The Paris Climate Deal, which will be signed in December, is now estimated to add $90 trillion to the economy over the next several decades while reducing our carbon emissions to zero by around 2080. This would double the size of our economy along with the size of the world economy.
The main concern is that it would be unequally distributed -- would this money go to the 1%, or would it reverse the disturbing trend of inequality that we are seeing in the world today? We talked about Basic Income and changing the culture of our economy from one that is debt-based to one that is based on sharing. If we do not change the way things are going now, we will see even more inequality and even more social upheaval even if we do reverse the effects of climate change. But if we use this deal as an opportunity to transition to an economy that is based on sharing and one that recognizes the inherent worth of every human being, then we will solve a host of other problems as well.
Currently, our GDP is around $17 trillion, according to the World Bank. The Gross World Product, or the sum of all combined GDP's in the world, is around $78 trillion according to the CIA World Factbook; both figures are as of 2014. Assuming the US maintaining the same percentage of the world's GWP, if we were to add $90 trillion to the current world economy through green energy, our GDP would grow to $36.6 trillion over the next few decades. This number does not include the industries lost to this change such as coal or fracking, so this number may well be lower. However, the amount that we would add to our economy would more than offset that.
Consequently, over the next few decades, the money we could raise to pay for a Basic Income would grow. I estimated that we could raise a dividend of around $30,000 a year for everybody over 18 in addition to single payer, a $15/hour minimum wage, Social Security, and all other government programs intact along with cutting defense spending. In addition, in the discussion, we found we could raise even more for every man, woman, and child through regulatory fees and the sale of public property and spectrum. That could grow in size over time as we collected an ever-increasing tax base from new corporations formed to take advantage of the new $90 trillion economy.
One of the biggest obstacles to a deal had been the reluctance of China and India to sign on to any such deal. But in the last few years, they have come on board. China alone, for instance, has invested $80 billion in renewable energy just last year. Initial pledges by 2030 amount to around $13.5 trillion of investments, which will swell as the momentum from investment in green energy takes place. Already, the problems of wind and solar energy storage are being solved at a much faster rate than anyone had thought possible just six years ago.
By contrast, the coal industry is fighting reality tooth and nail like Exxon/Mobil is with climate change and the tobacco industry did when health risks from smoking first became known. Case in point -- Murray Industries, which is accused of trying to silence whistleblowers. As an example, CEO Bob Murray called mandatory meetings of employees at which he gave slide shows with captions like, "Now, let's take a moment to think about your job suddenly being gone." The problem is that people like Mr. Murray think that it is a leak problem and a problem with regulators when the reality is that "clean" coal and other polluting industries are going the way of the dinosaur like the rail industry ran the canal industry out of business in the 19th century. From The Telegraph:
Shell says a carbon price of $40 would bring CCS into play under current technology - some say $80 - but that in itself would shift the balance of advantage further in favour of renewables just as the cross-over point arrives. In large parts of Africa it already has: it is cheaper and quicker to install micro-grids based on solar power than to bother with power stations.
The old energy order is living on borrowed time. You can, in a sense, compare what is happening to the decline of Britain’s canals in the mid-19th century when railways burst onto the scene and drove down cargo tolls, destroying the business model.
Technology takes no prisoners. Nor does politics. World leaders have repeatedly stated that they would defend the line of a 'two degree planet’, and now they are taking the concrete steps to do so. Fossil investors have been warned.
And if we do not act, we will simply trade one set of problems for another -- climate change for massive unemployment caused by technology and robots. Basic Income will help us, as a society, mitigate the disruption caused by technological displacement and climate change. It's not that our politicians can't pay for it; it's that they don't want to.