@TG:
Sure. The statement was made by Bjorn Lomborg in his the book, The Skeptical Enironmentalists. If you interested, I suggest checking out the book itself.
Thanks for that. I doubt i find the time for that in the near future though…
However, the statement has been used in other articles as Time and National Geographic. For the gist of it, for the cost of complying with the Kyoto Protocol will be U.S. $150 billion to $350 billion annually (compared to $50 billion in global annual development aid). With global warming hurting primarily Third World countries, we have to ask if the Kyoto treaty is the best way to help them. The answer is no.
Though it seesm i have to read it, as i do not believe these numbers at all. Does it take into account the investments that have to be made to get the country complying, the jobs these investments create, the technological advancements that have to be made (which need investment, but lead to new industries etc)? Does it take into account money/costs that at the moment are hidden somewhere but have a clearly ecological background?
The cost for truck diesel for example: Does it take into account that heavy trucks are the number one road-killers? which means that without / fewer trucks you would need less repairing of streets / highways?
This would suddenly make railways much more competible (sp?)… yet this “hidden” cost is taken away from the trucks and put on whoever maintains the roads (the public here in germany).
It sounds to me that this book does look at costs without noticing that a “cost” sometimes is an “investment”.
The cost of meeting the Kyoto treaty for just one year would be enough to solve the biggest problem in the world—… Wouldn’t this be a better way of serving the world?
Well, if one of those was done…… but before nothing is done, i prefer money spent on Kyoto :)…
We need to focus more on development than on sustainability. … Only when people are rich enough to feed themselves do they worry about the environment and future generations. …
Unfortunately, what you state is only a possibility. It would be nicer if one would necessarily lead to the otehr, e.g. once you have enough to eat, you necessarily start to worry about the environment. Sadly, that’s not the case.
that’s at least 11 billions for that. Can you give a benchmark of other spendings by the US gov?
Oh please, all powerful German Government, we don’t know what to do! Please save us from becoming the Ecological Axis of Evil. Please, tell us how much your government spends on alternative energy in relation to total spending! Please, tell how much we should spent without significantly hurting the economy! Oh the terrible life of the Axis of Ecological Evil…
:P
i just downloaded the budget of the Federal Republic of Germany……
…damn… and i will work through it when you do the same for the US :) … way too much work to get through those statistics :)
How many wind turbines are there in the US? How much power do you get out of renewable sources? (In absolute numbers (Watts), relative to the total production and per capita please).
Nearly 1,700 megawatts was from wind farms built across the U.S.
Wind energy output has increased a 66% last year with an additional $3 billion in windpower projects at work. Relative to total production, wind energy in California is about 1.27 percent of the state’s production of electricity in 2000
… Additionally, U.S. Department of Energy recently announced the Wind Powering America initiative with goals to power at least 5% of the nation’s electricity with wind by 2020, increase the number of states with more than 20 megawatts of wind to 16 by 2005 and 24 by 2010, and increase federal use of wind energy to 5% by 2010.
So, let’s compare this to germany:
The aim is to double the amount / ratio of regenartive energies to the year 2010.
In 1999/2000 6% of electrical power produced came from these sources, at the end of 2002 it will be 8%
We had 17.8 TWh of electrical power in 2001 from renewable sources, 11 TWh from wind. the energy producers think in 2002 it will be 21 TWh from those sources.
About one third of all wind farms of the world are in germany:
at the end of 2001 a power of 8750 MW was installed, another 1100 were added till Juli 2002. 2.3 % of the electrical power was wind produced in 2001.
So germany produces more than 5 times more wind energy than the US.