Policy makers are now giving priority to the credit crisis that is threatening to push the whole world in to recession. They feel that the great problems of climate change, resource depletion and food security are less urgent but this could lead to disaster as less government and bank funding is available for sustainable projects.
Already, Texan oilman T Boone Pickens has been forced to delay plans to build the world’s biggest wind farm, partly because of the difficulty in borrowing money.
We should really be questioning if continuous rapid growth of the world economy is possible without damaging the Earth’s capacity to produce enough food for an expanding population. We need to find a way for all the people of the world to live a good life while using less fossil energy. We need innovative ways to reduce energy consumption and to efficiently collect the abundant solar energy reaching us every day.
While fossil energy is still cheap there is no incentive to do this, so the massive tax increases that will come about because of government borrowing should be energy taxes. Jobs would then be created in the new industries that would spring up providing renewable energy and building energy efficient products and infrastructure.