Man, I went to a cool talk today given by Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger who recently wrote a book called Breakthrough: From the Death of Environmentalism to the Politics of Possibility. Remember the essay I posted a while back called “Climate change is not an environmental issue”? They were basically backing me up all the way on that viewpoint. It’s always great when someone famous agrees with you AND gives you even better reasoning behind the position.
Their core message, however, which was not part of my essay, is that massive government spending on clean energy research is going to be the primary way we solve the climate crisis. They pointed out that massive government spending is what led to computing, the silicon chip, the economies of scale for the silicon chip ($1000 to $20 per chip in 7 years), and ultimately “silicon valley.” They also cited the very interesting fact that the international treaty banning CFCs (to protect the ozone layer) was not ratified until alternative chemicals to CFCs became available. Analogously, serious global warming treaties will probably not be passed until clean energy technologies as cheap as coal are actually available.
Their position is that carbon taxes are really only useful for raising the necessary money to massively invest in clean energy technologies – so that the true cost of these technologies become competitive with fossil fuels. They think an $80 billion per year investment will be what it takes. This is a lot, but pales in comparison to the defense budget of over $500 billion. This is reasonable for American taxpayers to swallow if they are convinced that it contributes strongly to issues they care about, such as national security and economic security.
Part of what’s amazing to me is that I was already fascinated by solar panels back in high school. Why was that? I guess it just seemed clear to me that the most efficient way to get energy would be to take it directly from its source: the sun. Every other method is incredibly indirect (fossil fuels stunningly so). Four years later, I put much of my savings into solar panel stocks (that was a good choice). And now we have a very clear case being made that solar panels may well be a major factor in tomorrow’s energy sources – it’s just going to take enough research and economies of scale to make them sufficiently inexpensive.
I bought their book (and got it signed) and am looking forward to reading it.