Liberal scientists and economists are, once again, issuing very encouraging reports of current efforts to reduce carbon emissions and ways to improve on this. They have some very good ideas which is illustrated in item 8:
Far greater attention therefore needs to be paid to the actions needed to reduce aggregate demand for energy and resources. When combined with a full understanding of the actions needed to reduce the risks of crossing other critical planetary environmental boundaries it becomes clear that effective climate change solutions will require significant rethinking of the ways in which we define and measure just and sustainable economic growth. One useful way to reframe the economic growth debate may be to prioritise ‘growth’ in health and wellbeing, education and access to information, social connectedness and time with friends and family over unconstrained consumption in goods and services.Although the author recognizes that...
The primary barriers to the rapid acceleration of de-carbonization policies and programs are political rather than technological....he grossly underestimates these barriers. I think that he has spent far too much time in academic institutions where liberal views compatible with capitalist values are encouraged. He apparently doesn't see how powerful the incentives of short term wealth and power are for the One Percent who will continue to oppose any real progress that might interfere with the system of capitalism that provides them with these rewards. And, it is well known that this system requires growth to exist. He and his colleagues appear to grossly underestimate the power of this class to thwart any rational efforts to implement the measures they advocate. (For example, see this latest report on opposition to the dirtiest of all oil mining.) Many rational policies to reduce carbon have been well known since the 1970s, and have always faced enormous opposition by political operatives of the One Percent.
I think that liberal academics like these people actually do more harm than good by encouraging unrealistic expectations of progress without changing the system that stands in the way of progress. It seems to me that only the Occupy movement has the potential for really challenging the One Percent and overturning their system in order to implement the changes needed to save a climate that can sustain human and other life forms.
