The seven most powerful leaders of the free world met last month by the seaside in Carbis Bay in the glorious south west of England. The agenda was packed with meaty stuff to get their teeth stuck into. Responses to the global pandemic, a plan to deal with China and Russia, and pledges to do more to head off man made climate change before it’s too late, if it isn’t already. The saintly David Attenborough, gave them a ticking off and told them it wasn’t quite too late just yet, but they were leaving it pretty damn close and probably ought to crack on a bit.
The delegates ate pasties, admired the view, had a barbecue, a few of them even had a swim. At the end of it, aside from a fantastic bit of marketing for the Cornish tourist board, there seemed to be a bit more hot air than there was concrete. T’was ever thus.
Specifically the G7 pledged $100bn per year to help poorer countries do more to cut emissions, they promised to incentivise the switch to renewable energy from polluting coal power for the parts of the world unlikely to afford to fund the switch themselves. The G7 themselves renewed their commitment to keep temperature rises to no more than 1.5C above pre industrial levels.
Really though this was more or less a reaffirmation to do the things they said they would do before, but couldn’t because of the economic pressures of Covid.
Meanwhile in the developing world, the lack of funding from the G7, and the crippling financial and humanitarian problems of dealing with their own pandemic has left the poorest in the world with virtually zero chance of making any meaningful pledges on climate change. They all meet up again in Glasgow in November for the COP26 summit, a really really last chance to make some serious change, as David Attenborough will no doubt lecture to them again. So much for politics.
Capitalism meanwhile is racing ahead with astonishing speed. Auto makers, big ones, not the little guys in the garages, are making ambitious one way pledges. Jaguar will sell only electric cars by 2025, Lotus by 28, Volvo and Ford by 2030 and GM by 2035. By 2025 it is estimated that 20% of all new cars sold globally will be electric, 5 years after that 40% and by 2040 100%. Meanwhile battery technology is innovating at light speed. 10 years ago it cost $1,000 per kilowatt hour of battery power, now, around a tenth of that. Gigantic battery factories are springing up, notably an enormous facility in Northern Sweden gearing up to cope with this demand. Orders are being placed by the tens of billions of dollars and the investment cash is queuing around the block for a slice of the action. That cash is flowing everywhere. In China they are trialing rapid battery change facilities. Instead of charging your car or home for hours, they are repurposing roadside gas stations to allow you to drive your car in, while a team of robots perform a pitstop, dropping your dead battery out and replacing it with a fresh one in less than three minutes. This neat idea kills range anxiety, charging time, lack of private charging and what to do with the world’s gas stations and fleets of tankers in one simple elegant solution, and will soak up billions more investment cash no doubt provide a decent return on it. All this is just cars.
Power generation, agriculture, construction, engineering, finance itself, all are being supercharged at the birth of this next industrial revolution. The politicians don’t need to kick start it, just steer it a bit, if they can take a little time away from bumping elbows in front of a phalanx of clicking shutters.
Capitalism has its faults, many of them, but it is supremely efficient at providing what those who have money to spend, want to spend it on. It is lousy at providing for the needs of those with empty pockets. The twin problems of the global pandemic, and the global climate emergency are just that. Global. They need global solutions, if not they are not solutions at all. The richest countries are way ahead with their vaccination programmes, so can expect to resume normal economic activity sooner, the poor have fewer vaccines, so their economies will take longer to recover and thus they will have less to invest in greener technology. Sharing vaccines, and global investment capital around isn’t just a case for being compassionate, it also makes perfect sense. Capitalism won’t do this, politics ca, and must. If you are in a swimming pool with nine friends all taking a pee, two of you stopping isn’t going to make a material difference to how nice your swim is going to be. A solution that stops everyone is the only one that matters.
Phill McCoffers – The Islander Economics CorrespondentÂ
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