Saturday, April 17, 2010

Croak of the Day: Brad Delong's "After Copenhagen, What?"

Brad Delong's proposals on climate change. I don't know how much he believes these, as opposed to putting them out for discussion, but it's probably the strongest macro-policy summary on climate change I have seen. It is also, by any reasonable construction of the word, a green socialist plan. When this is what the moderates are saying, I think it may be time for moderate capitalists to just surrender and start waving a red flag with a green theta.
  • Pour money like water into research into closed-carbon and non-carbon energy technologies in order to maximize the chance that we will get lucky—on energy technologies at least, if not on climate sensitivity.
  • Beg the rulers of China and India to properly understand their long-term interests
  • Nationalize the energy industry in the United States.
  • Restrict future climate negotiations to a group of seven—the U.S., the E.U., Japan, China, India, Indonesia, and Brazil—and enforce their agreement by substantial and painful trade sanctions on countries that do not accept their place in the resulting negotiated system.

2 comments:

Ted K said...

I always enjoy your posts on social issues Raven. You do a good job over here. Have you ever read Clark Clifford's book titled "Counsel to the President" ?? I think you would enjoy it very much, and you might be able to get it relatively cheap used on Amazon. It's a huge book and packed full of terrific political stories.

Raven Onthill said...

Thank you!

I think I'll look for that book at the library.