Interesting article in the WSJ yesterday.

[Hambone]

It's time for a rethink on climate change.

For two decades, world leaders have been trying—and failing—to hammer out a workable deal on global warming. Now they're meeting once again, this time in Cancún, Mexico, to kick around the same issues one more time—and, inevitably, stumble over all of the same roadblocks.

At the heart of it, these deals all come down to mandating emissions cuts, which means paying a lot more for energy. Some greens deny it, but clean energy still costs vastly more than fossil fuels. Significantly raising energy costs slows economic growth—something no country wants to do.

As a result, every country has an incentive to point the finger at someone else, while trying to game the system: sheltering key industries, understating emissions and overstating reductions.

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Stephen Savage

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There is a better way. Nations should focus on lowering the cost of clean energy, not raising the cost of fossil energy. The goal? Make clean energy cheap enough to become a viable option for poor as well as rich nations. Until that happens, emissions will continue to rise, and no effort to regulate carbon can succeed.

How do we accomplish that? Stop subsidizing old technology that will never compete with fossil fuels and create incentives for innovation. Along with ramping up support for research, governments should buy cutting-edge clean-energy technologies, prove them—and then give away the intellectual property, so others can improve on it.

At the same time, wealthy nations shouldn't try to hammer out these kinds of agreements in the United Nations, where they get bogged down in politicking with smaller nations. Big countries should work through the G20 and the World Trade Organization—forums that are, however imperfect, focused on economic and trade issues.

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Finally, until clean energy becomes much less costly, there are relatively cheap fixes we can make to curb emissions, such as closing the most inefficient coal plants. And we should change how we look at climate-related aid to developing nations, focusing on better roads, housing, sewage and electrical systems.

Here's a closer look at these ideas, and how they can get us past the current deadlock.

PUSH FOR INNOVATION

Our highest goal should be to make clean energy radically cheaper and truly competitive with fossil fuels through innovation. That's where governments should focus their efforts.

Emissions cuts have overshadowed technology innovation for so long in part because of a widespread myth—that today's clean-energy sources are either ready or almost ready to replace fossil fuels. They are not. It will take much more innovation to make them cost-competitive.

Associated Press The windmills of the Thanet Offshore Wind Farm off the coast of Ramsgate in Kent, England.

And the impetus for that needs to come from governments. Virtually all demand for clean-energy technology is a result of states subsidizing companies to make clean tech and consumers to buy it. Governments will continue to be the central driver of clean-energy innovation for the foreseeable future; without public support, the technology isn't close to being cost-competitive with fossil fuels.

Because policy makers have not fully come to terms with this reality, nations simultaneously spend too little and too much on clean tech: too little on research, development and demonstration of new technologies, and too much subsidizing the commercialization of older technologies that will never be cheap enough to stand on their own. If clean-tech companies can profit making uneconomic, but subsidized, technologies, why invent anything better?

Public investments in clean tech should work more like military procurement of new defense technologies and less like federal crop supports. What we need is competitive deployment.

Governments should solicit bids for projects or technologies within a given class—say, a next-generation nuclear reactor or a new solar-panel technology. Once a new technology with the lowest cost is proved, it should be set as the benchmark for another round of bids—all with an eye toward ever-newer, ever-cheaper technologies.

The military has used this method for decades to drive down the costs and improve the performance of critical technologies. A decade of Pentagon procurement drove the price of microchips to $20 a chip by the mid-'60s from over $1,000 in the late '50s.

At the same time, the military heavily invested in government, university and industrial research labs to deliberately create knowledge spillover—the sharing of intellectual property—which is crucial to rapid innovation.

The money for this new regime could come from various sources. The obvious source is redirecting existing energy subsidies. We might also impose a small fee on oil imports, or dedicate revenue from new oil and gas leases, as has been proposed by a number of Republican lawmakers. A low carbon tax might also help—one that might generate roughly $25 billion annually, but not so high as to slow the economy.

PROTECT—BUT SHARE

National investments in innovation won't happen if they are motivated solely, or even primarily, by the desire to achieve global emissions-reduction goals. They need to serve more immediate national objectives, such as reducing reliance on fossil fuels and getting a piece of a rapidly growing global energy market.

