And so the world burns, the seas rise and formerly pleasant areas like Florida are lashed by ever more violent storms(Ron Di Santis take note) Yet all of this was avoidable, gentle readers, if just a handful of people had decided a different way.
In August 1973 the world had clocked up 28 years of steady growth, especially in western countries. Regulated markets, and a growing network of co-operative international institutions, such as the World Bank, IMF and EC, suggested steady progress which would eventually be shared by all. Yet that autumn changed everything, as older readers will recall. A bitterly-contested war in the Middle East led Arab countries to employ the OIl Embargo. The result was disastrous inflation and economic chaos across the world. It was a time of doubt, dread and uncertainty. Decades-old verities were called into sudden, terrible, question, especially in places like the UK, which ended up only working for three days a week.
Something had to be done. And policymakers faced a choice. They could choose a financial solution-reduce the money supply, raise interest rates and cut labour costs. Or they could choose a scientific and engineering solution; wean themselves off oil as fast as possible using renewable and nuclear technologies. They chose the former. Inflation was indeed licked. You can argue about the cost-rising poverty and inequality, unstable financial markets, vast flows of migration. But the policies of economists like Milton Friedman, implemented by politicians like Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, mean that the memories of that terrible winter do indeed seem long ago.
But imagine if the other solution had been tried instead.. That the world had moved to a renewable carbon free economy. If this path had been started in 1974, it is pretty likely that it would all have been completed by about 2000. Not only would emissions have started to fall by about 1990, every molecule of carbon dioxide that has hit the atmosphere since the turn of the century need not have existed. We would never have heard of climate change. It’s funny how a single binary choice, which seemed so easy to make at the time, could have had such devastating long tern consequences. So- were those long lost years of the 1970s the worst ever in History. Or are we playing with hindsight?
#oil crisis #global warming #climate change #monetarism #milton friedman #solar power
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