Where is the technology?

Addressing Congress, Obama made a case once again for aggressive action on clean energy and climate change mitigation.

… to truly transform our economy, protect our security, and save our planet from the ravages of climate change, we need to ultimately make clean, renewable energy the profitable kind of energy. So I ask this Congress to send me legislation that places a market-based cap on carbon pollution and drives the production of more renewable energy in America.

None of this will come without cost, nor will it be easy. But this is America. We don’t do what’s easy. We do what is necessary to move this country forward…

Wishing for such leadership rhetoric among our leaders is one thing. The other is to look practically at what can be done.

The low-carbon technology industry is both capital-intensive and knowledge-intensive; private investment alone will not help the industry scale up sufficiently. Public funds and clear, long-term policy signals are needed to increase private investment. When that is the case for a nation that has been the envy of the rest of the world, how realistic is it to expect struggling economies and the nouvea rich countries to switch to low carbon energy?

Taking the case of US and China, the Worldchanging advocates that economic recovery can form the focus for climate-change negotiations, with major economies establishing bilateral partnerships and using stimulus packages to transform traditional models of growth.

But, there has to be more diffusion of technology across borders. Recent research has found that 76% of transfers still take place between developed nations. As nations talk tough to each other over emissions that belch out into the atmosphere uncontrolled, it is important that the rich nations make tech transfer work for the developing world.

After all, the blame for emissions does not always lie with the emitter. A new report talks of how about 9% of total Chinese emissions are the result of manufacturing goods for the US, while 6% come from producing goods for Europe.

If then as Dieter Helm, professor of economics at Oxford University, who argues that "focusing on consumption rather than production of emissions is the only intellectually and ethically sound solution" how does one go about measuring and parsing the precise footprints and taxing countries accordingly? A tough job!

Double accounting gets tough but at least acknowledging that consumption is also a critical aspect is a first step. And providing the technology the next. Any other solution to this truly ‘global’ problem?