What could $1 trillion buy?

Scanning my BBC newsfeed headlines this morning, I was struck by one juxtaposition. World scientists urge CO2 action was right next to Weapons spending tops $1 trillion.

I’m usually wary of simplistic equations in the form “if only 10% of spending on x were spent on y”. But particularly on the day when Tony Blair is going to get cold comfort from president Bush on significantly increased aid to Africa and even colder comfort on climate change, the news that we collectively spend $1 trillion on weapons (the US alone accounts for 47% of the total) strikes home.

Sadly, some of the weapons spending is necessary. I’m not a pacifist, and even though I’m sceptical about the so-called Global War on Terrorism, I want to make sure that the good guys do have the means to combat the bad guys. But $1 trillion buys a lot of weaponry, most of it, I suspect, of little relevance to fighting the non-state actors behind most terrorist threats.

As the combined science academies declared in the other headline that caught my eye, there is another threat facing everyone on the planet. I don’t have the figures for what we spend collectively on responding to greenhouse gas emissions, but the total budget for the US Department of Energy — which has primary responsibility for funding research on new energy technologies (as well as looking after the US nuclear weapons program and much else) — is only $24.3 billion, which shows how low in the Washington pecking order it is.

If you’re a climate change denier reading this, I think you’re profoundly wrong (and there’s an absolutely overwhelming scientific consensus behind my view). But even if you don’t think climate change is serious, the world is really facing a simple choice. We can let the experiment of increasing carbon in the atmosphere continue to run and see what the consequences are. When we find out, it will be way too late to do anything about it. Or we can take action to stabilize carbon concentrations over the next couple of decades.

Have a look at Nate Lewis’s calculations to understand our options. There aren’t as many routes out of our mess as many people think. We need to start putting serious money into finding viable, non-carbon emitting technologies. Just think what a fraction of that $1 trillion could do.

One thought on “What could $1 trillion buy?

  1. GeorgeOTJ

    My brann has difficulty in getting the concept of $1 trillion right – too big. So, I tried this. If I stood on a street corner in Beijing and shook hands with a citizen every 10 seconds, 24 hours a day, 364 days a year it would still take me 316,994 years to shake hands with 1 trillion people. That’s an awful big wad of money to be spending on arms and weapons – a year!

    Reply

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