Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
imposing de facto energy taxes on its businesses would mean that energy-intensive
industries will migrate to the lower taxed venue and negate the emission reductions.
Assertions that dire consequences will befall us decades or even centuries into the
future make rattling good stories, but when they are unaccompanied by any supporting
evidence they have to be treated with caution if they entail high present day costs.
Long range forecasts are fraught with uncertainties and the costs of taking action to
obviate a risk must be considered alongside the costs of the risks themselves and the
possibilities of taking such action in a world of sovereign states with different interests.
And in the case of climate change, the costs as measured are said to be modest.
Even the threefold increase in the costs of energy requires highly optimistic
assumptions about low cost replacements for current energy sources. Energy is the most
basic of economic resources behind wealth and living standards even though it represents
only 5 per cent of GDP (much of which is its distribution costs).
Shifting to the envisaged lower productivity power plants—wind, carbon capture and
storage, and solar—means a major reduction in capital productivity, which alongside
innovation is the key driver of overall productivity increases.
Finally, the complacency of the IPCC and some other official reports in advocating a
near abandonment of current fossil fuels rests on long term forecasts. In addressing the
pitfalls of these, one only has to look back to the momentous year of 1914.
Ahundredyearsago,whowouldhaveforecastthefalloftheEuropeanempires,therise
and fall of communism, the rise of China and India, widespread international air travel, the
internet and so on? Back then the few who would have forecast dramatic climate change a
century hence would have been proved wrong.
