From Wired, an interview with ED's Fred Krupp (The Environmental Defense Fund's Fred Krupp on the Best Capitalist Climate Solutions).
An excerpt:
Krupp: In 1992, the EDF worked with Bush Sr. to craft a market system to reduce acid rain. It spurred a revolution in sulfur dioxide scrubbing technologies. The costs were projected at up to $2,000 a ton, but after 10 years they were down to about $100 a ton and emissions were slashed by 50 percent. In 2005, George W. Bush signed off on an additional 70 percent cut. Why? The costs proved so low, the political controversy had disappeared. I suspect the same thing can happen with a cap on global warming emissions once the incentives are right.
Wired: What kind of cap?
Krupp: A legal limit that requires reductions of at least 20 percent from current levels by 2020, ratcheting up to 80 percent by 2050. That'll give new technologies the chance to flower.
Wired: But won't our economy get hammered by China and India?
Krupp: It's inevitable that those countries will adopt caps, too. We will gain a competitive advantage by going first. The real question is, do we want to import clean tech from Germany, Japan, and China or export it to the rest of the world?
Wired: How fast will industry's costs decline?
Krupp: I can't say without claiming to know more than I do, but I know that capitalism works, that American entrepreneurialism works, and we can damn well expect that private capital — not government money — will actually solve this problem.
