As has been seen in other articles about economic growth and climate change, there are people who see this global phenomenon as an opportunity to increase productivity and promote the economic growth of the countries. This is what the British economist Dimitri Zenghelis thinks.
What is this economist based on to think that climate change is an opportunity to grow economically and not see it as a global threat?
Economy and climate change
Dimitri Zenghelis is Co-Director of Policy at the Grantham Research Institute at the London School of Economics and believes that climate change is an economic opportunity to grow. Faced with the growing need for an energy transition based on decarbonisation and the use of renewable energies, Dimitri thinks that betting on clean energies and energy efficiency can bring economic benefits for a country. The search for innovative solutions can be seen as a economic opportunity in climate change.
Economic factors to take into account such as acceleration in innovation and production, an increase in knowledge, development of more efficient technology and an increase in productivity in the most traditional economic sectors can cause the creation of new jobs and with better wages.
By way of a "cold war", humanity faces a scenario in which climate change is 'putting pressure' on humans to create the necessary technology for its adaptation. For this reason, all the arguments that Dimitri exposes fit into the Economics of Climate Change. This discipline is defended by the teacher as an action that consists of "putting hands on the matter" and being able to face situations of reduction of the present and future risks that increases in temperatures entail and mix them with a good way of working that consists of lower costs to prevent and alleviate these problems.
Benefits of combating climate change
Dimitri is not arguing that climate change is an event from which economic benefit can be obtained in itself, but rather that stopping it can help in the economic growth of many countries, since this time the population is forced to grow and develop in a way that does not harm the climate. This idea suggests that a change in the way of production can be seen as a economic opportunity in the face of climate change.
Until now, an exact way of being productive has been maintained: polluting to produce and grow economically. A country's greenhouse gas emissions are closely correlated with its GDP. That is, richer countries that obtain annual GDP growth is higher as its greenhouse gas emissions are higher. However, in a scenario where the need to reduce the effects of climate change prevails, this does not have to be the case.
This economist focuses more on the benefits that innovation generates than on the costs that it entails.
"What climate change can mean is unknown territory for humans and that is why it is so difficult to quantify and know what is really going to happen," he explains.
Stop climate change in time
Of course, as is reasonable, all these economic benefits can be obtained as long as they are achieved within a not very long period of time. That is to say, climate change is a real problem and requires its disappearance as soon as possible. Therefore, it is necessary to address all these issues in time, as discussed in other articles on this topic, such as the need to measures to address Spain's vulnerability to climate change.
Most of the traditional sectors of the economy have already calculated the amount that it will cost them to be able to modify all their production models in the current situation and they know which politicians they can pressure to carry out these changes.
The main problems faced by this situation are resistance to change in production models and calculation problems. This makes the discipline take longer to implement, since we all tend to buy the cheapest, without thinking how much it has polluted in its production. Nor are we seeing which bank invests more in green projects.
Therefore, an external entity is needed to force us to carry out that economic paradigm shift that can be, in this case, climate change.
