The Breakthrough Institute

Is there an expert consensus behind major public investments in global warming adaptation and government investment in clean energy? Breakthrough says there is. What does the Center for American Progress' Joe Romm say?

Joe,

Please consider this post a genuine attempt to understand your position.

I often read you saying that your positions are grounded in a scientific consensus. Here's what I don't understand about this claim:

• You attack adaptation. This is odd to be me because adaptation has long been a central recommendation from both the IPCC and the Stern Review. Are you against investments in adaptation?

• Ted and I co-authored a white paper on "global warming preparedness" with Bracken Hendricks, a Senior Fellow with your organization, the Center for American Progress. Are you against the global warming preparedness recommendations we made in that paper?

• You say, "The country doesn't need a $20 billion annual program to develop new energy technologies." And yet there is an overwhelming expert consensus that we need massive government investments in technologies. Do you disagree that there is a consensus among energy scientists, or do you disagree with the consensus?

We did a fairly extensive literature review and found a consensus among energy scientists that public investments should go to both creating new technologies and to improving the performance (and reducing the price) of existing technologies -- a process that will effectively result in new technologies.

We're hardly hardly alone in finding a scientific consensus for big public investments. Andy Revkin from the New York Times interviewed 48 energy experts in the fall of 2006 and came to this conclusion:

In the private sector, studies show that energy companies have a long tradition of eschewing long-term technology quests because of the lack of short-term payoffs.

Still, more than four dozen scientists, economists, engineers and entrepreneurs interviewed by The New York Times said that unless the search for abundant non-polluting energy sources and systems became far more aggressive, the world would probably face dangerous warming and international strife as nations with growing energy demands compete for increasingly inadequate resources.

Most of these experts also say existing energy alternatives and improvements in energy efficiency are simply not enough.

In "The Investment Consensus" we reviewed more than two-dozen analyses by leading energy experts and found a strong consensus for massive public investments. Here's U of MD scientist Jae Edmonds:

Fundamental changes in the world's expanding energy system are required to stabilize concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Incremental improvements in technology will help, but will not by themselves lead to stabilization (Edmonds et al. 2007: 11, emphasis added).

Also consider that:

• The IPCC has called for major investments in energy RD&D.

• In his 2006 report for the UK government, Nicholas Stern called for public investments of $68 - $128 billion worldwide.

• Last December, more than 30 energy scientists, including four Nobel winners, sent a letter to presidential candidates calling for $30 billion per year.

Do you disagree with the IPCC, the 48 energy experts cited by Revkin, with the more than 24 experts whose papers we reviewed, and with Nicholas Stern on the need for major investments in clean energy? Please clarify.

I appreciate that you worked at the DOE. But let's face it, while your budget -- one billion dollars -- sounds like a lot, it buys almost nothing in the trillion dollar annual electricity sector. Your budget was puny and thus your ambitions were, understandably, puny as well.

I hope you'll read this email not as an attack but rather as a serious effort to discern your position.

Sincerely,

Michael