THE PAULSON PIECE, THE BRIEF

HANK PAULSON: Climate Change Risk Is The New Housing Bubble

Rob Wile, June 22, 2014 (Business Insider)

"Few were more intimately involved with manging the financial crisis than Hank Paulson, President George W. Bush's treasury secretary…In a new op-ed in the New York Times, Paulson says he's seeing the same stresses that nearly brought down the banking system, and which led to the Great Recession, are playing out in climate…[2008’s excess debt is 2013’s excess greenhouse gas emissions; flawed incentives to borrow for financed homes are today’s dependence on carbon-based fuels; the 2008 financial experts nobody listened to are 2013 climate scientists; and 2008’s risk to the global economy is today’s looming global climate disaster]...Paulson calls for the creation of a carbon tax, which he…[calls a ‘conservative’ solution that] allows market forces to put a price on allocating resources toward or away from addressing the problem…Paulson acknowledges that the U.S. alone can't address the situation — but that no one else will be moved to do so if it doesn't take the lead. And he takes his own Republican Party to task for not taking the crisis seriously, saying that the short term economic consequences will be swamped by the long-term ones that would come from doing nothing…” click here for more

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