Don Gerritsen - woensdag 17 februari 2010 Skeptical sustainable society

The outcome of the United Nations Climate Summit was below expectations for many. However, many member states have officially committed to the ‘Copenhagen Accord', in which several countries have pledged in favour of limiting global warming to a maximum of 2 degrees Celsius. Nevertheless, with the current commitments (few quantitative reduction percentages, see link) the global temperature will increase by no less than 4 degrees in by the year 2100. Is this a reason to sit back and relax? A reason to throw the towel into the ring and leave the ambition of a sustainable economy behind? I don't think so.

The urgency to invest in sustainability widely known. In my opinion, it's not the question if we will develop into a sustainable economy. The question is when it happens and, more importantly, at how fast a pace of development. However, a not to be underestimated percentage of the Netherlands population is still not willing to contribute to sustainable investment. Let me view the theme sustainable energy through the eyes of a sustainability skeptic, for the purpose of this blog. Let's assume that sustainability has no merits and is merely expensive, for ease's sake. Even from a skeptic's perspective, there are manifold reasons to invest in a sustainable economy. I'm giving three here.

An important reason is the supply certainty of energy and the directly related market price development. Any toddler knows fossil resources become scarcer every day. Renewable, inexhaustible resources will become a primary necessity to supply the entire world population (of up to 9 billion by 2050) with primary energy needs. A striking example is China's energy policy. On the one hand, China is notorious for its exponentially growing amount of coal fired power plants. On the other hand, China invests massively on domestic wind energy. The Netherlands, with a mere 3% share of renewable energy and an enormous potential in off shore wind energy in the North Sea, will be overtaken shortly by more progressive countries, within and beyond Europe.

This brings me to the second reason: geopolitics. No scientific evidence is needed to prove geopolitical conflicts have arisen and have been fought due to differing interests in natural resources. Investing in sustainable energy supply is a powerful way to temper our dependence on foreign energy, thus avoiding to change the balance of power. As history's proved, geopolitical conflicts have severe consequences (Russian influence in Ukraine by dependence of Russian gas supply, for example).

A last, certainly not less important reason is the possibility of making money through investing in sustainability. At various different scale levels, one can make money every month with little effort. At home as well as internationally, through investing in ever growing green energy funds, for example. There's nothing new under the sun.

Investing in a sustainable economy can easily solve problems for ourselves, our children and grandchildren. Declining natural resources, geopolitical- and financial reasons are abundant.

And are we thus helping the Earth's temperature to remain below 2 degrees increase?

That's cool.

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