This will mean pulling off a balancing act. Nations will have to protect, at least partially, their domestic clean-tech industries. There is no clean-tech industry without state subsidies, and there is no incentive for states to subsidize those industries without good reason to think that those subsidies will in large part benefit domestic companies.

Yet nations should not entirely block foreign businesses from accessing their clean-tech markets—or else they'd become too dependent on home-grown ideas and technologies. That's a bad bet. Radical innovation requires that ideas spill over—quickly—between nations and companies.

In fact, governments should make the sharing of clean-energy intellectual property an explicit part of the competitive-deployment system. The companies that win bids to deliver the next generation of solar panels and nuclear plants at the lowest cost would have to share their intellectual property with competitors—and quickly move on to compete for the next aggressive benchmark.

Bids in such a system would reflect the value of both intellectual property and technology and so might cost a bit more. But probably not much; the reality is that clean-tech IP is massively overvalued. There is little real value in intellectual property that allows a company to produce clean energy at several times the cost of fossil fuels.

The only value of present-day clean-tech intellectual property is as a public good, not a private one. Governments support clean tech in the hope that subsequent iterations of present-day intellectual property will be substantially cheaper and hence scalable without the need for government subsidies. Paying to procure cutting-edge clean-energy IP along with the technology it creates is more than worth it in order to accelerate the spillover of new knowledge among clean-tech firms, even if it costs marginally more.

In reality, strong financial incentives for commercialization of clean-energy technologies are more than sufficient to spur private-sector innovation, even without strong intellectual-property protections. Witness tech firms the world over rushing to take advantage of China's epic state investments in new clean-energy technologies—despite China's cavalier attitude toward intellectual property.

In short, the competitive advantage for companies would be not today's intellectual property, but rather the ability to rapidly and repeatedly create new intellectual property to win competitive contracts. Such a strategy will strengthen America's innovation system and help U.S. businesses capture intellectual property developed abroad—all while encouraging precisely the kind of knowledge spillover between nations and businesses that is in everyone's interest.

FORGET THE U.N.

The U.N. is the wrong place for hammering out the details of an international agreement on clean-energy innovation. The venue is too big and too rancorous. Small countries use the U.N. as a platform to push historical grievances against big ones, and nothing gets done.

Instead, the focus should shift to the relatively few nations that are responsible for the vast majority of emissions—and that have the resources to do something about it.

Look at the numbers. There are 192 members in the U.N. But two nations, the U.S. and China, produce more than 40% of the world's emissions. If you broaden that to the G-20 countries, you've accounted for 80% of total global carbon emissions—as well as 85% of global GDP, 80% of world trade and two-thirds of world population. The best way to address climate problems is to work through existing forums for these big countries, like the G-20 meetings.

As the recent meeting showed, the G-20 hardly guarantees agreements among nations over vital matters like currency manipulation. But it is still an easier forum than the U.N. General Assembly. And focusing on technology innovation to make clean energy cheap—instead of on polarizing measures like emissions cuts—will make it easier still.

DO THE SMALL STUFF

It will take years and maybe decades before clean energy becomes cheap enough to replace fossil fuels. What can countries do in the meantime?

For starters, wealthy nations can help poorer ones address other factors that are contributing to global warming. Black carbon—the incomplete combustion of cheap, dirty fuels in places like India—accelerates warming and can be reduced by replacing old diesel generators and primitive wood stoves with more-efficient alternatives.

These actions are economical, delivering more energy for less fuel, and bring an immediate public-health benefit—fewer respiratory illnesses and deaths from breathing dirty stove smoke. Methane, too, a potent greenhouse gas, can be cheaply captured in places like dairy farms and landfills and burned for energy.

There are other relatively easy things the U.S. and other rich nations can do. The U.S. could better enforce the non-carbon standards of the Clean Air Act, shutting down the country's oldest and most inefficient coal plants and replacing them with natural gas or clean-energy technologies produced through a competitive-deployment process. Over the next decade, such a strategy could quickly reduce mercury and asthma-causing pollutants, as well as cut carbon emissions from U.S. coal plants by as much as 10%—all while advancing the goal of inventing ever-cheaper low-carbon energy technologies.

