Drill and Research

I've just finished this book, and in it Bjorn Lomborg claims that with a 25 billion dollar a year investment worldwide, we could fund enough research and development to replace our need of fossil fuels with renewable sources of energy.

His solution for raising the funds is to tax carbon emissions at 2 dollars a ton. Now, I'm all for funding R&D for renewable energy but I think that we can do that without any new taxes. And we can get the 25 billion from the US alone.

I suggest we take all the money we get from land leases for drilling (on and off-shore), which came to about 9.4 billion last year. That total will be even higher if we open more areas for drilling. And while we're at it get rid of the the new farm subsidies bill at about 30 billion a year. This would give us almost twice the recommended amount needed to fund the research necessary to get us off of oil. Even without the farm subsidy money we would fund almost half of the 25 billion from land leases alone.

Also, new oil drilling sites would allow us to stabilize the price of oil, giving us time to transition to these new forms of energy.

I should probably mention that Lomborg agrees with the findings of the IPCC. Even with this being the case he still thinks it the 14th most important problem to tackle.

Also, with all that uranium coming out of Iraq, we could have the fuel for all those new nuclear power plants McCain wants.

I'll be doing a detailed write up on the entire book in future posts.

Climate Change Response: Adaptation or Prevention?

Bjorn Lomborg, author of Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist's Guide to Global Warming



"There's definitely a global warming problem, and it's one that we need to fix throughout the 21st century, but the problem is what we can do right now is actually fairly little at very high costs."

Mr. Lomborg is certainly not without his critics, but he presents a unique way of thinking about climate change policy.

To me, the most interesting part of the debate with regard to climate change policy is not whether the Earth is warming, or even the causes of warming, but the cost-benefit analysis of the policy choices.

A thought-provoking example provided by Mr. Lomborg is windmills (sometimes he'll use solar panels). A great deal of resources have been invested in constructing very expensive and inefficient windmills. These windmills will have negligible impact on global warming in the long-run. Rather than spend an enormous amount of money building and installing these few expensive and inefficient windmills, wouldn't it be better to spend that money improving the technology so that we can have a far greater number of more efficient windmills?

Further, if we are limited in what can reasonably be done to prevent global warming, should we be preparing to adapt to it instead? I worry greatly about unforeseen consequences, so this decision cannot be taken lightly. But the question of adaptation or prevention should be explored.