Today in green news:
“Macromyopia” and climate change. Will people be able to overcome self-interest or will it take a catastrophe to get us moving, just as it has with the credit crunch? That’s the question raised by Sailesh Rao in The NYT’s Dot Earth blog. It’s not a new quandary, but it’s a new way to look at it, complete with a GFC-related buzz word. Here’s just a bit of his depressing analogy:
At the moment, financial blogs are all abuzz over the phenomenon of “Macromyopia”. This is the inability of self-interested individuals to see beyond the next quarter and thus to have played along with the fiction that sub-prime No-Income-No-Job-No-Assets (NINJA) mortgages can be mashed up to form AAA rated financial securities forever.
Perhaps, Macromyopia is equally at play in all our environmental problems as well, and it might take a catastrophe for the majority of people to clamor for action.
Japanese company dyed in the wool greenies. ABC Rural this morning reports that “a Japanese wool apparel company has contributed $160,000 to improve the environment in Australia’s wool growing areas.” Onward Kashiyama gave the money to wool growers who had sought certification for farming their land in an environmentally friendly way.
Will Obama address climate change? There’s apparently plenty of speculation in Washington about just what US President Barack Obama will say about climate change in a speech to a joint session of Congress Tuesday night (1pm today AEST). Grist says “folks are already parsing what it means if Obama includes revenues from the auction of carbon credits in his proposed federal budget, due out later this week.”
But greenies shouldn’t get ahead of themeselves. Reports Grist: “one of Obama’s top environmental policy advisers downplayed the idea that the country will have a cap-and-trade plan (the administration’s preferred method of dealing with carbon emissions) in place this year, or that it’s even necessary to have a bill passed before the Copenhagen climate negotiations in December.”
