With the mounting public pressure against global warming, even the usually stubborn politicians and diplomats are also turning “green” nowadays. The two US presidential candidates have also declared their commitment for “green” policies. Not to forget all those international summits and conferences. But the question is whether the green economy is really sustainable or even achievable or not?
Recent observations have basically pointed out three facets of the problem. Firstly, the US economy has been more or less stagnant over the last few years with minimal growth or job creation. They simply don’t have enough capital for new ventures that can lead to a greener future as such new initiatives will require huge amount of initial investments to make them viable business options.
Secondly, due to the stagnant economy as well as rising inflation the consumer pockets are also shrinking. They are hardly in any condition to spend extra money despite the goodwill. As a matter of fact, most of these fashionable “green” technologies are intimidatingly expensive.
Thirdly, the infrastructure is aging and will require huge investments to adapt these new technologies. Especially the electric grid is too old and ill maintained to support the new initiatives. Infrastructure costs are going to be so high that it is going to affect the actual research budget!
The above reasons are mainly cited for the US economy but they hold good for most of the countries. Another point worth noting is that whatever technologies we have today, are perfected over last couple of centuries. Be it the internal combustion engine or the locomotive, it has taken decades of efforts by brilliant minds of our times to find out the perfect product. Even at a very optimistic estimate, it will take at least fifty years to find out the perfect green alternatives. So we can only hope that the process gets faster and turns out to be “pocket friendly” as well!
Image Source: groovygreen
Systemic change does take time and investment. For the most part, I can see how the average person may feel like there’s little they can do to hasten the onset of a greener economy (other than, say, attending to conservation and personal consumption practices). I think that the more people ’vote with our dollars’ in terms of aiming their personal investment money toward institutions that focus on the green sector, the more likely we’ll see the systemic changes we desire. The bank I work with, Shore Bank, is an environmentally-focused bank (has been since 1973). It uses customer capital for social good. It’s got a High-Yield Savings Account that earns 3.5%APY, is FDIC insured, and has online tools, etc, just like the other banks - where the money is used to develop green businesses, community-focused enterprises, and the like. For more info, you might find this story of the bank’s work in creating green jobs in Chicago helpful and inspiring: http://shorebankdirect.sbk.com/stories/indie_energy.asp.