HELP EMERGING COUNTRIES ADAPT IN A DIFFERENT WAY

Finally, we should immediately change how we distribute climate-related aid to developing nations.

First, we should stop talking about that aid in terms of climate change. It's impossible to tell if floods, droughts and hurricanes are caused by climate change—and that's unlikely to change for many decades. Trying to draw a distinction between disasters caused by climate change and "natural" disasters serves a political purpose, not a scientific one: justifying climate "reparations" from rich too poor countries.

Rich nations should focus instead on helping small nations deal with problems related to natural disasters in general. Aid should be spent on better roads, water and sewage systems, and housing—an infrastructure that can, in short, stand up to everything from earthquakes to big storms, whether caused by increased warming or not.

The proper institutional home for those efforts should be well-established international development agencies, such as the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the U.S. Agency for International Development—not the U.N. They're not perfect, but these institutions have a better track record of underwriting global development, collectively spending upward of $150 billion annually on international development efforts. Loans and aid for infrastructure development have traditionally created new markets, and what's more likely to win the support of Western countries in tough economic times, appeals to environmental guilt or to economic self-interest?

Beyond that, the best route to helping nations absorb natural disasters is to broaden access to energy. Wealthy societies can handle disasters a lot better than poor ones, and access to cheap energy is crucial for building wealth.

Fossil fuels alone won't cut it. They're still too expensive for about a third of the world's population, and will get pricier still as demand rises. If there is to be universal access to energy, there must be a global commitment to developing alternatives.

So we come back to the beginning. Energy that is cheap, clean and available to all should be understood as a fundamental public good and should be the central objective of climate policy. It's the best way to align national interests with the global one, economic benefits with environmental ones and emissions reductions with adaptation.

It's also the best approach for America. The U.S. has taken a pounding over the past decade as a global laggard on climate. Much of this was unfair—Europe manipulated the Kyoto treaty's accounting to start in 1990 and 1997 so it could count emissions reductions from the collapse of Communism. But it is also the case that the U.S. has not offered a suitable alternative to the U.N. framework.

The new climate framework we're proposing plays to America's strengths. It offers the country the chance to move from being the global scapegoat to the global leader. We are an electric nation born of invention—one that has long used technology to overcome tough challenges. With that as our mandate, we can do a lot to help the world solve this one.

—Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger are co-founders of the Breakthrough Institute, a public-policy think tank in Oakland, Calif. They are co-authors of "Break Through: From the Death of Environmentalism to the Politics of Possibility." They can be reached at [email protected].

[BethesdaWX]

Good post!

[skierinvermont]

I have been saying this for years. Positive reinforcement is the way to go. A punitive program which drives up energy costs has zero political standing. Until liberal greenies realize this or somebody else steps in to change the game we are going to go round and round in circles.

The idea of buying up clean IP is an interesting idea although I am afraid he underestimates the cost of IP and the bids he is talking about to create clean IP may not work functionally. How can companies bid to create technology they do not possess yet? And the companies that "lose" the bids get nothing which means they go bankrupt.

[JBG]

It's time for a rethink on climate change.

****************

FORGET THE U.N.

The U.N. is the wrong place for hammering out the details of an international agreement on clean-energy innovation. The venue is too big and too rancorous. Small countries use the U.N. as a platform to push historical grievances against big ones, and nothing gets done.

Is climate change the only issue on which the U.N. is uselss?

[iceicebyebye]

I have been saying this for years. Positive reinforcement is the way to go. A punitive program which drives up energy costs has zero political standing. Until liberal greenies realize this or somebody else steps in to change the game we are going to go round and round in circles.

The idea of buying up clean IP is an interesting idea although I am afraid he underestimates the cost of IP and the bids he is talking about to create clean IP may not work functionally. How can companies bid to create technology they do not possess yet? And the companies that "lose" the bids get nothing which means they go bankrupt.

