Climate Change and Economic Policy

Paper Info
Page count 10
Word count 2866
Read time 10 min
Subject Environment
Type Essay
Language 🇺🇸 US

Climate change refers to variations in weather events that persist for extended periods. It entails primary causes, such as fossil fuel burning, including coal and oil, that release greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere. Also, deforestation and agricultural activities contribute to greenhouse gas escalation that results in climate change. It interferes with the normal progression of the natural economies resulting in uncertainties. Economic policy refers to the course of action that the government intends to control and influence economic behavior. The economic interventions include various systems such as the labor market, government budget, taxation, and national ownership. Economic policy focuses on creating market stability, employment protection, business growth, and economic prosperity. This paper critically analyzes the effects of climate change and capitalism on the economic growth, political and agricultural sector.

Effects of Climate Change and Capitalism

Climate change emanates from capitalism in the energy sources that contribute to greenhouse emissions that cause global warming. The extensive influence of fuel fossils for energy production presents damaging effects on the environment and the challenging ability to transform it. Climate change realizes several consequences globally as it ensures whether alterations require the operation within the uncertainties (Stock, 2020). Comparing the current global Earth’s surface temperature and the pre-industrial period, there is a rise of 1°C. The current atmospheric concentration regarding CO2 gas depicts an increase and the likelihood of a further annual increase. Climate change modeling reveals that the possibility of increasing the atmospheric temperature to the 2°C poses harm to the international community. The greenhouse discharge tends to impact the temperature, resulting in warming which is above average and its progression is likely to lead to a more severe alteration of weather pattern and climate change in the upcoming years. There is a need for intervention on the current greenhouse emissions to prevent the likelihood of temperature rise exceeding 2°C in the future. These emissions not only entail carbon dioxide but include other harmful gasses such as methane and hydrofluorocarbons.

The warming up due to climate change entails several economic impacts such as the prevalence of extreme weather conditions, including flooding, droughts, infrastructure network breakdown, and higher risks of food insecurity. Additionally, climate change ensures other economic consequences such as reduced agricultural productivity and pattern changes in rainfall events resulting in food system breakdowns (Stock, 2020). There are also high chances of disease development and mortality rates emanating from the food challenges, water-borne illnesses, and extreme temperatures. Individuals are likely to ensure conflicts under such undesirable conditions while others face displacement due to man’s technologies. The situation results in the loss of important species and marine ecosystems (Zenghelis, 2015). These effects adversely affect the families’ financial abilities and food production levels, including access to healthcare. Others lose loved ones in traumatic situations of natural calamities relating to high rainfall events resulting in floods that wipe out numerous community members.

Studies indicate that high temperatures that exceed the usual cause temperature rise in the sea level interfering with marine survival. This situation is responsible for marine life loss and extinction. Although the climate change impacts occur globally, they do not encompass equal distribution (Golub & Toman, 2016). The well-developed countries are more likely to establish interventions that reduce severity due to the economic status and technological advancement. The more impoverished communities and vulnerable countries face severe conditions emanating from the climatic changes affecting their survival and ability to gain financial stability to lead an everyday life.

Climate changes impact the agricultural sector by ensuring damages through high temperatures and the precipitation that affect productivity rates. These changes result in fluctuation of agricultural produce in the global markets, resulting in policy establishment as a worldwide concern (Golub & Toman, 2016). To ensure financial and food stability, they have to study climatic changes and adapt to the farming system’s most reliable progressions. There are encompassing uncertainties for the best farming advancement, and farmers focus on ensuring a living by changing the farming activities and crops that fit the prevailing climate change provisions. Farmers can also respond to the climate change impact by shifting to non-agricultural activities that improve economic stability. This situation’s implication and individuals’ adaptation to the mitigation strategies include ensuring irrigation abilities for better produce.

The Economic, Social and Ethical Challenges Related to Climate Change Effects

The climate change impacts affect economic stability due to the encompassing costs in the situation management. There are numerous uncertainties related to the global financial costs in response to such changes (Burke et al., 2015). Within a global gross domestic product (GDP), there is an estimate of a 0.2-2.0 annual cost that caters to the warming consequences. In situations entailing uncertainties, there is a likelihood of multiplicative effects resulting in higher input for the economies to handle the circumstances effectively.

