Earth Equity News

Binding Emissions vs. Technological Fixes. By Peter N. Spotts, CSM, April 7, 2008. "A long-simmering debate has come to a boil among [some] climate policy specialists… At issue is whether the current tack on climate policy, which emphasizes... binding emissions... should take a back seat to an all-out push to develop... technology... 'This is one of the two or three central debates in the climate issue,' says Joseph Romm [of] the Center for American Progress… The trigger for the flare-up is a critique issued Thursday that attempts to show that the UN's IPCC has significantly understated the technology challenge the world faces on climate change. It does so, the argument goes, by overestimating the pace at which less carbon-intense and more energy-efficient technologies [naturally] take root... as economies evolve. Given the twin demands of controlling climate change and ensuring the world's future energy needs are met, 'the first question to ask is not how do we reduce emissions' [but,] 'how can we provide that energy in ways that do not lead to the accumulation of carbon in the atmosphere?' [says Roger Pielke Jr., of the University of Colorado at Boulder and author of the critique]. Technologies that are already at hand or likely to go commercial over the next decade may not be [able to ensure]... that global warming is held to about 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit by century's end. At this stage, he says, people should focus more on policies that directly address what many analysts see as a yawning technology gap, rather than on regulatory approaches."