I don't think the "round and round" game is solved by any sudden shift in liberal perspecitve....We likely go round and round until one of two things happens: 1. a sweeping, dramatic and urgent crisis, clearly or most likely connected to climate change, forces the collective hand of humanity to rapidly adjust energy consumption intensity and/or legacy sources, or 2. transformational technology offers an "easy", cost effective, and consensus path to move away from the current reliance on fossi fuels.

Contrarians will say that #1 ain't going to happen since it's "cooling" and oil/coal are okey-dokey, but IMO such a crisis is one of few things that would motivate a rapid move, and even then the alternatives need to be available and ready to meet the world's ever growing energy demands. #2 has potential and is more of a ramp vs a springboard, and it's obviously tough to get the entity known as humanity to move as one, and the rooted fossil fuel interests would continue to offer strong resistance to change.

Otherwise, the "iron law" as expressed by Pielke Jr (who I dont see eye to eye with on everything) holds a lot of merit: when it comes down to a choice between continued growth, or sacrificing growth for the sake of the environment and/or climate, continued growth wins almost every time. Not saying this is the way things should be, but it's the way things are...

[BethesdaWX]

I don't think the "round and round" game is solved by any sudden shift in liberal perspecitve....We likely go round and round until one of two things happens: 1. a sweeping, dramatic and urgent crisis, clearly or most likely connected to climate change, forces the collective hand of humanity to rapidly adjust energy consumption intensity and/or legacy sources, or 2. transformational technology offers an "easy", cost effective, and consensus path to move away from the current reliance on fossi fuels.

Contrarians will say that #1 ain't going to happen since it's "cooling" and oil/coal are okey-dokey, but IMO such a crisis is one of few things that would motivate a rapid move, and even then the alternatives need to be available and ready to meet the world's ever growing energy demands. #2 has potential and is more of a ramp vs a springboard, and it's obviously tough to get the entity known as humanity to move as one, and the rooted fossil fuel interests would continue to offer strong resistance to change.

Otherwise, the "iron law" as expressed by Pielke Jr (who I dont see eye to eye with on everything) holds a lot of merit: when it comes down to a choice between continued growth, or sacrificing growth for the sake of the environment and/or climate, continued growth wins almost every time. Not saying this is the way things should be, but it's the way things are...

Well Yitterbium, it is cooling, and no, there is no "crisis", as you say it.

[tacoman25]

Well Yitterbium, it is cooling, and no, there is no "crisis", as you say it.

That's definitely not Ytterbium. He never managed to put something that well thought out and articulate together.

[skierinvermont]

Well Yitterbium, it is cooling, and no, there is no "crisis", as you say it.

It's not Ytterbium. Pretty sure it is manonthewing, though no idea why he won't just say who he was on eastern since he was a pretty good poster over there.

[skierinvermont]

I don't think the "round and round" game is solved by any sudden shift in liberal perspecitve....We likely go round and round until one of two things happens: 1. a sweeping, dramatic and urgent crisis, clearly or most likely connected to climate change, forces the collective hand of humanity to rapidly adjust energy consumption intensity and/or legacy sources, or 2. transformational technology offers an "easy", cost effective, and consensus path to move away from the current reliance on fossi fuels.

Contrarians will say that #1 ain't going to happen since it's "cooling" and oil/coal are okey-dokey, but IMO such a crisis is one of few things that would motivate a rapid move, and even then the alternatives need to be available and ready to meet the world's ever growing energy demands. #2 has potential and is more of a ramp vs a springboard, and it's obviously tough to get the entity known as humanity to move as one, and the rooted fossil fuel interests would continue to offer strong resistance to change.

Otherwise, the "iron law" as expressed by Pielke Jr (who I dont see eye to eye with on everything) holds a lot of merit: when it comes down to a choice between continued growth, or sacrificing growth for the sake of the environment and/or climate, continued growth wins almost every time. Not saying this is the way things should be, but it's the way things are...

I don't even think a crisis would even do it against entrenched oil interests. A serious cap and trade program that drives up energy costs, or a gas tax, or anything like that, will never have political standing. Most crises could never directly be attributed to AGW and the opposing interests could obfuscate the issue as they have been doing for decades. We already have had crises which are indirectly related to AGW.. has this changed anybody's minds? No. In fact, if you suggest that severe flooding, or droughts, or heatwaves are related to AGW you will often get laughed out of the room.

