Emission trading – Theregenerationproject.org
Parker presented three lenses that can be used to view and prioritize solutions to climate change. She gave a warning before describing the three lenses, “The purpose here is not to suggest that one lens is superior to another, but rather to articulate the differing perspectives in order to facilitate communication among different parties and interests”. Any way of categorization is a simplified model of understanding the reality. I view the solution to climate change more holistically, through a mix of all these three lenses with different priority levels: first economic, then technology and finally ecological.
The way we have been trying to reduce emission is by creating a target deadline and a target percentage reduction in emission. Failures to meet these targets have negative political and economic implications. Within this framework, timing is an important factor. Three lenses, or three sets of solutions, have different response timeframes. Economic solutions yield the fastest results. As soon as an economic policy is implemented companies need to start cutting emission or face increased costs of production. This is the fastest way to get factories to invest in the newest technology available and to incentivize new business models with less environmental impact.
On a different note, technology solutions require time to research and develop. Even with sufficient funding and incentives, the process from researching, building prototypes, and mass production takes a relatively long period of time to complete. Timeframe in research is an open-ended issue. Researchers cannot promise a specific deadline for delivery of a new technology.
Among all three lenses, ecological lens requires the most time to have any impact. Viewing environmental issues in terms of individual and institutional behavior requires change in societal values and education in response. Individual habits are already hard to change. Changing the way the whole society produces and consumes from an ethics- based angle take many times more effort and time than that. It may take generations before ecological solutions have significant impacts.
For all the above reasoning and assumptions, I view all the three approaches as equally important. Yet, they should be implemented in order of economic, technology and then ecological to really achieve emission reduction in a timely and efficient manner.
Luan Nguyen.
Tags: Luan Nguyen
