Citi report: slowing global warming would save tens of trillions of dollars

You seems to forgot the elephant in the room. They would lie, bribe, confuse, make folks stupid to keep profitable behavior from happening.

Or, to put it the other way, they would lie, bribe, confuse, make folks stupid, to keep their profit from diminishing.

But even if they aren't in the room. Let's not forgot that we are irrational human. We smoke when we shouldn't. We over-eat when we shouldn't. We vote against government programs when we are on government programs. We are very often really dumb. So, yes, I would said sometime, profitable behavior would require coercion. It seems to be especially so here in the USA. We are special in that way.

It's unbelievably silly really. Every one know that fossil fuel will run out at some point. 50 years? 100 year? We have to move away from it anyway. We are literally willing to make the biggest human gamble ever for a short term $. Absolutely mass silliness.

 

No one cares about what happens next year much less the next decades. So this is pretty pointless.

Source: Human history

 

Pretty much this. There are too many vested interests in the status quo and also too much inertia in the existing carbon based infrastructure that is resisting change.

Anyway this article pretty much confirms something that I've been saying all along that there are very sound economical reasons to address the issue of anthropogenic climate change. Even without the issue of greenhouse gases moving off of a fossil fuel based system has many other benefits.

 

Not always. Many societies have built for the longterm. The Romans and Chinese built things that took generations to complete with the benefits of them far down the road.

 

It's a serious problem. The US style of capitalism is very short term focus. Couple that together with our political system which is also very short term focus and you have a double whammy.