Sure, it’s going to cost money to transition to a greener economy, but the truth is that we can’t put a price on our survival
When figures are used to propose solutions to big problems, the result is often sufficiently dizzying that, in practice, the headlines go unnoticed or are soon forgotten.
I recently read a report by a former World Bank executive in which she estimated it would cost $1 trillion annually for developing countries to transition toward low-emission economies. This is a fundamental issue: these nations argue that they have the right to use fossil fuels to industrialize, just as the West has done over the last 150 years, and continues doing today.
The problem with this argument is, firstly, if they do, the climate emergency will turn into a full-scale global disaster, making huge areas of the planet uninhabitable, with particular impact on less-industrialized countries. Reducing emissions must be a global project, and it’s clear that the industrialized countries are not doing enough to change themselves and much less to help the developing world. Secondly, although decarbonization costs money, it generates significant savings once it is implemented: renewable energies are significantly cheaper, to the point where it is estimated that these savings could amount to some $12 trillion a year by 2050.
