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• Dear Professor Stern.

  Please let me add a positive note from Italy.

  While actual Italian Government (guided by PDL – Partito della Libertà) is really far from the idea of a “Green Stimulus Plan” while is focussed on re-launching the Nuclear Energy Industry, the main opposition Party – Democratic Party (PD) is now seriously discussing about “Green Economy and Society” issues, as is evident in this campaign for new Secretary’s elecion.

  The new PD Secretary will probably launch the theme as central in the italian political agenda.

  Finally, it seems Italy is moving toward Green Economy.

  Regards,

  Innovatori Europei – Think Tank

  Posted 1 September 2009, 10:10 by Innovatori Europei

• No amount of green stimulus can solve the GHG emissions that is based on penalty. Carbon tax will create profit for one group and loose money for others in the developed world without any impact on the developing world. The world will always remain hungry for energy, and fossil fuel will be the cheapest source in near future. Going green through bio fuel like ethanol is a fallacy and will destroy even more forest land. Obama plan should invest money on efficiency, cheap hydrogen production and storage research, CO2 to methane conversion research, CO2 sequestration by creating CO2 pipeline grid. We can close some gap on the increased fossil fuel demand by developing technology that can cheaply produce solar energy, wind energy, and create viable cheap algae for bio fuel. We will have to develop clean coal technology that can be made available to developing countries free of cost. One major area in reducing CO2 could be coal liquefaction by adding hydrogen and make it able to compete with crude oil through tax credit. If investors see profit in coal liquefaction they might switch over from direct coal burning.

  Posted 5 June 2009, 18:54 by Goutam Biswas, Danville, CA

• The rainforests, like the arctic are at the core of this fast changing story.

  The Carbon Cap & Trade system will ultimately only prolong the use of fossil fuels. There is only one way to save the rain forests and ultimately humanity.

  Ironically, the answer may lie in one of the basic tenets of capitalism – ‘letting the market decide’. A couple of years ago an economic study estimated that the contribution made by the world’s Tropical Rain Forests to carbon scrubbing could be valued at around $35 Trillion annually. Thats 3 times the current value of global GDP. For the last 60 years or so, the world’s official reserve currency has been the dollar, un-officially it is oil or gold. Perhaps the ‘market’ will soon begin to see that the world’s greatest and most valuable assets should be placed at the centre of a new economic order, where enormous value is placed on the maintenance of the rain forests without which we could not breathe, the oceans – for their food, warming currents and tidal power.

  A new sustainable trading balance can emerge where countries such as Brazil, Central Africa, Madagascar and Indonesia could levy the rest of the world for maintenance of these irreplaceble natural assets. They can be the new OPEC, with huge sovereign funds in turn invested in our industrialised nations benignly powered by the fast developing technologies of windpower, tidal power and hydrogen power.

  Posted 23 May 2009, 21:56 by Tommy Murphy

• While President Obama’s budget proposals on most accounts have had a smooth sailing in the congress so far, the Cap and Trade proposal is seeing some opposition. With the decision now that a Cap and Trade proposal would need a 60 vote in Senate, things look a little less optimistic than a few weeks ago.

  In the ultimate analysis this may not be a bad thing, after-all this country’s legislative actions always relied on a good check-and-balances system through the two seats of governance. In the end it is entirely possible that the president makes some concessions on the timing as well as price of the carbon, especially in the initial few years to win congress support. Considering the fact that Europe made a number of emission concessions at the time of signing of Kyoto protocol, in order to push the protocol politically, this practice is not without precedence, although Jury is still out on the success of Kyoto Protocol in Europe so far.

  Posted 5 April 2009, 23:44 by Sunil Sibal

• Response to Andrew Ramponi re your comment

  yes – we will not run out of oil in the coming decades! But did we wait to run out of stones to get rid of the stone age?

  Posted 25 March 2009, 09:02 by Ben Stevens

• Large incentives are certainly a good idea to push the public toward green transformation. I think the administrations of the globe will not be able to stear a transformation of this magnitude. The governments should focus on setting and enforcing goals to transform the consumption avoiding to recommend specific solutions or subsidising concret single products.

  This will drive a significant global competition on innovation leading to smarter solutions and allow faster adoption. E.g. defining efficiencies in Household devices, Power grids, Cars ,…

  Posted 18 March 2009, 18:27 by Andreas Walbrodt

• Response to Andrew Ramponi re your comment:

  From your website I see you are coming from central Scotland, the land of William Wallace. According to my reading he would not have been so content to accept the status quo thinking about technological change like you seem to be willing to do. Neither would he have been willing to shift down and lump it. He was so successful for such a long time because he rejected the trappings of the knights from the other side of the border. They wore heavy armor and rode on great slow horses.

