It was a bad day for climate change deniers worldwide yesterday, when former Vice President Al Gore accepted the Nobel Peace Prize with the Chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Rajendra Pachauri.
According to the Norwegian Aftenposten, "Pachauri said the actual costs of mitigating climate change aren't as high as many might think, especially if they're taken during the next seven years before the consequences of global warming become irreversible. Nor, he said, do emissions control measure need to halt economic growth."
Pachuari was countering a climate change skeptic argument -- one shared by the Bush administration -- that reducing carbon emissions would be bad for economies. It's hard to see the reasoning here. You develop new technologies and new industries and that's supposed to hurt business? Look at the computer boom -- how was suddenly doing everything differently bad for the economy? Even breweries are computerized now. These aren't the concerns voiced by people thinking about the future, they're the concerns of those invested in the status quo. It's the argument of the buggy whip industry against horseless carriages...
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