Breakthrough

In recent months, increasing numbers of Brits have called for a new Apollo project on energy. Just before last December's U.N. climate change meeting in Bali, the London School of Economics' Gwyn Prins, and Oxford's Steve Rayner, wrote, "Time to Ditch Kyoto" in Nature, which argued for the U.S. to make an $80 billion investment in clean energy. Now, Financial Times columnist Gideon Rachman has called for for the U.S. to implement a Manhattan project on energy.

Rachman cites America's culture of innovation as reason for us to take the lead:

America's faith in the future and in technology continues to set the US apart from Europe. It is no accident that the information technology revolution that has transformed business and ordinary life all over the world was made in America. It happened not just because the US is home to the world's leading universities and a flourishing venture-capital industry. It is also to do with an attitude of mind.

But isn't this best left to private companies, as Gingrich and other American conservatives have been saying (here and here and here) in response to our call for a big investment? Rachman says no:

People with a background in private industry or venture capital -- rather than government -- are most likely to have the right mentality for such a challenge. But global warming is a vital issue of public policy. And however many billions philanthropists can mobilise, the US government can always find more. Washington has shown in the past that it can set up world-changing scientific initiatives. The challenge of global warming is crying out for just such an approach.

Now we just need a modern day Churchill and FDR to make it a reality.