Maybe repeated crises which are very clearly related to AGW could sway public opinion. Rapid sea level rise for example. Or crises large enough to remove any doubt as to their relation to AGW. But we could go through 10s of trillions of dollars and 10s of millions of lives and hundreds of thousands of extinctions before a crisis of large enough scale to sway public opinion.

#2 has some potential.. esp if oil/coal start running out.

I still think the political opposition to subsidies and government action to reduce emissions would be far less than punitive measures such as cap and trade or a gas tax. Look at Europe, they were successful in passing some fairly significant clean energy subsidies for wind and solar. California has been as well. These efforts were nipped in the bud by the recession, but they already had accomplished a lot and could have accomplished a lot more. Especially if the U.S. government gets on board.

[nzucker]

I don't even think a crisis would even do it against entrenched oil interests. A serious cap and trade program that drives up energy costs, or a gas tax, or anything like that, will never have political standing. Most crises could never directly be attributed to AGW and the opposing interests could obfuscate the issue as they have been doing for decades. We already have had crises which are indirectly related to AGW.. has this changed anybody's minds? No. In fact, if you suggest that severe flooding, or droughts, or heatwaves are related to AGW you will often get laughed out of the room.

Maybe repeated crises which are very clearly related to AGW could sway public opinion. Rapid sea level rise for example. Or crises large enough to remove any doubt as to their relation to AGW. But we could go through 10s of trillions of dollars and 10s of millions of lives and hundreds of thousands of extinctions before a crisis of large enough scale to sway public opinion.

#2 has some potential.. esp if oil/coal start running out.

I still think the political opposition to subsidies and government action to reduce emissions would be far less than punitive measures such as cap and trade or a gas tax. Look at Europe, they were successful in passing some fairly significant clean energy subsidies for wind and solar. California has been as well. These efforts were nipped in the bud by the recession, but they already had accomplished a lot and could have accomplished a lot more. Especially if the U.S. government gets on board.

I think the problem is that we're still so tied up as presenting the issue as "solving global warming" rather than "allowing communities to produce their own energy and be more independent" or "reducing urban air pollution." People need to believe that paying slightly more for energy and making significant investments in the future is going to have a tangible result that they can see, whether it means owning their own windmills, getting rid of the dirty coal-fired plant down the street, creating government jobs in clean energy. The environmental movement is losing the battle because they are too committed to presenting the issue as a solution to climate change rather than as a solution to foreign energy dependence, unemployment, chemicals in the air, etc. Global warming isn't a good way of showing the public the importance of the issue because it's much too abstract and future-oriented.

[skierinvermont]

I think the problem is that we're still so tied up as presenting the issue as "solving global warming" rather than "allowing communities to produce their own energy and be more independent" or "reducing urban air pollution." People need to believe that paying slightly more for energy and making significant investments in the future is going to have a tangible result that they can see, whether it means owning their own windmills, getting rid of the dirty coal-fired plant down the street, creating government jobs in clean energy. The environmental movement is losing the battle because they are too committed to presenting the issue as a solution to climate change rather than as a solution to foreign energy dependence, unemployment, chemicals in the air, etc. Global warming isn't a good way of showing the public the importance of the issue because it's much too abstract and future-oriented.

Well I agree on foreign energy dependence and pollution, but I don't think sustainable/local economy is a solution to unemployment, I think it would slow economic growth since it is less efficient and ties up more human and material resources in energy and food production. More household income will be tied up in food and energy costs than other necessities and luxuries.

There are some small things that are efficient for people to do, like insulate their homes, grow a vegetable garden (although this takes time and effort). But local agriculture, or having a windmill, or having solar panels etc. is so inefficient compared to big ag, oil, and coal, that it would drastically reduce people's standard of living to use them. Maybe this is what is necessary, maybe it's not, but it's not good for the economy.

