Why would that represent a huge cost and take a huge amount of restructuring our economy if we didn't want to just cut output and shrink the economy? Because most of our economy depends on activities that involved the emission of greenhouse gases (esp. but not only CO2). And its not just a byproduct or a trace contamination. Its one of the main results of burning fossil fuels.
Even if you don't consider all the indirect effects and all the industry that is dependent on fossil fuels, the transportation and energy production industries are themselves huge, and would have to be greatly restructured.
As for Combjelly's point about taking the shortest time scale, well that's why I'm opposing. If you want to take one of the longest time scales and restructure our economy over the next couple of generations than the cost might be more reasonable (less total cost, and also its spread out over many more years). I don't really oppose that because should it be needed its something we can probably do without massively harming ourselves, so I don't bring up such a time scale.
As for "the most outlandish changes proposed" - Other than perhaps the time scale, I'm arguing against quite common proposals, not some fringe that very few people support.
As for the upper end of costs - I mention very high end cost estimates, but I don't think they are really the upper possible boundary, and I don't assume them to be true. Whatever the costs are they will clearly be high, but my argument wasn't even that, it was only that the costs will not be negative or inconsequential, and that additional economic activity to replace current infrastructure doesn't represent real growth. Technically part of it does, because new facilities and equipment will presumably last longer, and may be more efficient, but the bulk of the investment is just replacing what we already have. Now if the change happens slowly enough we have to replace a lot of what we have anyway, but its still not reasonable to talk about a vast creation of new wealth from replacing existing infrastructure. |
