'Rising Sun'

Paul Krugman:

Rising Sun: Joe Romm draws our attention to the third slice of the latest IPCC report on climate change, on the costs of mitigation; the panel finds that these costs aren’t that big — a few percent of GDP even by the end of the century, which means only a trivial hit to the growth rate. ...

In fact, you should be optimistic...: the technological prospects for a low-emission economy have gotten dramatically better.

It’s kind of odd how little attention the media give to the solar revolution, but this is really huge stuff:

In fact, it’s possible that solar will displace coal even without special incentives. But we can’t count on that. What we do know is that it’s no longer remotely true that we need to keep burning coal to satisfy electricity demand. The way is open to a drastic reduction in emissions, at not very high cost.

And that should make us optimistic about the future, right? I mean, all that stands in our way is prejudice, ignorance, and vested interests. Oh, wait.