In a recent interview with Breakthrough Institute founders, Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger, the Energy Tribune's Robert Bryce leveled some pointed questions about the motivation behind the recent "Climate McCarthyism" series, Nordhaus' and Shellenberger's political leanings, as well as their long-advocated policy prescriptions for meeting the energy challenge. Below are some key excerpts from the conversation; the full interview can be read here.

On "Climate McCarthyism,"

RB: What motivated you guys to write the Climate McCarthyism series?

Ted: In the past we had only responded to Romm when he attacked us directly. The truth is that for months we kept trying to avoid the guy. We'd put out an analysis of climate legislation and instead of actually taking issue with the content Romm would attack us personally. We'd respond by saying things like, "No, we're not global warming deniers or delayers," duh. After he started going after reporters and others we started saying to ourselves, "Somebody really ought to stand up to that guy," but nobody ever did. So when he went after Keith Kloor -- a guy we've never met but who was the editor of Audubon Magazine for eight years - and called him a "trash journalist," we knew somebody had to say something. Romm was engaging in character assassination to intimidate the press corps, and it was starting to work.

Bryce touches on the fact that many critics have questioned both Nordhaus' and Shellenberger's political affiliations, occasionally asserting that the two are part of a libertarian political camp, despite their advocacy of massive public investment in clean energy technology and infrastructure central to Breakthrough's energy and climate policy positions. On political ideology:

RB: How do you describe your own political leanings? Do you consider yourselves Democrats? Libertarians?

Ted: We're both Democrats and liberals. Some highly partisan liberals and environmentalists have attacked us as libertarians or neo-liberals and it is laughable. We're advocating massive and direct state intervention in the energy economy. Whatever you think about that idea, it is indicative of how simultaneously hyper-partisan, ideological, and incoherent the climate debate has become that liberals who disagree with us can only understand our view point as some combination of conservative, libertarian, or neo-liberal even as our views and proposed solutions are diametrically opposed to those ideologies. It's just one more example of the ways in which the climate debate has been completely narrowed down to just two positions by both sides.

In continuously challenging the dominant environmental paradigm since the release of their article, "Death of Environmentalism" and their subsequent book, "Break Through," Nordhaus and Shellenberger have asserted that a politics that focuses on limits, instead of possibility, isn't applicable to meet the challenges presented by climate change. On pending climate and energy legislation and why its cap-and-trade mechanism won't work:

RB: Why? It can't work because they can't pass it through Congress or because it won't work if it passes?

Ted: What they can pass through Congress can't work. This is the problem of the "Gordian knot" that we describe in Fast, Clean, and Cheap. No political economy in the world has been willing to seriously raise energy prices sufficient to drive substantial emissions reductions and the U.S. Congress is not different. Until climate change advocates stop trying to implement solutions that are predicated on high carbon prices in a political economy that, if it does anything, is only going to establish low carbon prices, we will be stuck with the same basic problem.

Nuclear power is a hot-button issue in the debate surrounding pending climate and energy legislation, passed by the House in June, with many environmentalists coming out in extreme opposition to increased nuclear deployment despite the fact that it is a low-carbon energy source. On nuclear power:

RB: What is your position on nuclear power?

Ted: Our position has changed from radical opposition to qualified support. We need appropriate safeguards. But we are impressed by the technological improvements over the last 50 years, and think nuclear needs to both be a key power source for developing nations, and a way to displace coal in the developed world. We support the fuel bank mechanism and other key safeguards to prevent proliferation.

Bryce hits on one of the biggest questions about Nordhaus' and Shellenberger's call for increased public investment in clean energy technology by asking why the U.S. can't just rely on the private sector to "make clean energy cheap." On large-scale public investment in clean energy technology:

RB: You advocate bigger government-sponsored investments in renewable energy. Why should those investments be made by the government? The potential payoffs for a company that develops a high-density battery technology or other energy storage technique are enormous. Why can't the private sector be trusted to do this work?

Ted: The energy sector is massively under-investing in R&D compared to the national average for several reasons. First, few have any economic reason at this point to move away from fossil fuels, which are incredibly cheap and profitable sources of power. Second, energy technology innovations are fairly easy to reverse-engineer, and unlike pharmaceutical drugs and media, patent protection is weak. This makes firms unwilling to spend much on R&D. Third, energy technologies are expensive. You can start Google in your garage for a few million, but new power plants cost on the order of $5 billion. It's not an industry that lends itself to start-ups.

Last week, the Breakthrough Institute and the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation released a report benchmarking the clean energy competitiveness in four nations - China, Japan, South Korea, and the United States. The report found that the these Asian nations will out-invest the United States by a margin of 3-to-1 in clean energy technology. On the report, "Rising Tigers, Sleeping Giant: Asian Nations Set to Dominate the Clean Energy Race by Out-investing the United States," and clean energy innovation:

RB: In "Rising Tigers, Sleeping Giant," you argue that China, Japan, and South Korea are about to eat our lunch on all the major low-carbon technologies, including nuclear, because their governments are poised to spend three times more on infrastructure and technology than we are. What do you say to those who argue that you're looking at the wrong metric? America is still the global leader in R&D and home to most of the venture capital.

Ted: Yes, but look at where things are headed. For the first time in 2008, China attracted more private sector investment money than the U.S. Contrary to the neoclassical mythology, government investment in infrastructure and technology for new firms doesn't "crowd out" the private sector, rather it crowds them in. What you're seeing in all three Asia countries is a deliberate effort by governments to establish a first mover advantage over the U.S. through regional clusters of manufacturing, suppliers, universities, R&D labs - just like Silicon Valley.

Michael: And even Google got money from the federal government. Indeed, if Americans had held the libertarian resistance to state funding of new infrastructure and technology, we would not have built the railroads, the highways, or the Internet, nor would we have cheap and abundant food, radios, many pharamaceutical drugs, jet airplanes, computers - the list goes on and on.

Access the full interview here.

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