It isn’t entirely the Biden administration’s fault. That’s more like $10 trillion over 10 years. In particular, the scale is simply too small $900 billion on climate is not enough to catalyze the pace of decarbonization we will need in order to cut emissions by 50 percent by 2030, while providing millions of good jobs. Rhiana Gunn-Wright: It would certainly be a good start, but it really leaves a lot to be desired. But even if it did pass in its proposed form, how far would it get us on the climate fight? Its passage right now certainly isn’t clear. It is effectively this administration’s big climate bill. Kim Stanley Robinson Novelist and author, most recently, of “The Ministry for the Future.”Įzra Klein: The American Jobs Act, President Biden’s infrastructure bill, includes an ambitious clean-energy standard and huge investments in renewable-energy and electric-car technologies. Sheila Jasanoff Professor of science and technology studies at the Harvard Kennedy School.
Rhiana Gunn-Wright Climate-policy director at the Roosevelt Institute and an author of the Green New Deal. Saul Griffith Chief scientist and founder of both Otherlab and Rewiring America, a nonprofit that advocates rapid electrification to meet our climate goals. But they need to move faster.Īnd so we convened this panel of climate experts with different backgrounds - technological, literary, political, academic - to try to reconcile the reality of our political progress with the scale of the emergency. The trends are, broadly, going in the right direction. A rising generation understands the urgency of the moment, even if their elders do not. Activist movements worldwide are gathering strength and flexing newly won power. Clean-energy and battery technologies are outpacing even the brightest projections from a few years ago. That is not to say there is no reason for optimism or hope. Only a few countries are on track to meet the goals laid out in the Paris agreement, and none of the major emitters are among them. The international picture is little better. Its political prospects are mixed at best. President Biden’s climate agenda is both ambitious and, on its own, insufficient. It can seem an impolite question, even as it’s the path we’re on.
Of late, I’ve been obsessing over a single question: What if political systems, in the United States and internationally, fail to curb climate change?
0 kommentar(er)
