Christian Science Monitor: Climate change debate: push emissions goals or technology?
Should the world put less focus on emissions caps and more on spurring clean technologies?
A long-simmering debate has come to a boil among climate policy specialists over the most effective way to ensure humanity has the necessary hardware it needs to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions to virtually zero over the course of this century.
At issue is whether the current tack on climate policy, which emphasizes the establishment of binding emissions goals, should take a back seat to an all-out push to develop the technology needed to accomplish that feat. …
…Given the twin demands of controlling climate change and ensuring the world's future energy needs are met, "the first question to ask is not 'how do we reduce emissions?' " says Roger Pielke Jr., a science-policy specialist at the University of Colorado at Boulder, the author of the critique. Instead, he says, the question should be: "In a world that needs vast amounts of more energy, how can we provide that energy in ways that do not lead to the accumulation of carbon in the atmosphere?" …
…The critique by Dr. Pielke and colleagues at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo., and McGill University in Montreal, has touched off a small firestorm among the scientific community – in no small part because it appeared in the pages of Nature, one of the most high-profile science journals on the planet. …
…"That's an old game I've seen for 20 years," says Henry Jacoby, co-director of the Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In basing their analysis on frozen technologies, Pielke and his colleagues offer up futures "that are not going to exist." Rising energy prices, shifts away from energy intensive industries toward service- and information-based economies, and unforeseen applications of new technologies historically have combined to squeeze more energy out of existing sources, as well as trigger alternatives. There's no reason to think that won't continue, Dr, Jacoby says.
Other critics say a technology-first approach implies delaying action until it's too late. Future technologies "are irrelevant if you don't reverse course now" by "putting the pedal to the metal and deploy every last bit of technology we have today nationally and globally," says Dr. Romm. …
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