[BethesdaWX]

I think the problem is that we're still so tied up as presenting the issue as "solving global warming" rather than "allowing communities to produce their own energy and be more independent" or "reducing urban air pollution." People need to believe that paying slightly more for energy and making significant investments in the future is going to have a tangible result that they can see, whether it means owning their own windmills, getting rid of the dirty coal-fired plant down the street, creating government jobs in clean energy. The environmental movement is losing the battle because they are too committed to presenting the issue as a solution to climate change rather than as a solution to foreign energy dependence, unemployment, chemicals in the air, etc. Global warming isn't a good way of showing the public the importance of the issue because it's much too abstract and future-oriented.

I'd think it would be in everyones best interest if we were to come up with new energy methods.... but continue to burn Fossil fuels Until a proposed deadline, so we can then begin the transition to clean energy, without f*cking up the world economy.

While we transition, 50 years of GHG emissions won't bring doom upon the world. It would take about 70 years to double our emissions rslease. So even if we warm..... (which I personally find unlikely), a 0.6-0.9C rise in Global temps is nothing to fear for our lives about.

Our families, hard woking individuals, and our success is more important than "Cap & Tax".... alot of these plans would do nothing to halt warming...... if it were happening the way it has been said to be... in hype.

We must be doing something to halt warming already

[iceicebyebye]

to skier's points - the bar for a motivating crisis is indeed extremely high, for the reasons you list and others. i like to think of it as "societal and human inertia", and the preponderance of day-to-day concerns. would agree with the rapid sea level rise example, but even then "rapid" probably means decades at minimum. anything else that leads to more immediate rapid SLR would carry a whole host of other radical problems. given that something like 20 of earth's 30 largest cities are on/near coastal estuaries, rapid SLR would certainly be an attention grabber.

IMO govt has an important role to play in moving the ball forward, but it's best done by private industry, since that's where we have the best and brightest. The comments on "small things" resonate as truth, but only if done at a hugely collective level. But even then critics will delight in opposition (recall the "keep your tires inflated" debacle).

to nzucker's points - for a moment i thought mckibben walked into the thread, with your talk of communal energy, windmills and taking out the coal plants. Agree with the mostly abstract nature of the issue relative to the general populace. Tough to move people beyond the here and now without a more tangible demonstration of threats/impacts, alternatives and benefits of change. Plus the contrarian crowd is in general much more effective at communication, PR, and stating their positions.

BAU is in no immediate danger, but i think it can eventually be a very fluid situation, both literally and figuratively.

[skierinvermont]

to skier's points - the bar for a motivating crisis is indeed extremely high, for the reasons you list and others. i like to think of it as "societal and human inertia", and the preponderance of day-to-day concerns. would agree with the rapid sea level rise example, but even then "rapid" probably means decades at minimum. anything else that leads to more immediate rapid SLR would carry a whole host of other radical problems. given that something like 20 of earth's 30 largest cities are on/near coastal estuaries, rapid SLR would certainly be an attention grabber.

IMO govt has an important role to play in moving the ball forward, but it's best done by private industry, since that's where we have the best and brightest. The comments on "small things" resonate as truth, but only if done at a hugely collective level. But even then critics will delight in opposition (recall the "keep your tires inflated" debacle).

to nzucker's points - for a moment i thought mckibben walked into the thread, with your talk of communal energy, windmills and taking out the coal plants. Agree with the mostly abstract nature of the issue relative to the general populace. Tough to move people beyond the here and now without a more tangible demonstration of threats/impacts, alternatives and benefits of change. Plus the contrarian crowd is in general much more effective at communication, PR, and stating their positions.

BAU is in no immediate danger, but i think it can eventually be a very fluid situation, both literally and figuratively.

You are familiar with McKibben? He was the "scholar in residence" at our college (maybe you had figured that out already) and Zucker and I interviewed him on our radio show. He even wrote about us in an article that appeared on some online news sources like the Huffington Post and the LA Times (although the LA Times used a shortened version that cut us out). He called into our radio show one day very upset and claiming we had bad sources, so we arranged an interview which was interesting. We sort of came to an understanding I guess. I'm not all that familiar with him but I think he is also into the old school solutions like gas tax and cap and trade as well as the sustainable green economy.

