenues would be handed back as a compensation: a lump sum to all those at the lower end of the income scale, who would therefore come out ahead."

"We understand that a carbon tax is not an easy sell (taxes that hit most people never are), but our view is that it should be possible to make it politically acceptable by making it absolutely explicit that the carbon tax is not a way to raise revenues."

"Low demand for clean air may come from a failure of many of the poorest households to connect clean air to a healthy, happy, and productive life."

"Footnote: In Bangladesh, a study found that providing incentives to wash your hands for before meals for a few weeks increases handwashing even after the incentives are removed. Furthermore, people warned that they would get incentives in the future started washing their hands in anticipation of the program, to prepare themselves."

"Economists have begun to recognize the role of “habits” in our preferences: what we grew up consuming forms our tastes today. Migrants continue to eat what they grew up eating, even when the food that was cheap in their home country is expensive in their new country."

"larger open question is the extent to which energy consumption is a matter of habit. A particular way of consuming could become almost like an addiction simply because this is what people are used to."

"If people dont know how they feel about something as quotidian as a box of chocolates/a bottle of wine,why do we expect them to have clear preferences about climate change?Or what kind of world their grandchildren should live in?Or whether the people of the Maldives deserve to have their islands washed away by rising sea?And to know how much are they willing to alter their own lifestyles to prevent those disasters?"

"Any attempt to convince people to do something different (such as consume less or consume differently) would then encroach on those preferences. But as we saw in chapter 4, there are really no such things as true well-defined preferences."

"Our sense is that there may not be that many free lunches. Mitigation through better technologies may not do the trick; people’s consumption will need to fall. We may have to be content not only with cleaner cars but also with smaller cars, or no cars at all."

"The engineering estimates apparently did not fully apply to real houses in real places; they were much too optimistic."

"In 2013, the International Energy Administration calculated that energy efficiency measures alone could give us 49 percent of the reduction in CO2e emissions we need, without any other change."

" It is true that because coal and oil are not renewable means their prices will tend to go up over time (as the supplies run down), but there is probably enough coal and oil under the ground to take us to Armageddon. It is hard to be entirely sanguine."

"After all, the dirty technology would still be there. If fewer people used coal and oil, the prices of these inputs would plummet. This would make it very tempting to go back to using them."

"Our little economic engine could be back on its balanced path with the same growth as before, fueled by wind, water, and the sun. We could even stop all taxes and subsidies to encourage clean energy after a while."

"The clean technology would become cheaper and therefore more attractive, which would increase the demand for it and hence the returns to research. Eventually, the clean sector would be attractive enough to root out the dirty sector and we would be home free."

"The Stern report concludes that, assuming a rate of technological progress in the “green sector” based on extrapolating from recent history, it would cost about 1 percent of world GDP annually to stabilize emissions at the level necessary to stave off global warming. But that seems a modest cost to avoid endangering the future of the world as we know it."

"With strong, deliberate policy choices, it is possible to “decarbonize” both developed and developing economies on the scale required for climate stabilization, while maintaining economic growth in both. Amen to this."

"The Stern Review optimistically concludes: Yet despite the historical pattern and the business as usual projections, the world does not need to choose between averting climate change and promoting growth and development. Changes in energy technologies and the structure of economies have reduced the responsiveness of emissions to income growth, particularly in some of the richest countries."

"The hydrofluorocarbon (HFC) gases used in standard air-conditioning appliances have particularly deleterious impacts on the climate; they are much more dangerous than CO2. This puts us in a rather difficult situation. The very technology that can help to protect people from climate change also accelerates the rate of climate change."

"Putting everything together, across the entire world, a study finds that it being 1 ° C warmer in a given year reduces per capita income by 1.4 percent, but only in poor countries."

"Children have lower test scores at the end of particularly hot school years. These effects are absent where schools have air conditioning, so they affect poorer children the most.'

"Overall, we get the 50-10 rule: 10 percent of the world’s population (the highest polluters) contribute roughly 50 percent of CO2 emissions, while the 50 percent who pollute the least contribute just over 10 percent."

"The average estimate implies that when your income increases by 10 percent, your CO2 emissions increase by 9 percent."

"Climate change is massively inequitable. The lion’s share of CO2e emissions are being generated either in rich countries or to produce what people consume in rich countries. But the greatest share of the cost is, and will be, experienced in poor countries. Does it make it an intractable problem, given that those who must solve it have no strong impetus to do so? Or is there some hope?"

"In the coming chapters, we will go one step further and argue that it may even be better for the world if we did not find that recipe."

"For the world of policy makers, this perspective suggests that a clear focus on the well-being of the poorest offers the possibility of transforming millions of lives much more profoundly than we could by finding the recipe to increase growth from 2 percent to 2.3 percent in the rich countries."

"It may not be an accident that many of the winners of globalization were ex-communist countries that had invested heavily in the human capital of their populations in the communist years (China, Vietnam) or countries threatened with communism that had pursued similar policies for that reason (Taiwan, South Korea)."