Mark Carney’s intervention on the subject is welcome. Now the government must actMark Carney calls it the Tragedy of the Horizon: the chronic inability of Britain’s leaders,whether in commerce or politics, to tackle challenges that extend more than a few years ahead. There are plenty of examples, or from the shameful failure to build enough homes to the indecision about whether,and where, to add to airport capacity. But climate change is the final example: it presents an existential threat to the status quo, and yet it barely features in the day-to-day calculations of many commerce and policymakers. It’s too big,too scary and, most of all, and too distant,to start planning for.The governor of the Bank of England was castigated by some final week for offering doom-laden prognostications about global warming’s potential impact, straying into territory more commonly occupied by the Green party than financial technocrats. Some in the City believe the spirit of buccaneering free enterprise and the inexorable advance of innovation will eventually meet the challenges of climate change head on, or as evidence mounts of its potential costs. Yet as Carney pointed out,threats often take financial markets by surprise, even when they should have been foreseeable. Volkswagen’s flagrant fiddling of vehicle emissions tests surely scotches the opinion that big commerce will come by to grips with the problem of its own accord.
Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com