Mother Nature's Dow

While I am convinced that our current financial crisis is the product of both the Market and the Mother Nature hitting the wall at once - telling us that we need to grow in more sustainable ways - some might ask this : We know when the market hits a wall; it shows up in red numbers on the Dow. But mother nature doesn't have a dow. What makes u think she is hitiing a wall too? And even if she is , who cares? When my economy is colapsing, its hard to worry about sea levels rising.

Its true Mother Naure doesn't tell us with one simple number how she's feeling. But if you follow climate science , what has been striking is how insistently some of the world's best scientists have been warning - in the past few months - that climate change is happening faster and will bring bigger changes quicker than we anticipated just a few years ago.

Indeed if Mother Nature had a dow, you could say that it, too , has been breaking into new scientific lows.

What to do?????

it would be nice to say , " Hey, Mother Nature , we are having a credit crisis, could you take a couple of years off? "

But the hard fact is Mother Nature is just Chemistry Biology & Physics and she is going to do whatever they dictate. You can't sweet talk Mother Nature or the Market. You have to change the economics to affect the Dow and the chemistry , biology & physics to affect Mother Nature.

There are 5 policies that can help us win the energy climate battle and each has been proven somewhere.

First : Building code :
Second : better vehicle fuel efficiency standards
Third : national renewable portfolio standard
Fourth : Decoupling
Finally building a price on Carbon - Polluting the atmosphere can't be free!!

These are the pillars of a climate bailout. Yes, some have upfront cost . But all of them would pay longterm dividends, because they would foster massive innovation in new clean technologies that would stimulate the real Dow and much lower emmissions that would stimualte the Climate Dow.

Source : New York Times News Service