The Island of Doubt

Earth: The Sequel
The Race to Reinvent Energy and Stop Global Warming
by Fred Krupp and Miriam Horn

Has the climate crisis got you down? Cheer yourself up with yet another dose of (almost) unbridled optimism from the president of the Environmental Defense Fund (Fred) and one of his staffers (Miriam). Don't be fooled by the odd choice of title; this is actually an ode to the free market.

We've been here before. Last year came a compendium of attractive investment options in the form of The Clean Tech Revolution by Ron Pernick and Clint Wilder, and for those who really can't stomach the idea of government telling us what to do, there was New Gingrich's A Contract with the Earth. Each book comes from its own corner of the political landscape, some less ironic than others, but all share the conviction that capitalism will save us from the ravages of global warming through venture capital investment in clean-energy science and technologies.

What sets apart Earth: the Sequel apart is its honesty about the challenges involved in letting the free market work. Almost every chapter — every 20 pages or so — we are reminded that the industry will only get to work on the problem of finding sources of energy that are both competitive and clean when the federal government introduces cap-and-trade legislation that limits the total amount of greenhouse gases the country's power plants can emit. That's all.

In other words, capitalism can only save us if we impose some of the most oppressive regulation of industry the country has ever seen. Unfortunately, Krupp and Horn aren't quite as up front about the hurdles required to pass such legislation. Just look at what happened last week in the U.S. Senate to the latest best effort by the country's political elite to do just that. It died. Again.

But the authors do make a point of describing just how far each candidate technology, from solar thermal to high-flying kites, is from commercialization. In fact, if you pay too much enough to attention to the concluding pages of each chapter, it's easy to lose the optimism that infects the rest of the book. I don't know how they do it, but Krupp and Horn somehow manage to hang on to their upbeat outlook in the final page:

In fact, the sheer scale of the problem is one reason our sense of alarm has given way to excitement and hope. The question is no longer just how to avert the catastrophic impacts of climate change, but which nations will produce — and export — the green technologies of the twenty-first century.

For me, though it wasjust as easy to come away a bit depressed, knowing that every time an entrepreneur predicts he or she is on the verge of producing electricity or biofuels cheaply enough to take on coal or gasoline, some new glitch sets us back to three or five or 10 more years of tinkering.

It's not that we aren't getting tantalizingly close to some serious breakthroughs. And there are plenty of off-the-shelf technologies that we can use right now, without breaking the bank, to slash fossil-fuel use. But even existing alternatives take time to introduce. We may be running out of the kind of time needed to bring about the necessary transition.

There's little doubt that we do indeed need cap-and-trade (or tax and dividend, as James Hansen proposes) to force the industry to embrace clean energy technologies. It's just that the task of implementing whatever carbon-pricing mechanism we settle on may make the technological challenges seem trivial by comparison. And although Krupp and Horn don't say that explicitly, they're not so naive as to pretend otherwise. For example, Krupp recounts a conversion with Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens, in which he senator was explaining why he votes for such ludicrous subsidies to corn-based ethanol, despite its drawbacks a clean fuel. The response? "It's 28 votes, the strongest lobby in the nation."

One other complaint, one that has been pointed out already by the likes of New Scientist's Fred Pearce. Krupp and Horn deal almost exclusively in American efforts, ignoring the rest of the world's significant contributions. They do this, they say, because without American leadership, the big transition will never come about. That may be true, but as far as the "race to reinvent energy" goes, American startups aren't the only players, and their excuse for optimism might actually be better served by a more global survey.

Ignoring the Euro success story of Vesta, which produces more wind turbines than anyone else, is a serious oversight. Although, considering it wasn't venture capital but massive government subsidies that got Vesta where it is, I suppose that doesn't really bolster their capitalist argument.

Still, it's nice to reminded just how many hardworking and brilliant entrepreneurs and venture capitalists there are out there willing to bet it all on saving the world.