Transcript
CARLOS PASCUAL
: This is really an existential issue that is at the core of the viability of the plant. When we read reports on climate change and its impacts, what it can do to flooding and desertification, its impact on crops, its impact on disease, the possible impacts on conflict over resources, one would think of course this would focus attention and result in viable solutions. Then we get into the complexity of the question, and it does not mean that the focus dissipates, but suddenly we are in to realities that anybody who is emitting greenhouse gases has them joining together in the atmosphere, so regardless of where the emission comes from, it has an impact on everybody.
We have temporal questions that most of the benefits are in the future but the costs are today. We have a problem that has been created principally by the industrialized world, the principal emitters of carbon in the future are going to be from the developing world and they are wondering why is it that we should restrain ourselves if in fact somebody else actually created this problem.
If we start aligning policies with technology, we start to find that there are actually huge gaps to achieve the kinds of outcomes that even the widest range of scientific projections have suggested are necessary. Then if we think about what the formula is to actually achieve some of those technological changes, we inevitably have to come to questions about the pricing of carbon because if you do not price it, why should anybody innovate. And of course, the minute that you start imposing those prices, we all come back to our domestic constituencies and we ask the question of what industries and what labor groups are affected and how do you deal with those kinds of questions. It is this complex network that is going to have to be dealt with in national policy and in international policy, and it is in this context that we really have this panel today and I am sure that they will resolve all of these questions for us in the debate that we have today.
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