David Roberts at Grist seems to have had an a ha! moment. In a long, wonky post about the "rebound effect," he frames the grand challenge of emissions reduction as a problem that offers one of two choices:
2a. Drive down global energy intensity. 2b. Drive down global economic growth.
Roberts runs through the math and concludes that "it will be extremely difficult to drive energy-intensity decline faster than economic growth." He also admits that it will "be extremely difficult to scale up low-carbon energy fast enough, especially in the short- to mid-term." The logical conclusion he arrives at:
So what option does that leave us? It seems we're back to 2b, the option that dare not speak its name: suppressing economic growth.
Roger Pielke Jr. gets a chuckle out of all this (while coughing "iron law") but gives Roberts props for
taking the time to run the numbers and ...
