Economics

"Socialism failed because it couldn't tell the economic truth; capitalism may fail because it couldn't tell the ecological truth. "
Lester Brown, Fortune Brainstorm Conference, 2006

Had a particularly good creative session with my son yesterday evening. I make up stories at bedtime but ever since we decided to capture them and one day turn them into a children's book, he has become the official editor. Yesterday, he was in particularly good form, slicing and dicing the story until it fell within his acceptance parameters. And, I have to say, he was a very canny four-and-a-half-year-old editor. Today's story will probably include the floods that are ravaging England...

Climate change is upon us - of that there is little doubt, some but little. The question is, is it mankind who has caused it through rampant technology and consumption, or is it cyclical? There are two opposing camps on this topic. Instinctively, one feels that it is mankind. Five billion people on this planet does not seem natural. Surely, it was inevitable that sooner or later the planet would begin to struggle. But hasn't this sort of thing happened before? The cyclical camp would present much evidence to dismiss the climate change environmentalists. They would argue that the bulk of carbon emissions actually comes from trees and animals engaged in flatulence!

I don't know what the solution is to the climate change puzzle. Indeed there might be no solution if the cyclical camp is right. If, on the other hand, we have caused this, then we need to fix it. And let's be clear on one thing. Cutting emissions and being more environmentally friendly is a good thing. But it will not fix the problem - it's too late for that. Even the scientists have underestimated the speed of the changes. The only way out of this mess is technology. That is the price of having a 5 billion population. And not just environmentally-clean technology, but environmentally-cleansing technology. Capitalism does not tell ecological truths, but it does tell economic truth. The key is to turn ecological truth into economic truth...