Climate Engineering vs. Climate Taxation

Climate change is perhaps the most pressing issue facing the U.S. and the world in the coming decades- and there is no shortage of ideas about how to deal with it. The private clean tech industry has a flood of ideas, projects and businesses that utilize innovative engineering solutions to address the issues. At the same time, government approaches these issues from a different perspective, looking instead at how to mobilize and utilize the general public to finance and move problem-solving forward. And, as with anything in the public or political structure, parties have different takes on which angles are best.

environmentNews/idUSTRE58307720090904?feedType=RSS&feedName=environmentNews" target="_blank">Reuters reports on a group of economists, led by Bjorn Lomborg, author of “The Skeptical Environmentalist,” is questioning classic environmentalist views. His group touts “climate engineering” projects like spraying seawater into the sky to dim sunlight and “cloud whitening” as the most effective ways to combat global warming  and climate change rather than raising taxes on energy. Sound out there and crazy? Lomborg doesn’t think so.

"Climate engineering could provide a cheap, rapid and effective response to global warming," said the group of economists.

Lomborg’s group ranked research into marine cloud whitening as the best idea that they reviewed. The least promising option, according to them, would be carbon taxes, which they dubbed as “an expensive, ineffective way to reduce the suffering from global warming."

Other promising options they highlighted would be research into clean energies like solar and wind power, followed by spraying dust-like particles into the atmosphere to block sunlight or burying greenhouse gases.

"We should look at climate engineering as a fix for the first 50 to 100 years," Lomborg told Reuters.

While most governments are looking at carbon emissions alternatives, Lomborg and his panel believe that engineering is the way of the future.

"Research into green energy is what is going to fix the climate in the long term," he said.

This begs the question of where governments should put not only their money but their focus. Climate change in general requires innovative thinking about how to partner governments with the private sector to come up with viable solutions to the crisis.

Is it possible that combining the two is an option? Can carbon taxes and emissions schemes be one of the sources of revenue to fund the engineering research? Would governments be willing to utilize the money they make off of carbon markets and taxes into tax credits or grants to innovative engineering research?

The Royal Society of Britain said while research into climate engineering is important, it should not replace emissions cuts.

"We found that climate engineering has great promise. Even if one approaches it from a skeptical viewpoint, it is important to invest in research to identify the limitations and risks." Said Thomas Schelling, a member of Lomborg’s grop and a Nobel Prize winning U.S. economist.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change of the U.N. reported in 2007 that climate engineering technologies “remain largely speculative and unproven, and with the risks of unknown side-effects."

This is prudent advice, harkening to genetic manipulation of seeds to yield higher crop output. We don’t know the after-effects of attempting to alter the environment, indeed, the 100+ year experiment of fossil fuel burning has gotten us to where we are today, needing to deal with the effects. All options need to be considered, and it remains to be seen how governments and private enterprise will work together on this issue.