Battling climate change with high tech, not hair shirts

The US used this Copenhagen climate-talk week to unveil a $350 million dollar plan to boost the use of carbon reducing technologies in developing countries.

My reaction: More, please.

Increasingly, it’s clear that very few of the world’s citizens are willing to make the sacrifices needed to cut greenhouse gases by the necessary amount.

Forget about the naysayers and Doubting Thomases.

I, for one, am absolutely convinced that global warming is real, with dire consequences. But have I changed my behavior much?

Nope.

I know quite a few passionate environmentalists.

Even they remain pretty sanguine about their families’ multiples cars, long-distance air flight vacations, and other carbon belching indulgences.

Put simply, guilt about climate damage is not a strong enough lever to motivate significant grassroots lifestyle changes.

Even those videos of polar bears plummeting from the skies aren’t doing the trick.

So what do we do? We innovate.

Yes, the US should continue to pressure the big polluters to clean up. A carbon tax is one possible model.

But the big investment — and the full-court political press — should go into technological change.

Smart grids, electric cars, wind, solar, hydro. The mantra should be progress, not punishment.

Americans will buy into a new, green way of life only if the changes make our lives better at the same time that they protect the environment.

To get there fast, state and Federal governments should double down on their investments in efficiency, renewable energy, and green technology.

$350 million? That’s a baby step. If you to to 350.org you’ll see that it is, at best, a downpayment on a sustainable future.