Breaking the jam

The Kyoto process has failed to deliver meaningful reductions in emissions and the Copenhagen climate meeting is doomed to failure.

The only solution is to abandon the cap-and-trade approach, re-frame climate change as an energy issue rather than a “green” issue, and persuade governments to invest massively in clean technology to provide increasing energy in a way that protects the climate.

That is the thesis of Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus, who founded the Breakthrough Institute in California to smash the jam on the climate and energy debate.

… They believe that cap-and-trade will never produce the desired results. Its energies are subverted by the sort of political manoeuvring which is hampering the Waxman-Markey Bill.

It is the best-established industries with the biggest voices inside government which benefit most, whilst investment in cutting-edge technologies which might provide our future clean energy continues to be starved.

BBC