On stimulating innovation in green energy

The quest for green energy seems strongly bound to the politics of global warming and climate change. I find that unfortunate.

The earth's climate has gotten warmer over the past two centuries. Abundant evidence exists, from scientific measurements to the visual impact of melting polar ice and receding glaciers. Where people can honestly disagree is to what extent human activity has caused it and whether a catastrophe awaits the entire human race if we don't fix it.

My reading indicates that the present climate change follows a long-established natural rhythm, that industrial activity has contributed only marginally to it, that suddenly going back to pre-industrial energy use would not stop it, and that it does not threaten a global catastrophe. We need green energy for other reasons. Those who think otherwise generally follow two basic strategies for dealing with it.

Many want to deal with the problem through collective, global action to reduce carbon emissions and give billions of dollars worth of clean technologies to developing countries. Others want to work on the national and local level to stimulate the market place to develop new and more efficient energy sources and of products and processes that require less of it.

Those of us who are skeptical about the prospect of a climate-induced disaster ought to make common cause with the second group, because, in fact, it doesn't matter who is right about climate. Our current energy usage cannot be sustained, especially as India and China struggle to catch up as industrial powers.

Global initiatives do not offer much hope. World leaders can agree on all kinds of high sounding theories, but not on actual mechanisms for working together. Then, when they leave the big, splashy conferences, like the recent one in Copenhagen, they cannot find a politically viable way of meeting their own targets.

Still, entrepreneurs and industry cannot by itself devise self-sustaining ways of green energy generation and usage. The federal government must be involved in the creation of a new energy model, with or without the cooperation of other countries. Making most efficient use of any foreseeable kind of green electricity, for example, will require massive investment in an upgraded power grid.

At some point, the government must regulate carbon emissions. It will have to find some way of calculating the cost of carbon emissions both in terms of their impact on pollution and the implications for energy independence. The kind of extensive infrastructure upgrades that we need require funding from some kind of carbon tax.

Development of renewable, minimally polluting, efficient energy sources that do not depend on imports is certainly worth the creation of a new tax. Green energy legislation will open the door to innovation, therefore startups of entirely new companies, and therefore the creation of jobs that cannot exist under current conditions.