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A Safety Net for the Green Economy
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A Safety Net for the Green Economy

How to Protect Workers Hurt By the Fight Against Climate Change

Simone Tagliapietra
Foreign Affairs, 2021
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Editorial Rating

8

Qualities

  • Eye Opening
  • Well Structured
  • Visionary

Recommendation

The price of renewable energy has decreased markedly, something that should help government efforts to address climate change. But the state also has the responsibility to help those who will be displaced by such efforts. Professor Simone Tagliapietra draws sobering parallels between these imperatives and past failures in dealing with globalization’s effects. Yet he sees reason for optimism in fiscal plans to turn carbon emissions into carbon dividends that could support disadvantaged individuals and communities, while at the same time improving the environment and creating jobs.

Summary

Climate change mitigation demands bold actions that include economic protection for citizens.

In 2021, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned that nations had a thirty-year window in which to make significant reductions in carbon emissions to avoid irreversible, widespread climate disasters like wildfires, extreme heat, drought and floods. Policy makers need to act urgently to revamp the energy, transportation, residential and agricultural sectors, but the costs to do so will be high.

Expanded safeguards for affected individuals are a necessary component of green revolution policies, as officials learned from ...

About the Author

Simone Tagliapietra is a senior fellow at Bruegel and an adjunct professor at the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart in Milan.

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