SomeOtherGuy said...
pweedas, most of what you say makes sense except the bit about governments putting all the money into research. I'd think that if governments created a huge alternative energy research scheme (something which actually they do already fund on a much smaller scale through the universities) then what that would do is create a huge alternative energy research business. They'd be in the business of doing research, not necessarily the business of finding solutions. In fact the cynical among you (what here?) would say they would be in the business of NOT finding solutions 'cause that would stop the money flow.
40 years ago Australia had some excellent government funded research facilities which used government money to find and develop new ideas into commercial reality and then sell / release them to general industry.
Commonwealth Serum Laboratories was one of them. CSIRO was another.
The new energy source project would slot nicely into CSIRO which I think is still government owned. Otherwise it could be set up as a separate entity.
The idea of using government money to fund a large project is not new.
After all, the government thinks that the benefits of high speed porn is of sufficient benefit to the community that it warrants setting up a new government funded communications company just for the purpose. (NBN Company)
This is a bit of a joke since they have only just finished selling off their last communications company (Telstra) back to it's original owners, us taxpayers whose money they used to set it up in the first place.
Meanwhile the corporations in the business of burning things have no motivation to stop. In fact, they're motivated NOT to stop because it'd cost them money to move to different technology and every corporation is in the business of improving profit. Which means controlling costs.
That's right. They have no incentive to develop new technology which would bring about their own demise. That's why any new technology will have to be developed outside of their influence by an authority which is beyond their control. They can get on board later by buying any successful technology from the government funded research organisation.
On the other hand, if you slug a large corporate a big tax on their pollution, they instantly have lots of motivation to go find something cheaper. They have the motivation to both do the research and stop burning things.
They do, and they may well do this in a small way. However, their first reaction is to incorporate the extra charges into the final cost of their product, coal, oil, electricity, whatever.
They have to. It's the way the system works. No profit means no company which means no jobs which means financial disaster.
By having it a government funded project it becomes partly removed from the necessity to show a profit every year. I say partly because there will still be many who sledge the whole operation on the basis that "It's been operating for two years now and hasn't made a single cent!"
I've heard it all before.
Back in the 1960's I was boarding with an old chooky who couldn't understand why we (mostly the American Government) was spending millions of dollars sending up rockets to wizz around the world for "no good purpose other than their own amusement." (she said)
This was at the same time I was doing an engineering degree and in spite of my best efforts trying to explain that what she was looking at was a critical turning point in civilisation and particularly in communications, she remained totally unconvinced until the day she died.
Like it or not, we are at another critical turning point in civilisation.
If we shut our eyes and blindly forge straight ahead on the same path we are on now, we are going to run off the road,... at high speed. It wont be pretty!
KRudd was close to being right when he used the expression "the greatest moral challenge of our time".
He was wrong when he thought that it could be solved by a carbon trading scheme.
The problem will not be solved by putting bandaids on the present technology.
It will not be solved by cutting back emissions by 10%, 20%, any% simply because the rapidly increasing numbers will quickly drown out to the point of insignificance any small reductions.
It can only be solved by a totally new, clean, cheap and inexhaustible energy source.
It solves everything from water shortages, food shortages, air pollution, and yes,.. excessive atmospheric CO2, whether this is a problem or not.