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Dear Mr. President
http://www.technologyreview.com/featuredstory/508841/dear-mr-president/[font face=Serif][font size=5]Dear Mr. President[/font]
[font size=4] In a letter to President Obama, the editors of MIT Technology Review argue that addressing climate change must take top priority in the next four years.[/font]
January 2, 2013
[font size=3]Amid the crises and battles, both predictable and unforeseeable, that you will face over the next four years, one problem will stand out both for the economic and social dangers it poses and for the difficulty and cost of solving it. Whether you can develop a practical and sustainable strategy to address climate change—specifically, to begin lowering carbon dioxide emissions—will define the success of your new term as president. We do not make such a declaration lightly; we are keenly aware of the many other challenges you face. But the potential for global warming over the next decades threatens consequences so dire that they could overwhelm any progress you make toward other long-term economic, social, and political goals.
Altering the course of climate change is a task that will take decades. It will require innovative new technologies and overhauls of the world’s energy, agricultural, and transportation infrastructure. We don’t suggest that you can reverse the warming trend over the next four years, or even that you will be able to significantly decrease carbon dioxide emissions. But with the help of the world’s best economic, technical, and scientific minds, you can formulate a policy that will show the nation—and the world—how we can begin to make the changes necessary to ensure that the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere stabilizes at a safe level. Indeed, it is critical that you do so.
Four years ago, you made a remarkable start. The $90 billion in your 2009 stimulus bill for energy projects and research breathed new life into the search for cleaner sources of energy. The appointment of prominent researchers such as Steven Chu, your secretary of energy, and John Holdren, your senior advisor on science and technology, sent a signal that your administration was committed to making decisions based on facts and science. Most important, you made it clear that the government would play a vital role in encouraging the innovation needed to develop these new energy sources.
But you also made several painful mistakes that doomed much of the progress you had hoped for. Perhaps most damaging, you justified much of the spending by holding out the prospect of “green jobs” and suggesting that the creation of a new clean-energy industry could jump-start the economy. In the May/June 2009 issue of this magazine (see “Can Technology Save the Economy?”), we cautioned against conflating economic stimulus with a sustainable and effective energy policy. Leading economists noted that job creation needed to happen quickly, while transforming our energy infrastructure would take decades. And much of the energy spending in the stimulus bill, suggested one, resembled “pork-barrel politics” to satisfy the immediate need for jobs. The rush to fund energy projects meant that the choices made were not always wise. As another economist warned, “The cost here is not only the dollars. It may also be the dog that doesn’t bark—the truly important program that we could put in place if we went about encouraging innovation in a thoughtful way.”
…[/font][/font]
[font size=4] In a letter to President Obama, the editors of MIT Technology Review argue that addressing climate change must take top priority in the next four years.[/font]
January 2, 2013
[font size=3]Amid the crises and battles, both predictable and unforeseeable, that you will face over the next four years, one problem will stand out both for the economic and social dangers it poses and for the difficulty and cost of solving it. Whether you can develop a practical and sustainable strategy to address climate change—specifically, to begin lowering carbon dioxide emissions—will define the success of your new term as president. We do not make such a declaration lightly; we are keenly aware of the many other challenges you face. But the potential for global warming over the next decades threatens consequences so dire that they could overwhelm any progress you make toward other long-term economic, social, and political goals.
Altering the course of climate change is a task that will take decades. It will require innovative new technologies and overhauls of the world’s energy, agricultural, and transportation infrastructure. We don’t suggest that you can reverse the warming trend over the next four years, or even that you will be able to significantly decrease carbon dioxide emissions. But with the help of the world’s best economic, technical, and scientific minds, you can formulate a policy that will show the nation—and the world—how we can begin to make the changes necessary to ensure that the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere stabilizes at a safe level. Indeed, it is critical that you do so.
Four years ago, you made a remarkable start. The $90 billion in your 2009 stimulus bill for energy projects and research breathed new life into the search for cleaner sources of energy. The appointment of prominent researchers such as Steven Chu, your secretary of energy, and John Holdren, your senior advisor on science and technology, sent a signal that your administration was committed to making decisions based on facts and science. Most important, you made it clear that the government would play a vital role in encouraging the innovation needed to develop these new energy sources.
But you also made several painful mistakes that doomed much of the progress you had hoped for. Perhaps most damaging, you justified much of the spending by holding out the prospect of “green jobs” and suggesting that the creation of a new clean-energy industry could jump-start the economy. In the May/June 2009 issue of this magazine (see “Can Technology Save the Economy?”), we cautioned against conflating economic stimulus with a sustainable and effective energy policy. Leading economists noted that job creation needed to happen quickly, while transforming our energy infrastructure would take decades. And much of the energy spending in the stimulus bill, suggested one, resembled “pork-barrel politics” to satisfy the immediate need for jobs. The rush to fund energy projects meant that the choices made were not always wise. As another economist warned, “The cost here is not only the dollars. It may also be the dog that doesn’t bark—the truly important program that we could put in place if we went about encouraging innovation in a thoughtful way.”
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