Economics: The User's Guide: A Pelican Introduction by Ha-Joon Chang

Author:Ha-Joon Chang [Chang, Ha-Joon]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Tags: Economics, Business & Economics, General
ISBN: 9780718197049
Google: 93rAAgAAQBAJ
Publisher: Penguin UK
Published: 2014-05-01T21:06:14+00:00

… but there are limits to technological solutions

However fast our technologies develop, there are still definite limits to the availability of non-renewable resources, even including those natural substances that are yet to become resources.

We won’t completely run out of any of the major resources in the near future. But their declining availability can make them unaffordable to poorer people, threatening their welfare or even existence. The rising price of water is already hurting poor people by increasing waterborne diseases and reducing their agricultural yields. Higher food prices would increase hunger and malnutrition. More expensive fuel would cause extra deaths of poor elderly people in winter even in the rich countries. As in the world of Neal Stephenson’s science-fiction novel The Diamond Age, poor people may be forced to cope with flimsy synthetic substitutes made with nano-technology, rather than real natural materials.

Far more urgent, of course, is the challenge of climate change, whose consequences are already being felt and certain to become extremely serious, if not necessarily catastrophic, within the next generation or two. And given this, it is extremely unlikely, if not logically impossible, that humanity will be able to come up with a purely technological solution to climate change in time that does not require any significant change in the way in which we live.

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