Earlier this month, I wrote about getting to carbon-free and suggested that natural gas from fracking and nuclear power were part of the way to get there while putting relatively less carbon into the atmosphere on the way. Today, I am going to make another suggestion with respect to climate change. Most of the proposals for addressing climate change and getting to carbon-free are not easy. In fact, they are downright hard, and they will cause a lot of pain for a lot of people. It’s not just cutting out the occasional airplane flight or getting rid of plastic straws. We are talking real impacts on living standards – especially on people who are still hoping to increase theirs.
If Emanuel Macron had trouble raising gasoline taxes as part of his environmental plan in France, how are people in China and India, etc., going to feel if their chance at a higher living standard is cut off by a green agenda? I realize that climate change advocates, perhaps especially those in the West, will say that the alternative is global catastrophe, but that is easier to say when you already have a higher standard of living than when you are giving up a chance to ever get one.
The idea is that at least part of the solution to the problem of climate change hasn’t been invented yet and that we’ll be surprised when it is and what it is. I don’t think climate change is going to be solved with just the tools and plans we have available to us today. The costs are too high for too many people.
The problem, however, is that too many climate change advocates seen to lack the imagination and the respect for what innovation might come up with. They can’t imagine that the best solutions to climate change might be ones we haven’t invented yet. While climate change advocates hate fracking, what they miss about fracking is the revolution it has created in energy in less than twenty years. A decade ago, the United States was dependent on countries like Saudi Arabia, Russia, etc., to keep our economy going. If oil producers wanted to squeeze us, they could. But ten years later, they can’t do that anymore. We have gone from producing five million barrels of oil a day to producing twelve million barrels of oil day. I realize climate change advocates think this is bad because we need to stop using fossil fuels. What they are missing is the incredible change from innovation. The point is: If we could have this kind of technological breakthrough in the production of energy, why can’t we have similar technological breakthroughs in ways to address climate change?
The key, however, is that we need to avoid government restrictions and policies that limit innovation and ingenuity. If government tries to lock in the solutions to climate change based on just what we know today, we probably won’t get climate change solved. But if we put the appropriate incentives in place,1 and avoid unnecessary rules and restrictions on innovation and ingenuity, who knows what ideas might be developed and what new ways we might come up with to achieve the end result we want. Because it is not the policies we use that count; it is actually getting to where we need to go. And the best way to do that is to invent and innovate, so we can solve climate change as easily as possible – and we can increase the chances we actually it done.
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1 Hint, hint: a carbon charge. (“Carbon charge” probably sounds better than “carbon tax.”)
A Further Comment (1/28/20 1:45/2:05 pm): In finding the inventions and innovations that will help us address climate change, there needs to government funding of research and development. There is no doubt about that. But we can’t rely just on government action. We need to harness private innovation and ingenuity, too. Because why pursue just one avenue when you can do more. And because you never know what might work and where it is going to come from.
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