"Climate change is a wicked problem … and there is no way to solve it without sacrificing something that society currently holds dear, and without thereby generating more problems. For example, shrinking the economy would reduce carbon emissions, but it would throw a lot of people out of work (in effect, we did trial runs during the financial crash of 2008 and the COVID pandemic of 2020; both times, carbon emissions plunged, yet everyone was eager to “get back to normal”). Building vast amounts of low-carbon energy-producing and energy-using infrastructure would also reduce emissions, but that would require tens of trillions of dollars of investment as well as enormous quantities of depleting, non-renewable minerals—the mining of which would generate pollution and destroy wildlife habitat."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Richard Heinberg, "Something Wicked This Way Comes", republished in Resilience, December 7, 2023
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Global_warming
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Related Quotes
"We need to address climate change, we need to limit the temperature rise globally to the maximum extent but we cannot…"
"We were warned plenty that we were creating a disaster in the only atmosphere we’ve got, and we kept on doing it. Now…"
"We don't have much time left. We are moving towards temperature increases of around two degrees Celsius, which is goi…"
"The lie is that if we address the climate crisis, we will also solve the biodiversity crisis."
"Is humankind itself hastening its own end? Man has, for instance, been burning carbon-containing fuel — wood, coal, o…"
"When we look at the rising ocean temperatures, rising carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, and so on, we know that they …"
"When I was a boy in the 1900s, the carbon dioxide level was still below 300 parts per million. This year, it reached …"
"Right now we are facing a man-made disaster of global scale, our greatest threat in thousands of years: climate chang…"
"One very simple truth about Global Warming is this; that it will spare nobody, however rich, mighty and powerful we t…"
"I'm agnostic as to the causes. All I know is there is water where there once was ice."