U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham recently was quoted as saying, "Every day that we delay trying to find a price for carbon is a day that China uses to dominate the green economy." It was featured in a blog post on Joe Romm's Climate Progress, so you know something's wrong here. (Simple rule of thumb: Romm's never right. In fact, two Romms don't make a right. But a third might get you back on the freeway.) So, although I am a big supporter of putting a price on carbon (we will never get a hold of this issue until we do--never), I am forced to look for the error in logic that always accompanies the Rommulan's writing.
The Chinese will surely lead the world in manufacturing solar panels. They will move into third this year, behind Germany and the U.S. Certainly during this decade they will become number one in this category.
Who cares? Japan took our technological innovations in consumer electronics and gave the world the Walkman and more--and we became richer. Korea and televisions. Russia and nuclear warheads. Name the American innovation, and some country has immediately begun copying it, adapting it improving it and selling it back to us better and cheaper. And we have gotten richer. As a result.
But China is not stealing American innovations. Japan is the world leader in patents for environmental technology. Between 2002 and 2006, Japan applied for 60,261 patents for environmental technology, compared to the U.S.'s 25,047. China isn't eating our burger or even moving our cheese--they're stealing Japan's bento box. So, by inexorable force of logic and comparative advantage, Japan will get richer. As a result.
China can make solar panels more cheaply than we can. We have the high quality educational institutions needed to support systematic innovation (So, obviously, does Japan). It makes sense for China to use the technicians to put together panels and even build fabs to make the chips in solar panels. So Senator Graham is right to call for a price on carbon, but predictably both he and Romm are giving the wrong reason.
There is a common fear that America is in decline, that our best days are behind us. Part of the struggle regarding global warming is due to this fear--some are afraid we will be forever shackled to a world government brought into being to manage our response to global warming. While many of the people who are environmental activists also think multinational and supranational organisations should grow in number and power, I think it's a bit silly to think there's an international conspiracy involved here.
I think it's even sillier to think America is in decline. I absolutely believe, for better or worse, that this century will be even more of an 'American' century than the last. Here's why:
America has 168 of the world's 500 top universities. It is the only industrial country that will have significant population growth over the next 50 years (China will be in population decline by that time). And America is forging ahead on the three top technologies that will power this century--nanotechnology, biotechnology and robotics. So we win.
If that sounds counter-intuitive to you, if you think that we are going down hill, here's a simple reality check. Take a year when we were energetic, in our prime, knocking everybody dead with our brains. Like 1999, height of the dotcom boom. In 1999, the US Patent Office recorded a whopping 270,187 patent applications, a huge increase over 1998's 243,062 and 1997's 215,257. We were zooming.
In 2008 there were 456,321 patent applications filed at the US Patent Office. Folks, our best days are in front of us.
Green technology isn't that technological. Solar collectors and windmills? (I'm not even sure windmills are that Green, let alone technological. GE can put as many servos in them as they like to make sure they line up right with the wind, but they're still only producing 25% of rated capacity--that's not high tech, that's low tech. In fact, it's perilously close to no tech.) So whoever can make them cheaply, should. And we should buy them. Cheaply. And spend the money we save on research and development. Because we will need high tech solutions, both for global warming and the other challenges we face.
So, yes--despite their cluelessness, Romm and Senator Graham are right about putting a price on carbon. We tax things we want less of. We want less CO2. Not because we're going to drown under melting Greenland ice or because Manitoba will become Madrid overnight, but because global warming is really regional warming that will hit some places harder than others and it will be more expensive to fix than to prevent or minimize it.
But nobody's eating America's lunch--and a quick glance at the next 10 bellies you see on the street will serve as confirmation.
Steve Mosher and I have written a book about the leaked emails mentioned above. The title is Climategate: The CRUtape Letters. It is available on Create Space here, Amazon here, Kindle here and Lulu here. One Amazon reviewer wrote, "Mosher and Fuller do a good job putting the ClimateGate documents in context, and the book is a riveting read. I received my copy yesterday, and find the book to be faithful to the climate war events that I have followed over a period of years. It reports actual email communications of a small group of paleoclimatologists and their roles in perhaps the biggest scientific hoax since Piltdown Man."
Comments
Where are you getting the connection between CO2 and global warming?
We have been cooling for the past 12 years, while CO2 ppm has risen. Rising CO2 levels will be vital if the cooling trend continues, shorter growing seasons require higher levels of CO2 to achieve the same growth.
Thankfully CO2 will continue to rise for the next fifty years while India and China expand there coal burning electricity generating stations. In the meanwhile China has a good old laugh and make a lot of money selling the green energy revolution, wind turbines and solar panels, to the USA.
I do not agree that we want less C02. That is the fallacy in all this. You do not want a carbon tax because then China will eat America's lunch. The Chinese will make cheap wind turbines and solar panels for America while they open a new coal burning power plant a week, laughing all the time at dumb Americans brushing the snow off their solar panels. It is past time to get rid of the notion that C02 is bad and that solar and wind are any kind of alternative energy. It is time to get private industry creativity going on alternative energy.
