Bill Clinton was in Seattle last week, at the U.S. Conference of Mayors' climate summit. He reframed the discussion about coping with global warming by saying it was a golden opportunity to make money. One week earlier, Seattle business leaders were hearing the same siren song at the Chamber of Commerce retreat in Vancouver. A bank president declared, "Green is the new gold." Chiming in today is a this essay. As for the politics of possibility, Nordhaus and Shellenberger make a case for a massive governmental program in developing cheap, clean energy, as the Defense Department did with microchips or jetliners. It won't happen in the private sector alone, since they "rarely initiate technological revolutions," and there is actually very little innovation going on in the energy sector today. By contrast, when the Pentagon in the 1960s effectively guaranteed the market for microchips, it touched off a revolution that drove down the costs and spread the technology to many sectors of the economy. "An investment of roughly $200 billion would bring the price of solar energy down to that of coal," they estimate. The authors adopt a politics of hope, rather than fear. "Cautionary tales and narratives of eco-apocalypse tend to provoke fatalism, conservatism, and survivalism among voters -- not the rational embrace of environmental policies," they contend. "Young and grassroots environmentalists are more inspired by the vision of creating a new energy economy than regulating the old one." Got that Al Gore?
Green is the new gold rush? Not without government R&D
Bill Clinton was in Seattle last week, at the U.S. Conference of Mayors' climate summit. He reframed the discussion about coping with global warming by saying it was a golden opportunity to make money. One week earlier, Seattle business leaders were hearing the same siren song at the Chamber of Commerce retreat in Vancouver. A bank president declared, "Green is the new gold."
Chiming in today is a story in The New York Times that points out how bicycling in Portland is turning into a small industry. So can we all relax, now? Has market capitalism saved the earth, just as the big bad villain was about to do her in?
Bill Clinton was in Seattle last week, at the U.S. Conference of Mayors' climate summit. He reframed the discussion about coping with global warming by saying it was a golden opportunity to make money. One week earlier, Seattle business leaders were hearing the same siren song at the Chamber of Commerce retreat in Vancouver. A bank president declared, "Green is the new gold."
Chiming in today is a story in The New York Times that points out how bicycling in Portland is turning into a small industry. So can we all relax, now? Has market capitalism saved the earth, just as the big bad villain was about to do her in?
