Breakthrough: Which Reporters Get it on Climate?

Of all the nationally syndicated columnists, there are a few who think outside the conventional environmentalist frame on global warming. Robert Samuelson of the Washington Post is one of them. In his column this week, he imagined what the presidential candidates might say if inoculated with truth serum. His take on global warming was right on:

'Energy independence' is a fraud. We simply use too much foreign oil. All we can do is limit our dependence by shifting to more-efficient vehicles and increasing domestic production. But these measures will take years and have only modest effects. The same is true of global warming. Without major technological breakthroughs, making big cuts in greenhouse gases will be impossible.

He's long championed the need for investment in new technologies. Back in 2006, he wrote:

Unless we develop cost-effective technologies that break the link between carbon dioxide emissions and energy use, we can't do much. Anyone serious about global warming must focus on technological progress - and not just assume it. Otherwise, our practical choices are all bad: costly mandates and controls that harm the economy, or costly mandates and controls that barely affect greenhouse gases. Or, possibly, both.

Nicholas Kristof from the New York Times is another columnist who "gets it." Last month he wrote a column discussing the implications of the Pielke et al Nature piece, which warned that the climate challenge is much bigger than anyone anticipated. He wrote:

[W]hat we need is vast investments on top of a drive to curb emissions through a carbon tax and a cap-and-trade system. In the best of worlds, it will be enormously difficult to persuade China and India to rely less on coal-fired power plants, and it will be utterly impossible unless we take serious steps ourselves...So the next president should start a $20 billion-a-year program (financed by a pullout from Iraq) to develop new energy technologies, backed by a carbon tax and cap-and-trade system.

Where is Kristof's colleague at the Times, Thomas Friedman? It's unclear. Last year, he said,

I used to think it would be a "Manhattan Project" on energy. I don't any longer. I've learned that there is no magic bullet for reducing our dependence on oil and emissions of greenhouse gases - and politicians who call for one are usually just trying to avoid asking for sacrifice today.

Friedman puts more faith in cap-and-trade and dirty expensive energy than we do, but we definitely agree on the need for non-incremental, breakthrough technologies:

Without a transformational technological breakthrough in the energy space, all of the incremental gains we're making will be devoured by the exponential growth of all the new and old "Americans."

Friedman's nimble thinking, and his ability to evolve, is one of his strengths as a columnist. Where will he end up on climate? Stay tuned for his forthcoming book - "Hot, Flat, and Crowded" - in which he'll spell out what he thinks it will take to achieve a clean energy revolution.

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