The most obvious response to climate change should be to transform the way the world generates energy. Living standards have risen 40 times over the last 250 years in the west.

The growth has resulted from a complicated interaction between capitalism and science and technology, of necessity publicly funded, creating wave after wave of transformations in the character of our economic base and the quality and quantity of what it produces.

The same now has to be done for the world’s energy production. It needs to be technologically transformed to become as near carbon-free as possible, which will only work if there is a substantive global research and development effort led by governments, matching those of conquering space or winning a war, to explore the necessary technologies. Embracing global political solutions such as a global carbon tax or global emission caps are beyond political reach, given the range of entrenched interests, not to mention the stubborn refusal by many conservatives to accept climate change science. It will be innovation that will save the planet.

bbabo.Net