The gov’t “picked winners” in investing in corn ethanol, disqualifying and discouraging solutions like butanol, algae, and the like. This is a losing proposition — wasted tax dollars and no solution.

If the technology exists and it is not being implemented it is because the technology is not economically viable. No amount of wishful thinking disguised as government policy is going to change this nor will any crisis.

What people today forget is the society we have today was built with cheap energy. Without 90% of us would still be tending cabbages and helpless to protect ourselves against the capriciousness of the weather.

We need a replacement energy source that costs the same as what we are currently using before there will be any shift from fossil fuels. Politicians that try to force people use more expensive energy sources will not be able to keep their jobs.

Note that we had a suitable crisis in the aftermath of 9/11, albeit related to security rather than climate, and rather than take steps toward energy security the U.S. a) went shopping and b) moved to directly secure oil supplies in the Middle East. Doing otherwise would have made much more sense for the country as a whole, but entrenched interests wanted to go in a different direction. To be taken seriously, people like Pielke and Sarewitz need to explain how that happened and how in the absence of a crisis something different can happen relative to climate.

Of course new energy technology is being developed anyway and over a period of time will get adopted even without a crisis, but not quickly enough relative to the climate need.