The climate change impacts on different aspects such as civil conflicts, economic growth, and agricultural production depict uncertainties that prove problematic for the economies to estimate the possible costs. The economies engage in accounting projections to ensure proper response to the situations (Zenghelis, 2015). Although accounting is the best option in the advancement, it entails several significant elements due to the negative and positive outcomes. In most cases, an estimation team realizes worst situation outcomes due to underestimating the extensive multiple uncertainties. Researchers indicate that even under a knowledgeable study concerning climate change the team generation and results depict a wide range of impacts on the weather pattern (Zenghelis, 2015). These impacts adversely affect the economics progression resulting in the need to establish measures that ensure damage in future.

The social challenges entail communities in conflict over the scarce resources and financial stability. The severe impacts involve community displacement as individuals seek to establish financial stability (Golub & Toman, 2016). Through the advancement, it is challenging to adjust to the new lifestyle. Changes of routine affect solidarity due to different views on the best methods to adopt, ensuring global warming reduction. Also, the industrial progression affects the families through pollution, particularly those in the neighborhood.

There are several factors that are accompanied with changes of conditions of a particular place. The ethical challenges regarding the effects of climate change and capitalism entail ecosystem loss, the establishment of new injustice forms, undermining human rights, and the deepening of inequality levels concerning response abilities (Stock, 2020). The ethical operation entails a call for urgency in mitigating the effects entailing a precautionary approach in the prevention measures. Other ethical standards encompass solidarity, sustainability, equity, fairness, and integrity in decision-making capacities concerning mitigation policies.

New Business and Policy Models

Permanent climatic variations ensure significant challenges to capitalism due to the carbon dioxide emissions, especially the fossil fuels in the energy generation that contributes to the global economic stability. Carbon is an excellent foundation for capitalism since the invention of steam engines that utilized coal in operation and realized the Industrial Revolution (Cline, 2010). Even in the introduction of other energy sources like nuclear power and solar, the global world’s economy still inclines to carbon generating sources, including gas, oil, and coal. These latter sources constitute 80% of the worldwide economy’s energy use (Zenghelis, 2015). This situation implicates the high percentage of individuals across the world supporting the old technologies.

Capitalism suffers the consequence of carbon reduction and the adoption of less vulnerable energy sources to climate change. The mitigation policy intervention focuses on fossil carbon release reduction to zero to realize global temperature stabilization due to the primary greenhouse effect mechanism. The conceptual presentation indicates that greenhouse gasses stay in the atmosphere for more extended periods where accumulation causes temperature change (Zenghelis, 2015). This situation suggests that the stability establishment intervention should not focus on realizing a particular temperature level but instead focus on ensuring zero greenhouse gas emissions. The global economy has the option of entirely decarbonizing energy sources. There are options in net-worth emission reduction which include forest utilization and capture-storage techniques for natural carbon sinks. Technological implications in carbon reduction are ideal, but researchers argue that it may encompass other adverse effects on global warming. There is a dire need also to address the acidification challenges in the worldwide intervention economies.

Through gradual elimination of fossil fuels, capitalism faces a significant challenge based on the energy sources’ dominance in the economies for years to the contemporary progression. This situation results in nuclear power replacement, and renewable energy serves as the best move for global warming reduction. The IPCC’s climate projection indicates that the global economy’s likelihood of maintaining a 2°C should ensure a net zero carbon emission by 2065 to 2085 (Zenghelis, 2015). Also, to avoid a rise in global warming, the greenhouse gas requires containment. The adoption of environmentally friendly forms of energy works well with the combination of electricity storage for carbon. Other sectors such as transport also require vehicle electrification and utilization of hydrogen fuel cells originating from clean sources. Such progressions are essential in the actualization of new business ideas under technological advancement in the contemporary world. Additionally, the adoption of economies ensures stability in the market and compliance to the environmental requirements limiting the greenhouse gas effect.

Researchers indicate that electric vehicles are the best in reducing greenhouse gas emission reduction due to several advantages, although they encompass temporal situations. The electricity works best in reducing carbon dioxide emission by requiring the car-owners to charge the cars using low-carbon electric sources (Golub & Toman, 2016). These vehicles work best in moderate temperatures allowing for maximum carbon dioxide reduction. Additionally, they are the best as they allow for car charging at night, reducing enhancing the progression on the utility usage. This advancement entails higher energy usage, and the economic policies forge towards ensuring efficiency to align with the consumption rate. Most regions entailing renewable energy utilization, such as California, depict a wide range of adoption to electric vehicle usage, and the global progression is key (Zenghelis, 2015). Apart from transportation, the global economy focuses on utilizing electricity in other sectors in towns and cities to improve the greenhouse emission effect. This situation implicates major shifts regarding production, production, consumption, and distribution patterns.

