A Climate Repair Manual

Climate change compels a massive restructuring of the world’s energy economy. Worries over fossil-fuel supplies reach crisis proportions only when safeguarding the climate is taken into account. Even if oil production peaks soon–a debatable contention given Canada’s oil sands, Venezuela’s heavy oil and other reserves–coal and its derivatives could tide the earth over for more than a century. But fossil fuels, which account for 80 percent of the world’s energy usage, become a liability if a global carbon budget has to be set.


To go beyond what climate specialists call the “business as usual” scenario, the U.S. must follow Europe and even some of its own state governments in instituting new policies that affix a price on carbon–whether in the form of a tax on emissions or in a cap-and-trade system (emission allowances that are capped in aggregate at a certain level and then traded in open markets). These steps can furnish the breathing space to establish the defense-scale research programs needed to cultivate fossil fuel alternatives. The current federal policy vacuum has prompted a group of eastern states to develop their own cap-and-trade program under the banner of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative.

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