  Now that we are motivated by Wallace’s example, lets talk about technology of today.

  There might come a time when solar technology gets to a price range that it can displace coal fired electricity generation. I keep checking, but the numbers do not work for the specific example of my house, and it looks like they will not work out for the world in general, at least not just yet. So given this current stand-off situation, why not look at more indirect approaches.

  Maybe technological growth could come about with fairly simple, but different, ways to do things. Clearly cars need to change and power generation as we now know it needs to change. Seriously rethinking the last 100 years of development in these fields seems to show some answers that require very little technological change.

  Building insulation is another field where simple known technologies can make a big difference. This seems to be generally acknowledged, though each insulating action needs to be judged on its true economic merits. Certainly new construction offers possibilities for huge improvement over houses of the 1960 era. Replacement of houses is not something that is done on a ten year trade in cycle. This makes building insulation a much less responsive candidate for energy improvement.

  But the automobile has more potential for rapid improvement. Yearly CO2 emissions due to transportation, and most of this is depends on oil as the fuel, are about the same as yearly CO2 emissions from electric power generation. About 64% of the transportation CO2 is from light vehicles (American code for cars) emissions, so there is a lot to work with here. The benefit here is also in the possible reduction of demand for oil. So maybe it would be worth taking a serious look at a new kind of car that could eliminate a large fraction of that 64%. (Follow link by clicking name at bottom of comment.)

  Interestingly, people could still drive fast and tall. Provisions for people as tall as
  William Wallace would help to make such cars popular. (I might need a booster cushion.)

  Posted 13 March 2009, 13:57 by Jim Bullis

• transitions are always costly
  but we do know that the old energy gridlocks and worldwide warring energy factions do not work…we can go local with windmills and solar
  and control our down destiny
  instead of being at the economic mercy of other countries for massive gallons of oil a day

  Posted 11 March 2009, 17:34 by edna thackeray

• I agree we need to be less wasteful and far wiser in our use and distribution of resources. I think it is unlikely however that we will see a technological revolution which will fuel economic growth for another 3 decades. Like our ancestors, though with some substantial advantages, soon we are going to be living mainly on direct flows of solar energy. Our wealth and high living standard (at least for the privileged) has come primarily from depleting capital, and not the intelligent investment of our income into various technologies, useful though they are. Yes we can print money, and IOU’s and temporarily create the impression of growth and a stimulated economy, but ultimately we will not be able to print barrels of oil. The energy return from the energy we will need to invest in alternative energy sources is going to result in a huge reduction in net energy available for society. We are going to have to make do with far fewer energy slaves. Many of us will be shifting down a gear or two like it or lump it. Personally, at 1.70m and 70kg, I don’t need to grow any more anyway.

  Posted 11 March 2009, 14:40 by Andrew Ramponi

• Curiously, reducing the demand side equated in the article to a steep price for carbon, presumably meaning a tax or cap and trade which is just another kind of tax.

  Maybe we should try a little harder to find a solution that does not punish the public. A better way might be to develop technologies that also reduced demand. Building efficiency improvements fall in this category.

  Even bigger gains could come about from making cars far more efficient than the best production cars now available. And then yet further, we could change the way we produce electric power.

  At www.miastrada.com examples can be seen of how we could provide rapid transportation solutions that would enable our present life styles with safe and comfortable cars of a very different sort. Also discussed is an integrated system based on such cars which could then be the basis of a distributed power system that could produce double or triple the amount of electricity from natural gas than we now are able to manage.

  Such solutions require attitude changes, but since the cost would be minimal, in the end these could actually enhance life, and forego the punishment phase that otherwise seems to be the answer. Maybe a modest tax would be appropriate along with a set of rewarding developments, where the combination could be politically possible.

  As to stimulus, imagine what things could look like if industry went to work to produce some really innovative cars that might make American products look desirable to our folks as well as the rest of the world.

  Leading by example can be effective. I recall a narrative account by soldiers led by then Lt. ‘Thunderbolt’ Bullis, later General. “He was a good kind of officer, he would say, lets us go up there and fight them indians, not, you boys go up there and fight ‘em.” (Though Thunderbolt appears to have been a far distant cousin, I claim no such qualities myself.)

  Posted 9 March 2009, 21:26 by Jim Bullis, Miastrada Company

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