It’s happening again. In the 1970s, when oil prices soared, Americans started pursuing alternative energy technologies. But when prices subsequently dropped, so did the promising projects. As recently as six months ago consumers, CEOs and politicians were hell-bent for green technologies, but then the recession worsened, oil prices plummeted and calls rose to postpone clean tech options.
Begging off now would be a terrible waste. In an incredibly short time, impressive business, technological and political gains have been made. Venture capital investment in clean tech hit an all-time high in 2008. Airlines are making test flights powered by biofuels. And President Barack Obama—exploiting unprecedented political will to clean up the planet—has promptly set the federal government on a course to confront climate change.
The U.S. and the rest of the world cannot cave in to a temporary dip in energy prices and the economy. Rest assured, both will rise again. Fossil-fuel dependence remains a grave problem: production cutbacks by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries were already pushing oil prices back up in January. Global warming still looms as highly dangerous, in part because China has announced it will increase coal production by 30 percent by 2015 to meet its energy needs.
Clearly, we should continue to pursue clean technology aggressively, if for no other reasons than to create millions of jobs and to put the country in a strong competitive position. Even venture capitalists, whose sole metric is profit, say we must stay on the offense. As John Doerr, partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, writes, the best response to our concurrent economic, climate and energy security crises “is a bold, coordinated campaign of investment and incentives to accelerate green innovation.” Let’s press on toward solutions for sustainable progress.
Note: This article was originally printed with the title, "Don't Stop Now".
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Add CommentWhile investing in clean energy technology we must not forget that it is vital to invest in CO2 sequestration technology. Biochar methods are now mature, but funding is lacking. If we wait for market forces to power investment, it might be too late to reverse Climate Change...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSee www.EPRIDA.com for more details.
It might already be too late to reverse climate change.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisReally, to put it all in one paragraph, this is quite a storm we've got brewing. The glaciers and ice caps melting, causing flooding and chaotic tropical storms, the forests dying and burning wiping out the breathable air, the oceans are turn to acid, and three quarters of all land mammals facing extinction, our food tainted by myriad toxins required by a corrupt business model, medicine allowing bad genes to flourish in our gene pool... and seven billion people are primarily concerned with the amount of money in their pockets.
Almost makes one wonder if we deserve to survive it.
Quickly develop clean energy like geothermal, hydrogen, solar and wind and we will not have to sink billions into CO2 sequestration that will take decades to clean a third of the carbon from the air. Convert all fossil fuel vehicles to electricity and the earth will clean itself in a short time. CO2 sequestration is another one of those bad ideas that will only justify fossil fuel manufacturers in releasing tons of more carbon into the air. "Let that funny looking sequestration machine handle it!", they will say.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt is not energy prices that are causing a lack of investment in clean technologies, but the lack of a guaranteed minimum price per ton of CO2. Where should it be set? Currently $10 is clearly too little. We should increase the price progressively until it produces the desired results. At $30 per ton biochar technology will kick in in no time...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisCarbon tax is what we need. When the price of oil is high, we conserve and go to alternatives. When the price is low, we just talk about what we SHOULD do.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBTW - If/when climate change comes, we probably will not want to "reverse" it. The problem is not the climate, but the change itself. The earth has been much warmer and much colder in the last 10,000 years alone. There is no "right temperature." Life did just fine during the Mesozoic when temperate zones reached into the arctic. It hung on during the ice ages when it got cool at the equator. It is the rapid transitions that are hard. So if it does get warmer, we better hope it just stays that way for a long time.
Broadnax : There is surely a 'right' climate, in that all our plant and animal selections have been achieved under set conditions. We may find it hard to adapt new strains over a short period, with obvious effects on food production.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNo - there is not a right climate. 150 years ago the climate was significantly colder than it is today. 1000 years ago the Vikings could colonize Greenland and grow crops. During Roman times in the 1st century, they could produce wine in what is now southern Scotland.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWe all know about the ice ages just 10,000 years ago where half of N. America and Europe were under miles of ice or the earlier ages when the world was almost ice free.
Plant and animal selection is ongoing and never finished. They are all adaptions to conditions. If the world becomes warmer, they will begin to adapt, as will our own human systems.
It will be hard and should be avoided if possible, but as a new balance is achieved, it will be undesirable to cool it off, just as we might not wish to reestablish to colder world of 1500 or the warmer world of AD 1000. Assuming that we COULD even do it, why put the whole system though the ringer again just to establish weather patterns that were common from 1970-2000?
To nature, which has experienced much greater changes, it makes no difference, BTW. It only makes a difference to us.
