From NPR this morn, listen at:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=105834436
Pushing Innovation, Not Regulation
"Personal computers didn't take off because there was a tax on
typewriters, he says. And the Internet didn't sprout up because the
government made telegraphs more expensive.
"So is there a better way to do this? Well, we think that there is.
It's very simple: It's that we need to make clean energy cheap
worldwide."
China will never stop burning its massive reserves of coal unless
there's something cheap to replace them, he argues. And the United
States isn't likely to stop burning coal, either, he says.
Shellenberger and Nordhaus argue that the best way to develop those
clean technologies is to increase federal energy research tenfold, and
to create a project akin to the Apollo mission to the moon. But a
massive increase in federal energy research spending is not a popular
idea at the moment.
"There's this idea that the government shouldn't be involved in
technology, the government shouldn't be picking winners and losers,"
Shellenberger says. "Which is sort of a funny thing to say. It's kind
of like, well, why not? And when hasn't the United States government
been involved in picking technology winners and losers?"
He points to the computer industry as just one example of something
that came into being because of deliberate federal investments."
Tapping Into Americans' Love Of Invention
Nordhaus and Shellenberger weren't always technology advocates. They
met as young adults, trying to save redwood trees on the California
coast. Working as pollsters and strategists, they spent a lot of time
figuring out what motivates people. That led them to rethink how to
frame global warming as an issue.
"The things that will drive or not drive action have nothing to do
with how well you understand how fast the polar ice caps are melting,"
Nordhaus says.
A sense of doom or shame only motivates a small segment of the public
— and puts off the rest, he says. Instead, their research shows that
people are motivated when the issue is presented as an opportunity to
revolutionize energy technology.
"In fact, not only is it popular, but voters get excited about it,"
Shellenberger says. "If you go and talk to folks in the Rust Belt, in
Ohio, or you talk to people in Silicon Valley, you talk to people in
New York, Americans love that. And they love that, I think, for
reasons that are really specific to the national character, which is:
That's what Americans do; we invent stuff. That is so much part of who
we are. It just seems crazy that we wouldn't put that at the center of
our policy agenda."