[nzucker]

You are familiar with McKibben? He was the "scholar in residence" at our college (maybe you had figured that out already) and Zucker and I interviewed him on our radio show. He even wrote about us in an article that appeared on some online news sources like the Huffington Post and the LA Times (although the LA Times used a shortened version that cut us out). He called into our radio show one day very upset and claiming we had bad sources, so we arranged an interview which was interesting. We sort of came to an understanding I guess. I'm not all that familiar with him but I think he is also into the old school solutions like gas tax and cap and trade as well as the sustainable green economy.

I really like Bill McKibben's approach to the energy crisis, though I think his viewpoint on global warming is extreme. I do believe that the future of energy and food security lies in producing it more locally, or at least having more localized inputs to a sleek, efficient, computer-controlled grid. Just as growing vegetable gardens and preserving local farmland helps reduce our carbon emissions from food transport, as well as allowing for healthy growth of ecosystems and pleasant green spaces, I believe that people committed to producing their own energy and conserving what they use can be part of this solution as well. I believe that ultimately, cities will join together to create wind farms, residents of the Desert Southwest will all harness the power of the sun for electricity and hot water through solar panels (using the thin film new technology), etc. The current centralized grid is vastly inefficient and subject to immense corruption as we saw in the Enron case. Much of it is still based on manual switching which is simply outdated at this point. We need a smart grid that demonstrates the technological prowess of 21st century civilization.

I also think we have to rely more on nuclear power, as countries like France generate approximately 70% of their electricity from nuclear and do so in a safe fashion. We are still much too reliant on coal simply because of the inherently objectionable nature of nuclear plants, but it is getting to the point where we need the government to step up and build these plants and insure them as well. People's fear of a nuclear crisis or terrorist attack, both of which are extremely unlikely, is hurting the environment...even though such citizen efforts are commendable, well intentioned, and do reflect real problems in the regulation of nuclear energy plants such as Entergy's unsafe management of Indian Point here in NY.

[skierinvermont]

Thin film panels have been around for a while now and are becoming limited by their lower efficiency compared to crystalline panels. It requires far more land or roof space to get the same energy production which is a large portion of the costs in any solar project. This is why crystalline continues to have much larger market share.

[superjames1992]

The thing I have never understood that is often the environmentalists (not all of them, though) who are the most opposed to the building of nuclear power plants. Yet they are the best alternative to coal-burning plants. I think nuclear is the way to go and France is evidence of this.

[JBG]

The thing I have never understood that is often the environmentalists (not all of them, though) who are the most opposed to the building of nuclear power plants. Yet they are the best alternative to coal-burning plants. I think nuclear is the way to go and France is evidence of this.

I think the environmentalists have an anti-growth agenda and are not really interested in global warming; they have a command and control mentality and need some reason compelling enough to restrict others' freedom.

[Hambone]

I don't even think a crisis would even do it against entrenched oil interests. A serious cap and trade program that drives up energy costs, or a gas tax, or anything like that, will never have political standing. Most crises could never directly be attributed to AGW and the opposing interests could obfuscate the issue as they have been doing for decades. We already have had crises which are indirectly related to AGW.. has this changed anybody's minds? No. In fact, if you suggest that severe flooding, or droughts, or heatwaves are related to AGW you will often get laughed out of the room.

Maybe repeated crises which are very clearly related to AGW could sway public opinion. Rapid sea level rise for example. Or crises large enough to remove any doubt as to their relation to AGW. But we could go through 10s of trillions of dollars and 10s of millions of lives and hundreds of thousands of extinctions before a crisis of large enough scale to sway public opinion.

#2 has some potential.. esp if oil/coal start running out.

I still think the political opposition to subsidies and government action to reduce emissions would be far less than punitive measures such as cap and trade or a gas tax. Look at Europe, they were successful in passing some fairly significant clean energy subsidies for wind and solar. California has been as well. These efforts were nipped in the bud by the recession, but they already had accomplished a lot and could have accomplished a lot more. Especially if the U.S. government gets on board.

The problem is we are wasting time and resources on outdated technology that will never be cost effective. I'm all for reducing carbon emissions, but not in a manner that will hamstring our economy.

My biggest complaint (amongst many) about the stimulus package was that there was no "Manhattan Project" for energy created. If the US created new technologies that greatly increased the efficiency/cleanliness of fossil fuels, or eliminated fossil altogether it would be a huge boon to the economy.

