The climate change debate

Putting aside the debates about whether climate change is real, that it is a danger to humanity, or that it is man made (and for the purposes of this post, I'm going to assume it is real and it is irrelevant whether it is man made if indeed it is dangerous to humanity), I have strong opinions about what can be done to alter climate change.

Let's face facts, without any cynicism or bitterness: what is currently profitable for our economy (and that includes corporations, governments, and individual people) is cheap energy made from fossil fuels. That is indisputable. In the long run, fossil fuels are no longer going to be profitable, due to the disasterous economic, political, social and human costs they will wreak due to climate change. However, it is (in my opinion) one of the failures of markets to not be able to take into account future costs. I very strongly believe that in the long run, the market can and will adjust to these costs - fuel prices will rise, the market will begin to provide cost-effective alternatives, and we will continue to be able to consume because these alternatives will be cheap.

Markets perform, and they respond to demand. When there is a real and sustained demand for alternative fuel (not this pansy green movement shenanigans), markets will be able to provide them cheaply. Many  people think this is naive, but I'd answer, look at personal computers, cell phones, cars, microwaves - each of these things began as incredibly expensive items for the ultra rich. They began cheap because profit-seeking companies sought a way to make them accessible to a massive market of middle and low income people.

Therefore: the only real change in energy policy, the only real answer to climate change, is to make it profitable to be truly green, and make it not profitable to be operating with dirty fuels. People will ultimately change their buying habits when green products are as efficient and cheap as dirty products. New technology must be developed to make green products that are not even marketed as "green" but as BETTER and CHEAPER than our old products.

How do we do this? I have yet to hear a real free market solution to this. I am forced to believe there must be some sort of government policy to make the change. The solutions proposed by free marketers (and I'm not talking cap and trade and those types of policies, as they require government intervention) are basically: "Wait, and the market will provide." Well yes, it will. But is it going to be soon enough to avert a disaster?

A hundred years from now, I'm not concerned about the future hating us for killing off polar bears or rainforests. I'm concerned that people will look at our generation as the only that enabled and furthered the massive humanitarian disaster that will occur if ocean levels rise in the south Pacific, or if droughts increase and intensify in the Sahara.

As much as it pains me to say it, I do not think the market can provide this answer in the short run - which is when we need it. I think the market needs to provide some sort of price signal that takes into account these future costs. Unfortunately, if the market cannot plan for it, I'm sure that government bureaucrats will not be able to adequately predict it either. I'm left feeling, as I do with that unsolvable problem of "development," that I have no idea what can be done.