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Killing Cobras Won’t Solve Climate Change
The economic principle behind carbon credits failed in 1865.
For the last few decades there’s been a push for energy efficiency. Energy efficiency was meant to be a stopgap, a way for the world to slow down climate change until replacements for fossil fuels reached parity. Yet for all the efficiency we’ve enjoyed in cars, computers, and even energy production, our emissions have grown and climate change is getting worse.
What happened? And how do we stop it from continuing?
In the context of climate change, it doesn’t matter how efficient we can ever make our fossil fuel use. We’re still using fossil fuels. We’re still emitting.
Out of frustration, this has led to even stronger calls for efficiency, so much so that we can’t help repeating this mantra even for energy use from renewable sources.
To see why energy efficiency failed, let’s take a journey back in time.
Imagine you’re a character in Jules Verne’s book “Around the World in Eighty Days”. You find yourself in India during British rule. That’s when you learn Delhi has a cobra problem.
THE COBRA EFFECT
India in the 1880’s was a dangerous place. Over 20,000 people a year perished from venomous snake…