Climate change effects entail the economic development approach in similar ways it does to the environmental pollution crisis. The progression views carbon pricing as the ultimate method in countering the global warming challenge above other natural strategies that are prevalent. Economics has to deal with climatic changes such as pollution regarding carbon emission and ocean acidification (Stock, 2020). There entails the need to establish natural sources that minimize the emissions’ accumulation in the atmosphere, such as the forests. This situation also entails minimizing human activities in their operations, encompassing exploitative agricultural activities and deforestation that affect carbon dioxide’s possible absorption. The economic process in the case adopts the notion of realizing the best environmental outcome under equilibrium of marginal costs in pollution elimination and benefits gained.

Economics view global warming as a pollution form and an externality in the market-based transaction, emitting greenhouse gasses. As greenhouse gasses release rise, it increases warming, establishing a damage role. This situation results in measuring carbon’s social cost, which, through internalizing, creates carbon pricing (Golub & Toman, 2016). Economics utilizes the progression by creating emission trading schemes or ensuring carbon tax which provides incentives in the long run as the actors reduce CO2 they generate. In the event of equilibrium about the tax rate and carbon’s social cost, there is an achievement of optimal warming level.

This framework provides climate businesses and economists with conceptual tools and a classical approach to the global warming crisis. The carbon pricing policy qualifies as an outstanding and favorable measure in the climate change effects solution. Its best qualities entail the cost-effective nature of emission reduction. The approach is also non-discriminatory as it possesses transparency measures and allows for price signal realization, ensuring that markets establish efficient short-term emission reduction forms. The pricing activity in the carbon helps in reducing the dangerous operation and over-consumption tendencies. Despite the pricing activity, the policy cannot work single-handedly due to the scale and urgency the decarbonization requires for stability in the global temperatures and realization of safety levels. This situation originates from the uniqueness of carbon as a pollutant and its inclination on economics.

Economic Sacrifices and Opportunities

To actualize changes in the climate change effect, the economies experience sacrificial and opportunistic phases, requiring an individual’s intellectual ability to understand the options and choose the best. Carbon gas entails the negative and positive aspects depicting its ability to harness the power and cause environmental pollution. Research in renewable energies equates carbon’s insignificance in energy generation to lead and petrol (Zenghelis, 2015). The studies further indicate that lead metal entailed a manageable control measure for elimination and reduction, such as changing an element in the production process, carbon proves challenging to solve (Zenghelis, 2015). Carbon elimination requires extensive fundamental changes in the expansive global infrastructure. The pollutant powers the economic activities in all the encompassing sectors to the international economy level. It inclines to main physical structures in contemporary societies, including the economies implicating that the ability to realize an effective solution relies on a complex strategy establishment. Carbon is a pervasive pollutant on a global scale, based on the emission and effect levels. This situation implicates the centrality of carbon to capitalism and the challenging task in the elimination.

Additionally, the economies’ ideas on static equilibrium establishment in the market as a correctional operation through minor failures are a marginalized approach and cannot address the carbon issue. The challenging nature of the carbon issue entails centrality to capitalism and depicting several aspects that require re-shaping modalities (Barkenbus, 2017). These issues encompass the re-definition of individual technologies and the consumption, production, and distribution systems. The economies need to base on evolutionary aspects and institutional thoughts to understand the economic change dynamics. There is also a need to understand the fundamental innovation development the path-dependence functions for system change.

The economic progression entails the adoption of technological measures in solving the climate change challenges. Research indicates that economic growth in recent years emanates from technological man’s technological innovations that contribute to a self-sufficient life. Human beings utilize acquired knowledge to devise new production, consumption, and distribution ways that contribute to a reliable environment that is pollution-free (Barkenbus, 2017). Knowledge utilization leads to harnessing non-carbon energy sources by utilizing the Earth’s natural resources like the solar system and wind. Additionally, the innovative progression entails an economies’ increased shift to information-based services and knowledge capital. Innovation contributes to the material economy in attaining a steady functioning in the sustainability and resource utilization. Additionally, this situation enhances economic and individual development and prosperity. The whole progression ensures a coupled material, human and financial growth.

