We need less talk about “climate” and more about how conservation saves money, renewable energy creates jobs, restoring the gulf’s marshes sustains fishermen and preserving the rainforest helps poor people.
via www.nytimes.com
The bulk of today's article is about the good news that the BP oil spill seems to be much less worse than feared and the bad news that the U.S. Senate won't pass climate change legislation. The quote above is from the last paragraph.
My quibbles are with the first two things that we need more talk about. First, conservation tends to take a while to save money. You install expensive equipment or perform expensive activities up front and then you whittle away at those up front costs over time. Whether conservation saves money or not, and how long it takes, depends on the discount rate.
Second, renewable energy creates jobs but the policy process that leads to more renewable energy (e.g., a carbon tax [note how I didn't say cap-and-trade]) will lead to fewer jobs in other sectors. The net effect on jobs would likely be small and no one can really say whether it is positive or negative (e.g., did NAFTA create jobs?).
