The greenhouse gambit
- Investor Responsibility Research Center, Washington, DC (United States). Environmental Information Service
While forecasts of the economic costs and benefits of ameliorating global warming remain speculative, so, too, are the climate change projections that gird the debate. The consensus among most of the scientific community is that a doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide is likely to raise the mean global temperature of the Earth 3 to 8 degrees Fahrenheit by 2050. To put this forecast in some perspective, the planet was about 10 degrees cooler during the last Great Ice Age and about 10 degrees warmer dozing the Age of the Dinsosaurs. Accordingly, the warming could bring about dramatic changes in climate. But a prudent investor must be careful not to invest too much in pat assumptions about the greenhouse effect. The climate may have many surprises in store. Indeed, it has surprised climate forecasters already by not warming nearly as fast as their general circulation models have suggested it would. This book examines four industries with the most at stake in the greenhouse debate: agriculture, forest products, automobiles and electric power. All of these industries essentially face two choices: Act now to blunt the possible momentum of climate change, or wait and see if the basic forecast is correct, accommodating any change as it occurs. These choices involve a trade-off between further information-gathering to ensure a proper course of action and implementing a strategy, quickly to its intended effect. Such a trade-off is the essence of risk, the stuff of investing. For the purposes of this book, it defines the greenhouse gambit.''
- OSTI ID:
- 7225666
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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