Modernized and Ready for Climate Action

In case you didn’t read it on your iPhone, Google it on your 2.5 pound laptop, or Tivo it on your 19-inch plasma TV / DVD combo (which you bought for $349.99 with your sizable disposable income) – we live in a modern age. There are more white collar jobs in the U.S. than blue collar, median income has increased steadily over the last century, and multiple homes, cars, boats and gadgetry (once reserved for the super elite) have become a common part of middle class Americana. Modernization – the process of building a wealthy, intellectually advanced, democratic society – has given us the freedom to pursue self-actualization, a college education, even freaking laser eye surgery! Our standard of living has never been higher, the population never more educated, our emotional and material security never more sure. Until gas prices started reaching $4 per gallon earlier this year.

With truckers striking, airlines fearing bankruptcy, and workers calling in sick to avoid the commute, our oil-driven economy looks as if it’s heading into a recession. Energy prices will only continue to increase over the coming decades, experts assert, with gasoline running $12-$15 a gallon in the not too distant future. The price of heating homes, transporting goods, generating electricity – nearly every energy-related facet of our economy will experience costs climbing steadily (or wildly) upwards. Let’s not forget that our carbon-intensive energy system is not only expensive, but it’s also driving climate change, which the IPCC reminds us will unleash extreme ecological and economic consequences over the next century if “business as usual” continues.

Rather than dwell on our rapidly increasing financial and environmental woes, however, it would behoove us to look at the assets we’ve aggregated as a society and how our modern world, with all of its technology, wealth and human capital, can be employed to solve our energy crisis. To put it bluntly: we have the power. We have the wealth (largest GDP of any nation in the world), we have the information (have you seen the internet recently?), we have the technology (solar, wind, hydrogen, hybrid, even transgenic algae), and we have the people (Nobel prize winners, engineers, physicists) capable of designing brilliant energy solutions. With more highly educated professionals, more renewable energy technology options, and more information exchange than any human society has previously ever seen, we are certainly the best prepared generation to take on the looming energy crisis.

So what are we doing about it? Let’s take a look at the U.S. government for starts. We’re currently debating a weak carbon-capping bill in the senate, the Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act, that a.) won’t pass, b.) wouldn’t likely reduce emissions to ecologically relevant levels even if it did pass, and c.) is being used by senators as a litmus test to show constituents where they stand on the issue of carbon capping, in order to boost their fall re-election prospects (how convenient!). You can guess – if a senator comes from a carbon-heavy energy producing state (coal mining, oil, etc), they’ll be voting against this climate bill, despite the fact that U.S. climate legislation will be enacted fairly inevitably within the next two years. The prevailing attitude is this: “Let’s save action until after the next election cycle, until the next presidency, perhaps until the energy and climate crisis is so bad that every constituency, conservative or progressive, demands it…” – because only then will it be politically safe to take action. But by that point, it’ll be too late to really avert the beginnings of deep economic and climate disaster.

Jumping back to our modernized world, it seems as though this political stagnation is wholly unnecessary given the tremendous tools and capital we possess to take on our societal challenges. If we take the space race or development of microchips / the internet as any example, it’s clear that large federal investments in technology can yield incredible economic growth, create entire new markets (aka jobs), and produce substantial increases in the benefits we love about modernization: high living standards, wealth, freedom and security. And getting to the moon wasn’t even a life-threatening issue… Failing to solve climate change is. So why not treat a significant problem with the same optimism, intensity, and effort as we did our moon shot? There exists greater wealth, information and technology now than there did then, plus this situation is an opportunity to address and potentially solve a conflation of pressing issues for humanity (rather than just build a fancy space craft). The impending recession, the huge rise in energy prices and demand, the ecological and economic devastation of climate change – can all be addressed by investing significant cash in renewable energy RDD&D.

Don’t get me wrong – the Lieberman-Warner bill isn’t entirely futile, and a carbon tax is certainly going to be a necessary tool in our belt when we get serious about addressing energy and climate. But alone, pure carbon taxation falls on its face because the cost it passes to consumers and its effect on our GDP are both economically dangerous and politically unfeasible. It’s not just that our senators won’t vote to ramp up energy prices (at least not high enough to actually solve the climate crisis) – it’s that the American people themselves wouldn’t vote to support such an issue. What they are overwhelmingly in support of, however, is backing a large investment in renewables, roughly $30 billion per year according to the polling, to bring down the price of clean energy so it can compete with the dirty stuff. That’s the American way, and the only way we can retain, build upon, and hopefully spread the benefits of modernization we enjoy in our country. So let’s harness our modernity by unleashing our technology, knowledge and human potential upon the greatest opportunity humanity has ever faced.