Innovation maybe the only answer to Global Warming.
Monday, December 7, 2009 at 10:10PM I have watched the Global Warming discussions online this week with much interest. The UN Global Warming conference in Copenhagen Denmark is getting serious attention from around the World. The science behind this issue is extremely complicated, but not nearly as much as the politics.
I am not a doubter, and believe that there is compelling evidence of a century long trend in global warming due to accelerated human production of CO2. That said, I am practical enough to know that no individual or even national based CO2 reductions will make the difference if the developing nations of billions like China and India don't make significant changes in their economic development; which frankly won't happen and might also have catastrophic effects on global economies if they did.
So, I am reduced to hoping for visionary leadership on the issue, and the creation of new ideas to combat the problem. It will be the natural tendency for energy rich economies like ours to ignore the problem, or come up with extremely expensive and untested programs. The natural tendency will be to politicise the short-term and fight for what will keep people employed. For emerging economies, it will be nearly impossible to check the demands of the growing middle class.
So again, I don't have the answer and I will argue that there may not be one that fits every political, geographic and demographic region of the world. What I DO think can make a difference would be a dollar for dollar mandate to spend on technological advancement in combating the problem, vs simply attempting to reduce the CO2 emission of the World. I do believe that the human race has the capacity to find solutions to problems that aren't necessarily answerable with what we know today. Considering that this might be the only way out of this problem, perhaps that is the best way to try and combat Global Warming.
As an afterthought, it may seem an oversight to assume that innovation will come without CO2 restrictions. I am not proposing that we must completely relax efforts to reduce emmissions, but I guess I am suggesting that these will never be enough, if the situation is as dire as many say and the pressure from developing nations will drag these efforts down. In fact innovation will be an outcome of restrictions. I am just suggesting that MORE effort on innovation is needed.
Also, I am not suggesting that Carbon Storage is NOT the answer, but I do seriously wonder what would come of spending $2 Billion in RESEARCHING alternatives to carbon emmisions that can be applied globally, than spending $2 Billion to simply bury our own small percentage of the problem.
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Reader Comments (4)
Sounds a little like innovation economics (or perhaps cowboy economics, the idea that technology will solve all our problems). The thing is, we're really good at creating new problems! Or perhaps this is a better way to put it: we historically have been quite poor at recognizing the longer term impacts of our "solutions".
I'm not saying you're wrong - I'm inclined to agree with you. I think technology and innovation have an important role to play in this. But they're just part of the story.
Talk about a naive post. Carbon capture is one of the key planks to reducing carbon in our atmosphere.
Confused. What is $2 billion in CO2 sequestration if not research that can be applied globally? If it works, not only do we reduce our emissions - real reductions, not cap and trade fallacy - but we can then distribute this technology and process development elsewhere in the world. Lots of depleted reservoirs in the world that can be sequestration candidates.
I.E.
I will give you that. Carbon Storage could be one of the solutions and I didn't extend the concept of storage being a technological solution. Hopefully it provides value on the production side, as well as the reduction side.
C