Acting Now Is Fiscally Conservative

December 13th, 2011 by Zachary Shahan

QUICK NEWS: Over on Climate Progress, Dr. Elizabeth Sawin and Dr. Lori Siegel had a nice post (or repost) recently on the cost of ambitious CO2 emissions cuts now versus the cost of pushing the ball down the road. Graph from that above. The summary:

“Postponing commitment to ambitious targets until after 2020 would commit countries to rates of CO2 emissions reductions in decades beyond 2020 that exceed those typically seen in the current generation of energy system models, making future efforts to limit temperature increase to 2°C more expensive and disruptive than needed. Without deeper reductions than are currently pledged by 2020, future generations will have sustain very rapid rates of reduction in emissions.”

I think this is common knowledge now, but perhaps it is not so common amongst our political leaders or they just don’t care since those higher costs will come in several years, once they are out of office. Check out the full piece for more.

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Tags: co2 emissions, Greenhouse Gas Emissions, greenhouse gas reduction, greenhouse gas reductions by 2020, greenhouse gases, quickies

About the Author

Zachary Shahan spends most of his time here on CleanTechnica as the director/chief editor. Otherwise, he's probably enthusiastically fulfilling his duties as the director/editor of Solar Love, EV Obsession, Planetsave, or Bikocity. Zach is recognized globally as a solar energy, electric car, and wind energy expert. If you would like him to speak at a related conference or event, connect with him via social media. You can connect with Zach on any popular social networking site you like. Links to all of his main social media profiles are on ZacharyShahan.com.