Al Gore just updated his prescription for fighting climate change. Now other environmentalists have to follow his lead. ... Nordhaus and Shellenberger in
The New Republic.In a New York Times op-ed published on the first Sunday after Barack Obama's presidential election, Nobel prize winner Al Gore shifted from his longstanding focus on regulating carbon pollution to advocating direct government investments in clean energy as the best way to deal with climate change. Gore is the country's most prominent spokesperson on climate change and a shift in his thinking in reaction to new economic and political circumstances is highly significant.
Of Gore's five recommendations to President-elect Obama, the first four are for investment--in solar thermal plants, energy efficiency, a new electrical grid, and in electric cars--and only the final is for regulation, establishing a price for carbon. But even on this last point, Gore was far from aggressive, suggesting merely that the United Nations meeting to replace to Kyoto treaty in Copenhagen next year should result in countries agreeing to "invest together in efficient ways."
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