,
16 tweets,
6 min read
Read on Twitter
The world is facing twin crises: a climate crisis which scientists say threatens us all & an economic crisis as productivity around the developed world slumps, provoking anger, frustration and a backlash against the establishment. It is tempting to get v depressed by all this 1/ 
Esp when u hear the suggested remedies. Some people (inc some hard Brexiteers & the hard left) think the economy should revert to how it was in the 1970s or 50s. Some climate strikers think we should return to the pre-industrial era (as long as they can keep their smartphones) 2/
For me the most striking thing from the climate strikers' demands (as itemised in this @rcolvile thread) is that when you combine them the logical consequence is zero or even negative global economic growth 3/
To take one example, you can’t have zero fossil fuel energy production without wind turbines and you can’t have wind turbines without steel and you can’t have steel without coal. For the time being coal is a key ingredient in mass steel production 4/
So if we’re abolishing fossil fuel use & abolishing coal use then until we come up with new technology to replace steel we have to cut back energy consumption to near zero. Oh & no high speed rail either (lots of steel there). No flying. No electric cars. So no going anywhere 5/
Except we’re highly unlikely to develop new technologies without the collaboration of the private sector (cf @elonmusk, Thomas Edison etc). And the climate strikers want to ban intellectual property & ban market-based remedies & ban corporate involvement in climate remedies 6/
It is possible to get down to net zero while acceding to those demands. But only if we revert to a hunter gatherer lifestyle. That might sound sexy for western millennials, but try telling it to the hundreds of millions of people pulled out of poverty by tech/economic growth 7/
Econ growth is the most astonishing force we know of to make people healthier, happier & more prosperous. @GretaThunberg is right about much, but she was wrong last week to speak so disdainfully abt “fairytales of eternal economic growth” 8/
Climate change may be killing people. But believe me giving up on economic growth will result in far, far more deaths. And, even more than is the case for climate change, most of those lives will be lost in the emerging and developing world. 9/
Actually the real problem isn’t GDP per se: it’s that GDP has been overly dependent on fossil fuels. As I pointed out in our film some months ago growth has been eerily correlated to carbon emissions since Abraham Darby invented modern steel production 10/
First piece of good news is we ARE breaking that link. The amount of energy we need for a given amount of econ growth is falling. In other words, we KNOW it’s theoretically poss to get cleaner growth. Yes that goes for developing countries too. But it’s happening too slowly 11/
If the world is going to stop increasing carbon emissions it will need a massive wave of spending: on new green technologies, on carbon capture, on clean steel etc. It will cost trillions. And yes some of that money might be wasted - totally clean GDP is not a dead-cert 12/
In any other period that might strike fear into the hearts of policymakers, but that brings me to the second piece of good news. Not since the 1930s has it been more evident that the world needs an investment splurge. Growth is already stagnant. Productivity is stuttering. 13/
Even if you’re utterly sceptical abt anthropogenic climate change, then consider it this way. The world is desperately short of investment. We’ve fired pretty much every other post-crisis bullet. A green new deal may be capitalism’s best hope of saving itself from implosion. 14/
If you’re still sceptical then read chapter III of @UNCTAD’s latest Trade & Development Report. They’ve actually modelled this and worked out that all this investment could actually pay for itself in terms of higher econ growth & tax receipts unctad.org/en/pages/Publi… 15/
It’s not often that science tells us we can have our cake & eat it. But this is one of those moments. Econ growth is not a fairytale. It will help us address climate change and the economic malaise we’re currently in. More in my @thetimes column: thetimes.co.uk/article/growth… 16/16
