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| Title | [ETNEWS - Monday Forum] Green Growth Success Requires Enduring Hardship and Inconvenience | 2009.05.11 |
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FROM: ETNEWS [ETNEWS - Monday Forum] Green Growth Success Requires Enduring Hardship and Inconvenience With the government declaring low-carbon green growth as the nation’s core growth strategy, “green” is assuming its place as a trend of the times combining politics, economy, society and culture. In contrast with “sustainable growth,” which refers to growth within a scope that preserves the environment, and the “Green New Deal,” which is focused more on overcoming the economic crisis, the term “green growth” carries the most active policy determination, with overall growth promoted through the encouragement of green industries. As Hot, Flat and Crowded author Thomas Friedman predicts, the green industry has enough market potential to become one of the three major industries of the future along with defense and IT. For this reason, competitiveness in the green industry area will be linked with national competitiveness. But as I watch substantial discussions on green growth taking place, one fact that I would like to highlight is that as great as the potential of “green growth” is, we must also make preparations and steel ourselves for the “shadows” accompanying it. The transition to a low-carbon or carbon-neutral economic system represents a massive change in systems, and some temporary chaos, hardship and inconvenience is inevitable in the process. That process can be either an opportunity for success to all individuals and companies or a trap that leaves them falling behind. Some companies will transform themselves swiftly and emerge triumphant in the low-carbon economic system, but there could also be a number of companies that ignore the currents of the times and wind up lagging behind in competitiveness. The three major US automakers—Ford, General Motors and Chrysler—stand now in bankruptcy or on the brink of it. They are the first to be faced with the difficulties that arise from not having predicted or prepared themselves for the period of great upheaval that is the energy transition or energy revolution. The Green New Deal Group, an organization made up of British energy, environment and finance experts, made suggestions to the British government last July about the policies needed for the shift to a low-carbon economic system. They are urging the formation of such a system through maximized energy efficiency and the development of a carbon army to carry out an environmental reconstruction program, together with the establishment of high energy prices. Such prices are necessary because the resource investment necessary for the shift to a low-carbon economic system, such as technological development to increase energy efficiency and the development and distribution of new and renewable energy sources, will not happen as long as fossil energy prices remain low. Raising energy prices means suffering for everyone in the short term—the individual, businesses and the government. Households find themselves struggling not only with transportation and climate control costs but with an overall rise in the cost of goods, while companies suffer from increased production costs. Inflation and temporary economic sluggishness will create difficulties for the government and policy officials in formulating economic policy. Inconveniences will also follow in daily life. People will have to drive small, fuel-efficient cars or hybrid cars instead of big cars, and they will have to increase their use of public transportation or bicycles instead of the family car. They will have to find and use appliances that consume low levels of electricity, and they will have to adapt to a culture of preferring recycled goods to new ones. Politicians will find it hard to escape the temptation to pursue green growth that does not involve adopting unpopular policies of high oil prices and that minimizes additional rises in the price of energy. But if an increase in energy prices is shunned in order to avoid such hardship, the entire national economy will inevitably wind up falling behind in the green industry competition. Most of the countries that stand far ahead of South Korea in the distribution of new and renewable energy sources, such as Japan and the EU nations, assess high oil and carbon taxes on energy, while their gasoline and electricity prices are far higher than South Korea’s. In order for green growth policy to succeed, the government, politicians and public opinion leaders need to avoid planting rosy visions in people’s minds. They should instead be speaking frankly about the hidden side of those visions and persuading the people to meet the challenge. Green growth can only succeed when we have a broad base of the public realizing that we must endure some slight hardship and inconvenience in the short term in order to realize a larger vision for the future, and when we have everyone taking part voluntarily and offering their support. |
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| NO | Title | Date |
|---|---|---|
| 207 | [ETNEWS - Monday Forum] Green Growt... | 2009.05.11 |
| 206 | KOREA WILL ENSURE CONTINUITY BETWEE... | 2009.04.10 |
| 205 | [Korea Herald] 'Energy Olympics' br... | 2009.04.09 |
| 204 | [Korea Joongang Daily] Korea lags i... | 2009.04.09 |
| 203 | [JoongAng Daily] Recycling market t... | 2009.02.06 |