Political Support for Change

Governments utilize economic models in the evaluation and determining the viable policy options regarding challenging issues. The political progression bases on the national economic methods to adopt sectorial and particular policies such as subsidies in the renewal energy utilization and social carbon costs. The political sector is critical in contributing to change achievement, and liaising economies under different levels can ensure change that limits greenhouse emissions. For instance, by understanding the historical and present energy sources, economies indicate that climate change affects productivity and contemporary technology indicates a significant operational difference. It is crucial that the political advancement enhance the adoption of modern technologies on harnessing energy.

Politics support the research activities and mobilize the communities regarding the best measures to adopt to reduce the severity of the consequences. Through the advancement, they help the communities understand the need to adopt renewable energy sources that reduce global warming effects. When the environment has favorable conditions, it means a nation can increase its production in the agricultural sector and hence the economic will grow faster. The technological establishment of less vulnerable measures and lower-emission energy sources indicates increased returns (Cline, 2010). The long-existing old technologies depict the harmful effects of climate change and the diminishing returns. The overdependence on the old technologies explains the global warming effects that affect the communities’ survival and economic stability. This situation calls for establishing new technologies in the contemporary global world that are greenhouse emission compliant minimizing climate change effects.

In conclusion, climate change entails numerous impacts that threaten human survival due to the global warming effect. Some consequences of climate change and capitalism include community displacement, conflict crisis, loss of the ecosystem, natural calamities such as floods and drought. These impacts encompass social, economic, and ethical challenges. The economic difficulties entail market and financial stability, including accountability, while social problems involve displacement and ethical progression, with six principles encompassing the morality approach. The economic strategy in the concept entails new businesses and policy models. This strategy forges towards creating zero greenhouse emissions into the atmosphere. To realize better results, the new model requires an adoption of technological and natural measures of carbon dioxide sink such forestation and electricity storage. Economic advancement adopts the sacrificial and opportunistic approach to ensuring a solution to capitalism in climate change. This situation depicts carbon dioxide as a pollutant and a pricing commodity. Lastly, the political progression works on supporting a call for change. It supports the economies in the research activities, accountability, and policy implementation.

References

Barkenbus, J. (2017). Electric vehicles: Climate saviors, or not? Issues in Science and Technology, 33(2), 55-59.

Burke, M., Dykema, J., Lobell, D. B., Miguel, E., & Satyanath, S. (2015). Incorporating climate uncertainty into estimates of climate change impacts. The Review of Economics and Statistics, 97(2), 461-471. Web.

Cline, W. R. (2010). Economic analysis and climate change policy. Climatic Change, 101(3-4), 387-394. Web.

Golub, A., & Toman, M. (2016). Climate change, industrial transformation, and “environmental growth traps”. Environmental and Resource Economics, 63(2), 249-263. Web.

Stock, J. H. (2020). Climate change, climate policy, and economic growth. National Bureau of Economic Research Macroeconomics Annual, 34(1), 399-419.

Zenghelis, D. (2015). 10. Decarbonisation: Innovation and the economics of climate change. The Political Quarterly, 86(S1), 172-190. Web.

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EduRaven. (2022, June 14). Climate Change and Economic Policy. https://eduraven.com/climate-change-and-economic-policy/

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"Climate Change and Economic Policy." EduRaven, 14 June 2022, eduraven.com/climate-change-and-economic-policy/.

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EduRaven. (2022) 'Climate Change and Economic Policy'. 14 June.

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EduRaven. 2022. "Climate Change and Economic Policy." June 14, 2022. https://eduraven.com/climate-change-and-economic-policy/.

1. EduRaven. "Climate Change and Economic Policy." June 14, 2022. https://eduraven.com/climate-change-and-economic-policy/.


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EduRaven. "Climate Change and Economic Policy." June 14, 2022. https://eduraven.com/climate-change-and-economic-policy/.

References

EduRaven. 2022. "Climate Change and Economic Policy." June 14, 2022. https://eduraven.com/climate-change-and-economic-policy/.

1. EduRaven. "Climate Change and Economic Policy." June 14, 2022. https://eduraven.com/climate-change-and-economic-policy/.


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EduRaven. "Climate Change and Economic Policy." June 14, 2022. https://eduraven.com/climate-change-and-economic-policy/.