cours d'anglais: why do economists need to adapt their approaches to address the challenges of climate change?

« why do economists need to adapt their approaches to address the challenges of climate change? First and foremost, John McDonnel remarks that mainstream economics completely dismisses the correlation between the ecological crisis and economic issues that we are currently facing.

He exemplifies it by noting that river droughts cause pay-rises on goods that are transported on cargos.

Document 2 underscores the same ignorance, with the intervention of H.

Boushey who remarks the insufficiency of the market for polluted rights in times of catastrophic climate deregulation.

Indeed, this policy predominantly alters the budget of low income people, and doesn’t even propose an alternative to carbon use. Moreover, Document 1 explains that even if efforts are made by institutions, those are badly oriented, solely economical and will therefore not be any helpful to inflation.

According to him, this stems from a math-oriented education that disregards real-world matters.

He consequently believes that solutions found by the government, such as carbon- taxes or electric cars are inefficient, even unreachable since the extraction of their components won’t meet the needs of our consumption society.

Document 2 concurs on the incapability of carbon tax to seriously shrink carbon emissions.

Indeed, after being the chosen direction of economists and policymakers for decades, Biden decided to shift strategy regarding climate change. This Build Back Better plan actually consists in offering credits, loans and grants in order to reduce gas emissions.

Nevertheless, instead of accusing institutions, document 2 sees this as a need for economists to be more on the track as the ecological situation festers.

Indeed, the US government reacted fast to address the unstable emergency, hence the use of cheap and abundant solar panels, while economists kept focusing on prices, which minimizes the gravity of the situation. In terms of solutions, document 1 perceives degrowth and redistribution as the right solutions to tackle ecological issues, hence the need to focus on those policies as soon as possible.

Document 2, on the other hand, puts front and center the use of renewable energy, innovation, redistribution adapted to real world characteristics such as topology.

Indeed, a work on prediction made by specialists should aim at turning these problems into long term, political and social policies, which could address the situation more effectively. Growth is an indispensibal element of prospect (most pple think that) Various models developped by economist all point to ways to maximize it ==> economy of a country turned into equations ==> the one who inegrate environmental, social aspects are marginalists Should we look at it the same way Culturally speaking, the isolationism of economics has proved to be a civilisational disaster ==> how do we switch to another way ==> it involves questioning some of the fundamentals of how eco are seen and applied.

Growth is a central pb, a central qu° ==> job of economists and governments should be to maximize growth It comes out w/ reistences across the world for many reasons ==> civilational ad culture reasons: ever since the indus rev, technological pb has resulted in more comfort, easier acces to commodities, goods, objects, food, clothe => since the dawn of the indus rev, humanity (western countries) has associated human progress w/ making life easy, having access to more ressources, being able to harvest more energy, being able to extract more gas, oils, minerals… ==> strong association between human progress and increasing concumption Shift of indus rev pushed western societies into modernity was indissossiable w/ fossil fuels ==> difficulty in adressing climate change is that is does not simply rely on pol direction but also on profound civilisational changes EX: in amerca post WW2, massive expansion of suburban life (individual houses around big cities) ==> could only happen where acces to automobiles ad petrol available to all ==> democratic ideal of being able to have a car…(American way of life ) could not be separated from the autommobile industry and oil ==> envisaged as an incarnation of political freedom as understood by amrrcians for centuries (Pursuit of happiness written in the consitution) Pol climate action should be connected w/ state intervention (timelie of climate economic in america shows a constant back and forth regarding action for climate change linked to republicans VS democrats) Republicans have defended the American way of life ==> having a suburban life, having a car, consuming a lot PAC: political action comitees ==> fund , channel donations from various sources in order to support a caus eor a politician.... »