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Green economy: Still a far cry?

Green economy

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!

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Source: groovygreen

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