Alternate Vision

"If you increase energy prices too much, then you'll face a public backlash; if you increase them too little, then you won't reduce emissions. This is the heart of the problem with Kyoto. For any regulatory approach to work, the price of dirty energy must increase enough so that what is currently more expensive clean energy alternatives become cost-competitive.

There is a better way. Instead of making clean energy relatively cheaper, a new, post-Kyoto agreement should instead focus on making clean energy absolutely cheaper. The model we should follow comes not from past efforts dealing with past pollution problems, like acid rain and the ozone hole, but rather from past investments in technology innovation and infrastructure. Silicon Valley, we often forget, was largely built on U.S. government contracts. In the 1950s, the Pentagon guaranteed the market for computer microchips, driving the cost of a single microchip down from $1,000 to $20 in less than a decade. The precursor to the Internet was literally invented in a Defense Department lab." Shellenberger & Nordhaus (from the Breakthrough Institute)

At first when I looked them up and realized they were pushing for "The Death of Environmentalism" as we currently know it, I was skeptical. But upon realizing that they are pushing for a paradigm shift, one that reverses the way we think about environmentalism, it struck me as profound. I'll have to get a copy of the Break through soon. In the mean time, I hope to get my foot in the door at their talk tomorrow on the google campus. Fingers crossed.