I Am a Carbon Abolitionist. Are You?

This excellent piece by economist Eric Beinhocker radiates moral clarity:

History tells us that mass social movements always have a moral argument at their core. The anti-slavery movement only took off once white people in Europe and America began to see people of African descent not as property but as people. The argument that won wasn’t over the economics of slavery, or whether slavery was in the self-interest of white people or not. The argument that mobilized the abolition movement, and eventually gave it political power, was that enslaving other human beings is evil and had to be stopped...

The climate change movement must become a Carbon Abolition movement. There will inevitably be a diversity of views on what a zero-carbon economy looks like and how to get there. But there must be absolute unity and clarity that the current carbon economy is immoral and must end, and that net-positive carbon emissions must be illegal in all countries by 2050...

Under slavery, white people benefitted economically and socially by harming people of African descent. Under the fossil economy, people alive today benefit economically and socially by harming, and perhaps even extinguishing, future generations. Pre-1970s we had an excuse, we didn’t know; and perhaps even as late as the 1990s some could argue that we didn’t know for sure. But now we do know. Carbon emissions are a moral wrong, they are destroying life on Earth, and must be abolished.