Major Climate-linked Emissions Regulation Will Help Everyone Everywhere, including Business
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Related subjects: Carbon Emissions, Climate Change, Economy, Energy Supply, Environment & Ecology, Harvest & Food Supply, J.E. Robertson, Legislation, Renewable Resources, Sustainable Development, U.S. Economy, U.S. Environment, U.S. Politics, Water: a Global Crisis Comments Off
Even as momentum gathers for major collaborative climate-linked emissions regulatory policy, aimed at reducing greenhouse-gas emissions like carbon dioxide (CO2), some in industry remain convinced of an outdated theory that assumes emissions reduction must be bad for business. The US Chamber of Commerce (CC), a leading business lobby, is devoting $150 million to fight regulation of carbon emission and prevent a transition to clean energy, and to “kill” much needed healthcare reform.
The CC project is rooted in the theory that only if status quo practices are encouraged and extended can business as we know it thrive. Critics argue such lobbying efforts are, far from market-oriented, in fact part of a quest to establish or maintain a rigged game in which narrow interests can prosper without having to compete, improve or innovate. The result is that one after another major firm, including Apple, Nike, Johnson & Johnson and GE, is walking out of the Chamber of Commerce in protest. Even local chambers of commerce are ending their support for the national organization due top the radicalization of its agenda.
But while some business interests cling to the outdated idea that burning more (carbon-based fuels) means earning more, industry broadly —including major industrial consumers, like the US military— is moving more toward a paradigm shift focused on fuel economy, reduced emissions and sustainability. The US Navy, for instance, is preparing to unveil its first hybrid ship, which is projected to be able to go two additional months before refueling and to power up and mobilize more quickly.
The CEO of the Huntsman chemical company has told the Financial Times the US and EU need to enact aggressive emissions reductions and regulations and raise environmental standards for industrial manufacture. Peter Huntsman also said the world’s two leading economic producers need to ensure that such regulations are enacted in conjunction with global agreements that prevent competitors abroad from cheating such standards in order to compete unfairly.
The United States never ratified the Kyoto Protocol largely as a result of its inability to constrain the expansion of carbon emissions in competitive and rapidly growing developing economies, like China and India. It is expected China, which is already consuming more in raw numbers than the US in some heavy commodities, could soon be the world’s leading emitter of carbon dioxide.
The old standard thinking on this point was that China’s expanding emissions make it ever more competitive as against any wealthier nation that puts environmental issues ahead of raw GDP growth. But this is no longer a viable argument over the long-term. It is increasingly evident that major and compounding advances in clean energy technologies mean the nations that most pervasively and most expeditiously transition from the combustible fuel era to the clean energy future will be the most competitive and resilient.
The glut of combustible fuels on which the present conventional economy depends is not sustainable, and the natural world whose regularity and productive services are the basis of our global civilization cannot absorb its emissions without serious destabilizing side-effects. Harvest-collapse, chronic drought, rivers running dry and mass migration are real effects already evident in many places around the world.
Cynics hav argued that as scarcity becomes more common and good prices soar, demand for fuel will increase and fossil fuels will see their fortunes turning brighter than ever. But, that assumes 1) that fossil fuels are the only game in town; 2) that massive price increases don’t cause a backlash and spur interest in renewable resources, as they have over the last two years; 3) that a ripple effect doesn’t cripple consumer spending ability and undermine the economy so much that we approach another collapse and the bottom falls out in terms of demand.
It must be remembered, for the most part the immense prosperity of oil companies has been consistently dependent on a constant significant global increase in demand for their product, made more lucrative still by massive government subsidies and by a speculative marketplace that unlike most has very direct, though remote, impact on prices everywhere.
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