I can hear Warmists right now: “it’s only $12.7 trillion by 2040. No biggee”
(Daily Caller) A whopping $7.4 trillion will be spent globally on new green energy facilities in the coming decades, but another $5.3 trillion is needed to meet the goals of the Paris climate accord, according to a new report.
Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF) is out with a new long-term energy outlook report, this time projecting a total of $12.7 trillion to keep projected global warming below 2 degrees Celsius by the end of the century — a goal of the Paris accord.
BNEF projects $7.4 trillion will be invested in new green energy capacity by 2040, and that global carbon dioxide emissions will be 4 percent lower in that year than in 2016.
There’s a training program we use in my company, which has lots of statistics in terms of sales, what people buy, how people buy, etc., and the presenters always say “if you don’t believe it, cut it in half. Cut it in half till you believe it, because it still means more sales for you.” In this case, when it comes to all this “green energy” and climate projects and stuff, double the number. Don’t believe it? Double it again. Because whatever the number is, it will be huge with government involved. Certainly, if it was all so super awesome, companies would be putting lots and lots of their own money to develop it.
Realistically, most of the money is going to go to administration, barely functional projects, in politicians pockets, and redistributed to 3rd world shitholes.
$12.3 trillion invested over the next several decades is a BIG NUMBER. Note though that the global GDP in 2016 was $75 trillion and should increase 2%/year unless trumpf destroys the global economy as the last Republican president did. In any event, investing $12.3 trillion over 20 years at the same time the global GDP is generating $1.75 QUADRILLION in goods and services is hardly much of a burden considering it’s also helping to solve a major problem (or a hoax if you’re a science denier). Divide by 1750, carry the one… it comes out to less than 0.7% of total global output through 2040.
This is a common mistake even the major newspapers make. Quoting big numbers with no context.
TEACH: You could perform a service by adding that $12.3 trillion is much less than 1% of global economic output through 2040. You could even twit it to the Daily Caller.
It’s like the right-wing (and NYTs) mantra that Social Security is a $200 trillion expense over the rest of this century. That’s a big number! Of course the US GDP over that same period will be in quadrillions of dollars.
Like I said, Warmists will find a way to minimize the cost.
billie,
You do agree that it’s a drop in the bucket, right? Or do you challenge the numbers?
And science deniers will find a way to lie.
Well, some private companies are investing in such things, and I have no objection whatsoever to private businesses doing whatever they want.
TEACH: Still no context for your misleading post? Why is that?
While $12 trillion spent over the next 23 years in private/public investment seems like a lot, it needs to be in the context of the world’s economies generating over $2000 trillion during that same time. The arithmetic is so simple that even high school dropout Con Men can figure it out. An investment to help secure and stabilize human existence is much less than 1% of the global economy! An honest “man” would make that his headline.
I bet Con Men will spend more than that on Viagra and child prostitutes during that same time.
And dog sex.
Jeffrey projects his problems on others:
Liberal
menmales need Viagra, but conservative men do not.Of course, many liberal
menmales have partially solved their erectile dysfunction problems with women by going homo.I couldn’t tell you how many times I’ve seen the left argue that some project or other would only cost the average taxpayer $1.02 or 54¢ or some other small figure a day, so it’s just got to be worth it, right?
And this is why the odious Hillary Clinton is still out there, blaming other people for her unexpected defeat, and Donald Trump is President today: the left want to keep on and keep on and keep on nickel and diming the public to penury, and not a single one of them understands that, to working class Americans, they aren’t talking about 83¢ a day, but a couple gallons of milk a week for their kids.
Dana,
Good point. I pay about $3 a day for the Afghanistan war; others probably pay less, depending on income. Since according to Republicans almost half of Americans pay no federal income taxes, how are the working poor affected by your 0.83 per day?
It will keep them poorer, as taxes are increased upon the more productive Americans, not only to cover the costs of the programs but to service the ever-increasing national debt. Thus, the more productive Americans will have less which could be used to create economic activities.
But, it’s a lot more than that: the government, with the collusion of both Republicans and Democrats, gets much of its revenue from hidden taxes, taxes on corporations, taxes which are passed down to the consumer in the form of higher prices. The left are very fond of saying that we should tax those wicked ol’ corporations, but corporations simply collect taxes from the final consumers of their products.
TEACH and Dana,
The article did not claim that the $12.7 trillion was from public money (i.e., taxpayer), in fact, digging into the source we find they were talking about private investment in renewable power.
https://about.bnef.com/new-energy-outlook/
Even if every shilling of that $12.7T comes from private investment, it still winds up costing the end consumer: corporations pass along their costs of doing business. If a corporation chooses, on its own, to do so, then that corporation must still compete with the ones which do not, and consumers have the option of choosing the lower priced products, or not choosing to buy at all.
But if the government forces such investments, then the consumers get hit, because all corporations wind up making similar investments, and what the consumers see is simply a general increase in prices.
In the end, the final consumer of a product pays all of the taxes on that product, from every stage of production and delivery. The Europeans are at least a bit more honest in this, imposing the Value Added Tax, in a way in which their subjects — even the ones living in republics, who would call themselves citizens, are more like subjects — can at least see what they are being taxed.