“If there is an iron law of climate policy, it is that when policies focused on economic growth confront policies focused on emissions reductions, it is economic growth that will win out every time,” writes University of Colorado political scientist Roger Pielke, Jr. in his new book, The Climate Fix: What Scientists and Politicians Won’t Tell You About Global Warming. The world saw this iron law of climate policy fully in action this past year, as both the Obama administration’s push to adopt a domestic cap-and-trade scheme to ration carbon dioxide and the Copenhagen climate change negotiations over a treaty to follow the United Nation’s Kyoto Protocol collapsed before it.
Pielke ends by arguing that the uncertainties about man-made climate change means that the world needs to develop no-carbon energy sources in the future. Given the iron law of climate policy, the new energy sources must be cheaper than the fossil fuels they replace. How can this be accomplished? He proposes that countries levy a $5 per ton carbon tax and that governments use the tens of billions raised to fund research and development for such new energy technologies. Pielke believes that reaching an international agreement on such a course will be far easier than trying to negotiate a comprehensive carbon rationing scheme (which would be ineffective anyway). Such a tax would raise about $30 billion per year in the U.S. Given the past sorry experience of government-funded energy R&D in the United States, Pielke is making a huge leap of faith that federal bureaucrats will get it right this time.
Pielke’s proposals look increasingly likely to garner some bipartisan support on Capitol Hill. Ultimately, The Climate Fix is a clear-eyed analysis of how climate science became politicized and of the magnitude of the technological and economic issues that addressing the uncertainties of any future warming will entail.
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Can the climate be fixed? 
