Most important, a 100% renewables target confuses means with ends. The priority for the planet is to stop net emissions of greenhouse gases, especially carbon dioxide. Putting too much emphasis on wind, solar and other renewables may block off better carbon-reduction paths. 'The Economist', dated 15 JulyNo. The real ends of policy have to do with the problems caused by climate change. Whether, and by how much, greenhouse gas (ghg) emissions contribute to those problems is still an open question. And, whatever the answer to that question, still more important to policymakers is whether reducing ghg emissions is the best way of dealing with climate change. For that, we need to go beyond the cant about renewables and beyond the Economist's - and almost everyone else's - focus on greenhouse gases to ask whether we are more concerned about climate change, or about the impacts of climate change on human, animal and plant life?
A Social Policy Bond regime would not assume that reducing ghgs is the best way of achieving our goals. Instead it would specify very clearly what our goal actually is. Most likely, we would express our policy goal as a combination of physical, social, biological and financial measures that must fall within specified ranges for a sustained period. We'd then issue Climate Stability Bonds that would be redeemed only when that had occurred.
Unfortunately an entire bureaucracy has grown around ghg emissions. It seems to me that the existence and activities of this bureaucracy embody the assumption that our trying (and most probably failing, though we'd never know either way) to influence the climate is the most efficient way of dealing with problems caused by unfavourable changes in the climate. I think that assumption needs to be challenged. Clarity about what actually we want to achieve, of the sort that a Social Policy Bond approach would necessitate, is the only feasible starting point.
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