"At the end of the day, the only way we are going to solve the climate challenge and the environmental challenge is to develop and deploy, in-scale, on a cost-effective basis, new technologies."
- Henry Paulson
A couple weeks ago, I made mention of a number of influential politicians, bureaucrats, and financial sector luminaries participating in the release of a bipartisan report on the economic risks of climate change.
One of them, Henry Paulson, the 74th United States Secretary of the Treasury under George W. Bush, has decided to take things a step further and launch an initiative to fund research and push for more aggressive action on reversing global warming.
Careful, Hank. You've seen how the screwball denial machine has tried to disparage another vocal advocate of climate science from across the political aisle, I'm sure.
And I really hope Steven Goddard is sitting down, because Paulson is starting this program in — dun, dun, ddddduuuuuuuunnnnnnn — China.
This video made me realize there's a very, very important point that I don't quite drive home hard enough here at this blog: we need to find ways to reverse man-made climate change while preserving our modern way of life. The idea is NOT for everyone to move back into caves, and grunt, "Ugh, job well done, Grog." The idea is exactly what Paulson intends with this initiative: get our best and brightest to innovate our way out of this mess of our own making. In fact, I would even go so far as to say that that innovation needs to not only prevent a return to the Dark Ages, but also to advance our technology and society as well and propel us into the future. It needs to align our means of powering our civilization with other ambitious human goals.
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