Fighting Climate Change Makes Economic Sense; Cities Should Take The Lead, Study Finds

[Rob L 3,811]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/09/16/climate-change-fight_n_5826858.html?cps=gravity

OSLO/LONDON, Sept 16 (Reuters) - Investments to help fight climate change can also spur economic growth, rather than slow it as widely feared, but time is running short for a trillion-dollar shift to transform cities and energy use, an international report said on Tuesday.

The study, by former heads of government, business leaders, economists and other experts, said the next 15 years were critical for a bigger shift to clean energies from fossil fuels to combat global warming and cut health bills from pollution.

"It is possible to tackle climate change and it is possible to have economic growth at the same time," Felipe Calderon, a former Mexican president and head of the Global Commission on the Economy and Climate, told a news conference.

Many governments and businesses wrongly fear that measures to slow climate change will undermine jobs and growth, he said. The report is meant to guide world leaders at a Sept. 23 climate summit hosted by U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.

Almost 200 nations are working on a U.N. pact, due to be agreed in Paris in late 2015, to rein in rising greenhouse gas emissions. Progress to combat global warming has been slow despite two decades of work.

"How the world's largest and fastest-growing cities develop will be critical to the future path of the global economy and climate," the report said, recommending a shift to "compact cities" that used less energy and invested in public transport.

Cities are home to half of the planet's 7.2 billion people, generate 80 percent of global economic growth and account for about 70 percent of energy-related greenhouse gas emissions, it said. But many urban areas are sprawling out of control.

[eieio 1,594]

The end is near. We are doomed. The earth is almost dead.

Oh....I forgot....send us your money

[lostinblue 1,989]

Democrats>Socialists>Communists - Same goals, different speeds.

[GandD 5,966]

Why would you not want renewable energy?

[eieio 1,594]

Why would you not want renewable energy?

Like the ethanol scam?

[JohnR! 5,495]

Because most fear that which they don't understand. The origin of all phobias is the same: fear of the unknown. Fear that the world will change and they will be rendered obsolete.

Why would you not want renewable energy?

[eieio 1,594]

Because most fear that which they don't understand. The origin of all phobias is the same: fear of the unknown. Fear that the world will change and they will be rendered obsolete.

More like....pay twice as much for less....for a scam no less.

I thought we were going to out of oil years ago?

Seems the earth must be making more for us...or something.

I see gas prices are not skyrocketing.(that must drive the man made global warming nuts even more bonkers)

[Curmudgeon 227]

Like the ethanol scam?

That's not an overreaction to the question, now is it?

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

Why would you not want renewable energy?

Because they think its a ponzi scheme. That is how paranoid some people are on the issue.

[lostinblue 1,989]

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

[lostinblue 1,989]

I am so happy to know that you are getting back to your AAA meetings

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

You're a small and bitter man aren't you. Try and have a nice day ;-)

[lostinblue 1,989]

Vaclav Klaus

As someone who lived under communism for most of his life, I feel obliged to say that I see the biggest threat to freedom, democracy, the market economy and prosperity now in ambitious environmentalism, not in communism. This ideology wants to replace the free and spontaneous evolution of mankind by a sort of central (now global) planning.

Professor Richard Lindzen from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology

“future generations will wonder in bemused amazement that the early 21st century’s developed world went into hysterical panic over a globally averaged temperature increase of a few tenths of a degree, and, on the basis of gross exaggerations of highly uncertain computer projections combined into implausible chains of inference, proceeded to contemplate a roll-back of the industrial age”.

The issue of global warming is more about social than natural sciences and more about man and his freedom than about tenths of a degree Celsius changes in average global temperature.

Edited September 20, 2014 by lostinblue

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

Posting random articles proves nothing.