http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/06/weekinre…ref=environment
I needed to point out some interesting notes in this article.
But now, with recent data showing an unexpected rise in global emissions and a decline in energy efficiency, a growing chorus of economists, scientists and students of energy policy are saying that whatever benefits the cap approach yields, it will be too little and come too late.
The economist Jeffrey D. Sachs, head of the Earth Institute at Columbia University, stated the case bluntly in a recent article in Scientific American: “Even with a cutback in wasteful energy spending, our current technologies cannot support both a decline in carbon dioxide emissions and an expanding global economy. If we try to restrain emissions without a fundamentally new set of technologies, we will end up stifling economic growth, including the development prospects for billions of people.”
This is the basic argument being used against such policies, that they stifle out ability to deal with any catastrophes if they actually do happen. When it’s warmer outside, how will we power the factories to sell air conditioners? What if they can’t be distributed because the vehicles are using too much CO2?
What is needed, Mr. Sachs and others say, is the development of radically advanced low-carbon technologies, which they say will only come about with greatly increased spending by determined governments on what has so far been an anemic commitment to research and development. A Manhattan-like Project, so to speak.
[…]
“Of course we need aggressive investments in R. and D. — I for one have been arguing that for two decades,” Mr. Romm wrote in a post to his blog, climateprogress.org. “But if we don’t start aggressively deploying the technologies we have now for the next quarter century, then all the new technologies in the world won’t avert catastrophe.”
[…]
Another expert who has emphasized the importance of capping emissions, Adil Najam of Boston University, said he hoped this emerging debate would not distract from doing whatever is possible now to curb emissions.
“You can do a tremendous lot with available technology,” said Professor Najam, one of the authors of the intergovernmental panel’s report on policy options. “It is true that this will not be enough to lick the problem, but it will be a very significant and probably necessary difference.”
But Professor Pielke and his co-authors say that a recent rise in emissions — particularly in fast-growing emerging powers — points to the need for government to push aggressively for technological advances instead of waiting for the market to force reductions in emissions.
[…]
Mr. Sachs pointed to several promising technologies — capturing and burying carbon dioxide, plug-in hybrid cars and solar-thermal electric plants. “Each will require a combination of factors to succeed: more applied scientific research, important regulatory changes, appropriate infrastructure, public acceptance and early high-cost investments,” he said. “A failure on one or more of these points could kill the technologies.”
In short, what is needed, he said, is a “major overhaul of energy technology” financed by “large-scale public funding of research, development and demonstration projects.”
Basically what is being said is that the government not the markets, has to make tons of money to put into research technology that isn’t really even needed in the first place. Regardless if there is a pay off or not for investors, the people supporting these technologies want large sacks of cash thrown at them at the expense of everyone who pays into the system, or uses the currency that’s inflated by the system that prints out money to pay for them. It’s a rather bold call for a large amount of force. This could amount to nothing but a gigantic waste of money fueled by higher taxes or higher inflation on our part. It’s one thing to waste shareholder money on anti-global warming technology, it’s another thing to wastse taxpayers money.
Oh yeah, there is something I forgot to add…
Most of the focus in the last few years has centered on imposing caps on greenhouse gas emissions to prod energy users to conserve or switch to nonpolluting technologies.
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All three presidential candidates are behind it.