Perhaps, if climate change were the ONLY negative result of allowing profit seekers to use the air, water and soil we, and the wildlife a lot of us think should be granted the right to live on this planet (and on which we depend for survival) need to survive, as a no-cost sewer system for the toxic waste their profit-making machinations produce, then stopping the process we have been engaging in for 200 years, of throwng the only known natural life support systen in the Universe out of balance, then maybe going back to the climate that allowed the dinosaurs to flourish for 100 million years would be OK.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe reality is quite different, however. Besides greenhouse gasses and the heat our machinery emits, the emissions of fossil fuel-powered industry and vehicles also contain mercury and other toxic heavy metals in gaseous form, which is why more than 20 U.S. states have issued warnings against consuming fish from their waters.
Those emmisions also contain sulphur and oxides of nitrogen which produce rain that is increasing the acidity of our lakes and oceans, and smog and ozone which cause deadly and societally hugely costly epidemic incidence of respiratory and other conditions and diseases.
We are poisoning the only natural life support system we know of because it would be difficult for human industry to convert to energy sources that neither pollute nor cause climate-change, and the fuel for which is FREE (Wind, sun moving water, geothermal heat, and water to convert, through electrolyisis into hyrogen and oxygen, which power the Space Shuttle, and whose only product of combustion is water vapor).
The ONLY reason we have not already, many yars ago, converted to those clean, abundant and inexhaustible energy sources is that they do not lend themselves to windfall profits.
The conventional dirty energy indutries control huge financial, (and therefore political) power and continue to blackmail (or bribe) politicians not to fund alternate energy infrastructure projects similar in scope to the Interstate Highway System, the Rural Electrification Administration or the Manned Moon-Landing program (which John F. Kennedy committed the nation to at a time when the science to complete it did not yet exist, nor did anyone know for sure that it was possible to create it that quickly).
If we had waited for ANY of the technologies on which human civilization now depends to be perfected before deploying them on a massive scale, as we now seem to be waiting for alternate-energy technologies to be perfected, WE WOULD STILL BE WAITING!!
We need to change the way we all THINK, our ATTITUDES must be forced to change to encompass the rethink of energy usage to this end there is only one solution in a capitalist global economy.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this100% energy tax to replace all other taxes, corporate, national, personal, and property,and any others you can dream up.
The tax would be implemented over a 5 year period replacing all the other taxes one by one and collected at source , for example at the well(gas and oil) or pit(coal) head ,quarry Coal, oil, uranium, etc.
This tax would be based on the potential energy value of the substances and a single price put on these per unit of energy.
The collection of this tax would be simple and far easier to control against fraud and evasion.
To encourage the correct direction of reduced energy use, environmental good behavior, and social harmony, a system of rebates would be introduced.
These rebates would be to give families rewards for reducing population and staying together as a family unit and not requiring social handouts.
Rebates for environmental and energy conservation would be only temporary to encourage the correct direction of the corporate and personal way of life.
The real benefit would be to make energy the real debate in all parts of life and question the direction and the uses it is put to.
The capitalist system would remain in so far as it is necessary to have ambition, drive, and enthusiasm for the new way forward.
MONEY=ENERGY=CLIMATE CHANGE
This formula is simple and shows that it is the financial system that has to change and find new ways of running a smart economy with less money and subsequently less energy.
Money is only a tool by which we transfer energy from one form to another and pass energy from one person to another.
Money is also a store of potential energy that can be released when needed, with the purchase of goods, energy and labour.
Simple
Transparent
Easy to understand
Equal to all
Rebates and overall tax reduction
Theses are all the things politicians are asking for but due to personal greed and selfishness are not prepared to take the bold decisions necessary.
President Obama is a breath of fresh air, but THIS is only real step needed to save civilization as we know it for our children.
PAY FOR THE REAL COST OF ENERGY!
Acute observations about carbon tax and with the heat to come ,what about the food for the ever growing population
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisEnergy companies want 'permits' to go on polluting, and also want to get into the business of clearing up the mess they produced in the first instance. Such monopolistic manoevring should be considered as contrary to the interests of free competition and banned.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisGlobalman : To produce 1 pound of steak requires 50 pounds of cereals plus soy beans and vast quantities of water that could better be used to feed the world's 970,000,000 starving people. Meat-eating is terribly wasteful and unhealthy. Eat meat only two days a week and all the world can have a full stomach...People with full stomachs have fewer children, thereby reducing pressure on ressources. This can be an individual choice, before politicians legislate...
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