How to Avoid a Climate Disaster: The Solutions We Have and the Breakthroughs We Need

Build the infrastructure that will get new…

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Some of the best inventions have emerged when scientists start their research with an end use in mind; Louis Pasteur’s work on microbiology, for example, led to vaccines and pasteurization. We need more government programs that integrate basic and…

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As a result, utility companies and their regulatory agencies are loath to shut down a perfectly good operating plant that may have decades of useful life ahead of it. Policy-based incentives, through either the tax code or utility regulation, can accelerate this process.

Defense departments can commit to buying some low-carbon liquid fuels for planes and ships. State governments can use low-emissions cement…

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Make bigger bets on high-risk, high-reward R&D projects. It’s not just a question of how much governments spend. What they spend it on matters too.

And even countries without a carbon tax can make it clear that they won’t make trade agreements and enter multilateral partnerships with anyone who hasn’t made it a priority to reduce greenhouse gases and adopted the policies to accomplish it

breakthrough wouldn’t even exist without a government spending tax dollars on research, policies designed to drive that research out of the lab and into the market, and regulations that created markets and made it easy to deploy at scale.

1. Quintuple clean energy and climate-related R&D over the next decade. Direct public investment in research and development is one of the most important things we can do to fight climate change, but governments aren’t doing nearly enough of it. In total, government funding for clean energy R&D amounts to about $22 billion per year, only aroun

governments will need to retire inefficient, fossil-fueled equipment—whether power plants or automobiles—faster than they might otherwise.

policies accordingly. In 2005, with an eye on rising oil prices and a desire to import less oil, Congress passed the Renewable Fuel Standard, which set targets for how much biofuel the country would use in the coming years. Simply passing this legislation sent a strong signal to the transportation industry, which invested a lot in the biofuel techn