Btw, there have been floods, droughts, pestilence and plague throughout history. None of which were caused by carbon. The problem with AGWers is that they use Carbon as a hammer and it's their only tool and if the only tool one has is a hammer, every problem becomes a nail.

[Hambone]

I think the environmentalists have an anti-growth agenda and are not really interested in global warming; they have a command and control mentality and need some reason compelling enough to restrict others' freedom.

Ding, ding, ding... give this man a cigar!

[BethesdaWX]

I think the environmentalists have an anti-growth agenda and are not really interested in global warming; they have a command and control mentality and need some reason compelling enough to restrict others' freedom.

Yes. There are many other ways to address this other than Cap & Trash.

How about cold Fusion??? You can get twice the power with NO pollution.....Hydrogen is so plentiful..... and can last 50 years with no fuel change/maintenence. Cap & Trash is only progged to reduce emmsisions, with no climactic effect.

[skierinvermont]

I think the environmentalists have an anti-growth agenda and are not really interested in global warming; they have a command and control mentality and need some reason compelling enough to restrict others' freedom.

That's me!

[skierinvermont]

Btw, there have been floods, droughts, pestilence and plague throughout history. None of which were caused by carbon.

Really?

This proves what exactly?

AGW has significantly increased the frequency of heatwaves, droughts, and flooding.

[skierinvermont]

Yes. There are many other ways to address this other than Cap & Trash.

How about cold Fusion??? You can get twice the power with NO pollution.....Hydrogen is so plentiful..... and can last 50 years with no fuel change/maintenence. Cap & Trash is only progged to reduce emmsisions, with no climactic effect.

Not true.. cap and trade would reduce emissions significantly enough to reduce AGW, especially if the cap is gradually lowered.

[Kevin Druff]

Yes. There are many other ways to address this other than Cap & Trash.

How about cold Fusion??? You can get twice the power with NO pollution.....Hydrogen is so plentiful..... and can last 50 years with no fuel change/maintenence. Cap & Trash is only progged to reduce emmsisions, with no climactic effect.

Cold fusion is located in the same realm as Iraqi WMD: Erewhon.

[BethesdaWX]

Really?

This proves what exactly?

AGW has significantly increased the frequency of heatwaves, droughts, and flooding.

Wrong. All we're seeing is attention paid to each and every speck of disaster. Nothing has changed.

If you can prove this, then we can discuss. Both Hurricanes and Tornadoes are dwindling, there is no evidence of flooding increasing. Yes, NH heatwaves have been more extreme since the the 80's...thanks to natural/solar.

Man Made CO2 is only about 3% of all the CO2 in the atmosphere...and all CO2 in the is only about 2.5% of the atmosphere. 0.28% of all GHG in the atmosphere is due to Human activities.

CO2 increase would be a HUGE help to biotic life Globally.....higher CO2 periods, boitic life flourished

[BethesdaWX]

Not true.. cap and trade would reduce emissions significantly enough to reduce AGW, especially if the cap is gradually lowered.

The AGW theory is still pure speculation, whether we like it or not. Cap and Trade is more useless junk.. Cold fusion/nuclear can take hold of the worlds power supply in 25 years if we put effort into it.

When people start using Models to measure global temps instead of Satellite OBS... then we know its bad

[BethesdaWX]

Cold fusion is located in the same realm as Iraqi WMD: Erewhon.

[Hambone]

That's me!

Did you vote for Obama? If yes, then YES!

[Kevin Druff]

Cold fusion/nuclear can take hold of the worlds power supply in 25 years if we put effort into it.

When you say things like this, you show your complete and total ignorance. If you can't do basic research to know that cold fusion is a pipe dream at hasn't even been proved in theory let alone application, you make me question every other "fact" you claim here in this thread.

I was not kidding when i said cold fusion only exists in the non-existent utopia that is erewhon. We'd all love the eureka moment where it comes true in this world, but unfortunately we're past peak oil and quite soon the cost of running this planet on fossil fuels will become prohibitive whether they ruin our planet through warmth or not.