Tom, I finally snuck a link to your book into a Nation blog on Climate Science Under Fire.
"that's not high tech, that's low tech. In fact, it's perilously close to no tech" - brilliant!
FLASH!!
This Brand New Video Blows a Huge Gaping Hole in Obama's Cap and Tax Scheme: www.youtube.com/watch?v=BVm5-6H_sH4
Tom,
Good for you being positive. I think if we can turn our lousy lower level education system around (K-12), we will be the top dog. However, if we do not do more drilling for oil and gas (needed for mobile power sources), we will run into big transportation cost and balance of payment problems. I think the only home and industry energy solution to avoid more use of coal (for electric power) is nuclear or space Solar, and the space Solar is not near term or even practical by today's technology. I have a writeup I made on the subject if you are interested.
Tom go to (no www): docs.google.com/Doc?id=dnc49xz_44f67brtp&hl=en
When you say, "Green technology isn't that technological. Solar collectors and windmills? (I'm not even sure windmills are that Green, let alone technological--that's not high tech, that's low tech. In fact, it's perilously close to no tech.)"
What are you an apologist for obsolete and polluting tech? Tell me the smart grid, creating digital two-way delivery of energy is low tech, yeah right. The interstate highway built in the last century wasn't that technological -- but it still fundamentally transformed transportation, our economy, our way of life. Clean Tech is more akin to this profound shift. Wind power is only one player in a whole host of solutions that will make up our green and clean energy team.
I have actually been to China and their photovoltaic research center. I work as an electrical engineer and purchase instruments and devices from certain Chinese companies.
You have been lied to. China is not just making the the solar panels. China has been designing the solar panels. The U of Colorado at Boulder just purchased many Chinese made panels and they were assembled in the United States. China's SunTech is one of the major companies that design photovoltaics. China earning huge amounts of profit on their solar and wind turbine technology.
In addition, people say "oh that's just manufacturing" and we are the innovation behind it. Guess what guys. Manufacturing itself is technology. Semiconductor fabrication is huge in China. Do you know how difficult and how much skill it requires to fabricate electronic devices(chips) ?
America is losing big.
China's photovoltaics are made in China and they are being assembled in the United States. This puts a "Made in America" lab
Hi all--I'm on the fly, so will pass over many comments I would normally love to follow up just to say thanks to Donna for her hard work on her blog--I'd say it there but she doesn't allow comments. Hope to respond more fully to the rest of you later.
If you're feeling comfortable about your lunch, try googling China and rare earth metals which are needed to manufacture green technology. Also, another factor to consider is outsourcing which means that the rich get richer and unaffected and wonder what everyone else is grumbling about.
Arguably, the technology that will power future societies is power technology. The U.S. built insurmountable leads in all areas of power generation, but managed to largely squander those leads over the past 50 years.
Amazing, isn't it? Solar photovoltaic, solar thermal, tidal, geothermal, and yes nuclear too...
deep-water drilling, super-deep drilling, shale fracking... and all the advances in coal burning technology in the last hundred years.
we kinda power the world, don't we?
You may not be aware of this, but Canada is an 'industrialized country' and has more favourable demographic trends than the US. That is if you think population growth is a favourable trend. Perhaps Japan with its population contracting, its economy in deflation and its per capita prosperity increasing that is showing us the route to sustainability.
If one wanted to build windmills in the US one would need to get an EPA permit for the smelting operation for the magnets.
Manufacturing moved offshore because not only is labor cheaper, one generally doesn't have to spend years jumping thru EPA pollution hoops.
Even when we look at seemingly benign WindPower...there are a couple of projects tied up hopelessly in environmental impact hearings. Wanna talk about Hydropower? Name me a single river that doesn't have at least one endangered something in it.
Solar Power? Virtually everything in a Desert is 'endangered'...Solar power will certainly upset the fragile desert ecosystems.
The Chinese are kicking our backsides beside we can not just sit down in a reasonable fashion, weigh the pro's and con's from all sides , take a decision and get on with business.
Perfection is the enemy of the good, the Chinese get that, we don't.
Eve is right re the fallacy around the CO2 and a new coal plant every week in China
The chinese are exporting 90% of their solar production leaving behind an environmental mess. From ENN
"The Post article describes how Luoyang Zhonggui, a major Chinese polysilicon manufacturer, is dumping toxic factory waste directly on to the lands of neighboring villages, killing crops and poisoning residents. Other polysilicon factories in the country have similar problems, either because they have not installed effective pollution control equipment or they are not operating these systems to full capacity. Polysilicon is a key component of the sunlight-capturing wafers used in solar photovoltaic (PV) cells."
How stupid are our politicians to ignore the total pollution problem with their carbon obsession.
Eve:
I also cannot say we want less CO2. Nobody has shown any actual harm from the current levels and tipping points are purely science fiction.
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