Would you give 0.1 cents for every dollar you earned if you could save the planet? Where does that 0.1 cents number come from? Right here:
Humans need to make sweeping cuts in greenhouse gas emissions over the next 50 years to keep global warming in check, but it need cost only a tiny fraction of world output, a major UN climate change report said on Friday.The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), in the third of a series of reports, said keeping the rise in temperatures to within 2 degrees Centigrade would cost only 0.12 per cent of annual gross domestic product.
"It's a low premium to pay to reduce the risk of major climate damage," Bill Hare, a Greenpeace adviser who co-authored the report, told Reuters after the culmination of the marathon talks which ran over their four-day schedule.
So, what do you think? Can we afford 0.1 cents for every dollar we make, 10 cents per every 100 dollars, 1 dollar for every $1,000, 100 dollars for every $100,000 we earn if we can take a huge step towards saving the planet? Personally, I'd be willing to give a lot more to defend the only home we've got, but that's just me.
Unfortunately, something tells me that Dubya, in his infinite (lack of) wisdom, will say that even 0.1 cents per dollar represents "too great a burden" for the richest country ever in the history of humanity to afford. Oh yeah, he'll also argue that there's probably one (ExxonMobil-funded) scientist somewhere who still questions the powerful empircal evidence behind global warming. And, he'll conclude, let's not do anything, let's save that 0.1 cents to "go shopping" for, I dunno, a drop of oil perhaps...and let the earth burn. Hey, Armageddon's coming soon anyway, so what's the difference? And so what if God commanded humans to be good stewards over His creation, that's one of the commandments (like "thou shalt not kill") we choose to disregard, sort of like one of those signing statements. Heh heh.