Sublime

This intergenerational problem is so acute that it explicitly pervades all economic decision-making. Indeed, there will be many times when it’s morally acceptable to help people today at the expense of those tomorrow. Take the example of air conditioners in Europe: energy use increases in response to higher temperatures, which can drive yet more em

If industry prevails and we stick with a business-as-usual scenario — and pretty much all data indicates this is what we are doing — we’ll blow through our carbon budget in less than seven years.9 Global temperature rise will continue on its trajectory of 3°C10 increase or worse by the end of the century, and, in environmentalist Bill McKibben’s wo

Because our houses are around for a long time (a well-built, properly maintained wood-frame North American house with a concrete foundation can last for more than 100 years), with proper wall insulation, triple window panes, and highly efficient heating furnaces they represent a unique opportunity for long-lasting energy (and hence carbon emissions

One of the more forthright early efforts to forecast temperature rise came in 1981, when Hansen and six other scientists published a paper in the esteemed journal Science.72 These predictions, which were based on relatively simple statistical estimates of the effects of CO2 and other atmospheric gases rather than a fully fledged simulation model, h

51 billion tons per year x $100 per ton = $5.1 trillion per year