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Economist William Nordhaus has come up with a new approach to reducing carbon emissions, writes Michael Gill. And Australia could benefit more than we expect
It wasn’t so long ago that communities ignored many of the threats we now respond to without question. When smoking was common in the 1960s most people thought it was harmless. Emissions of sulphur dioxide, chemical compounds and other particles were largely ignored until the 1980s, when increasing awareness of “acid rain” triggered coordinated action among leaders including British prime minister Margaret Thatcher and US president George H.W. Bush.
Today, two perceived threats are treated remarkably differently. The relatively low risk of terrorism has escalated to the point where nations are intruding on citizen’s liberties to a degree normally associated with times of full-scale war. The much greater global threat of climate change, meanwhile, has produced deep disagreements and generally ineffective responses.
