Let me say, that in spite of lobbying for years already that there is very little movement from any government on this subject. The back sliding bureaucratic paper pushing hyenas do nothing for as long as possible, probably on the assumption that nothing will affect them in their ivory towers and they can continue to govern over a few rebellious cinders, come the inevitable disaster.
The actual borrowing would have to be worldwide! Cleaning up our 1.5% won't hurt and might dull the tipping point somewhat; that is something science cannot tell us. The size of the borrowing? Roughly the same scale and intensity as that during World War 2 might do it. There's a lot of documentation on that, so I'll leave the interested reader (if there are any left alive here
) to seek that for themselves. For scale, the USA borrowed 112% of GDP during World War 2, so it's pretty "radical" like I said at the start. When will it be paid back? No one worried during the conflict of WW2 how it was to be paid back...
eventually...at least someone might be around to be asking for it
World War 2 was financially paid for,
eventually, but a lot of debt was "forgiven" as well it may have been to build a better world (and gain political influence). Compare that with the "reparations" after WW1 that led to (yes) WW2. This is not a "moral" challenge as described by Mr Rudd, but an existential challenge.
What would I spend it on? All the things you mention a.s.a.p. Re-forestation, renewable energy, and so on. I would (spending the money like a drunken sailor here) aim to have every house and business in Australia running on solar power and batteries by 2025 and every coal-fired power station closed down and replaced with wind, solar and battery farms (800 billion to 1 trillion$). I do
not see anything "unreliable" about renewables with storage on the large or small scale. There is no evidence, for example, from the wind farm and "big battery" installation in S.A. that it has done anything but a good job. The electricity providers are so pleased with the thing that they want the spot market reduce to 5 minutes from 30 minutes so they can make more money than they are now. It will have paid for itself in 5 years or so, which is pretty good in today's world. None of that matters though when you are faced with
existential crises (like WW2, and climate change).
Oil-fired ships and aircraft, particularly the latter, cannot be avoided short term (<5 yrs). Aircraft contribute ~2% to worldwide pollution. Ships are a much worse case. They can
individually pollute as much as
millions of cars. Therefore, they have to be re-fitted to run on cleaner fuels. Here is a role for Hydrogen as a fuel, (in both cases). Not so great on the roads where we don't want little stations with highly explosive fuels (hydrogen) replacing little stations full of highly explosive fuels (petrol). Strictly managed and controlled use of hydrogen by expert fuelers at airports is a lot safer than every man and his dog handling the stuff. If everything other source of pollution were reduced we could survive a little longer running current aircraft, perhaps, but, given a decent engine that no one has thought to develop yet, who knows? Hydrogen is the most energy dense fuel in the universe. Using it wisely in ships and aircraft engines seems logical.
Overall, I take some solace from the Chinese attitude. They are going renewable and electric at a great rate, most likely because they feel the need to go on breathing
This is one (perhaps only) advantage of a totalitarian system. The order is given, and it is done. We have cheaper and better solar panels (in the main) these days because the Chinese manufactured the *sugar* out of the industry and brought the price down. Competition is fierce and the product is getting better every year.
