The Island of Doubt

Not because he's wrong about the Herculean hurdles facing any society that tries to put an end to our climate-changing ways. He's right about that, as he describes the incredibly rapid pace of industrialization and modernization taking place in Doha, Qatar, and Dalian, China:

Hey, I'm really glad you switched to long-lasting compact fluorescent light bulbs in your house. But the growth in Doha and Dalian ate all your energy savings for breakfast. I'm glad you bought a hybrid car. But Doha and Dalian devoured that before noon. I am glad that the U.S. Congress is debating whether to bring U.S. auto mileage requirements up to European levels by 2020. Doha and Dalian will have those gains for lunch -- maybe just the first course. I'm glad that solar and wind power are "soaring" toward 2 percent of U.S. energy generation, but Doha and Dalian will devour all those gains for dinner. I am thrilled that you are now doing the "20 green things" suggested by your favorite American magazine. Doha and Dalian will snack on them all, like popcorn before bedtime.

I agree that all the little things that Al Gore's slide show asks you to do will amount to only a few pixel against the bigger, high-resolution picture. But so what?

Friedman implies that we might as well forget about trying to do something about climate change because it's too hard. As if it's a binary choice: either mitigate warming by making the radical changes required at every level, from the home to the international trading market, or learn to adapt as best we can to a warmer planet, with its rising sea levels, drought-stricken prairies and all.

And that, my friends, is what they call a false dichotomy. Of course we should learn to adapt. As much warming is in the inevitable pipeline as we've already experienced (something around 0.6 to 0.8°C). Add to that the inertia of industrial economies, and we can pretty much count on at least a total of 2°C. Which is where some very serious things like melting polar caps might become more than imaginary goblins lurking on climate change blogs. But why can't we also work hard on minimizing future warming as much as possible?

We should be pouring every last spare dime into clean energy research. And don't tell me we don't have enough money. After spending somewhere in the neighborhood of $1 trillion on Iraq, it would seem that we are able to find the cash for the wildest indulgences when we choose to (and are willing to embrace Keynesian debt loads). That's just in the U.S.

I think it reasonable to expect that a trillion dollars spent on scientific research into new ways to free hydrogen from oxygen, to sequester carbon from smokestack emissions, to move electrons across photovoltaic potential drops more efficiently, to generate superconducting coils at room temperature, would probably result in at least one of what Friedman calls the needed "transformational technological breakthrough in the energy space."

Besides, think of all the research jobs for scientists that would mean...