Quotes to mark for later

By later, I mean a few years from now.

1. "Roger Pielke Jr., has a name for this: the iron law of climate policy. Pielke, a professor of environmental studies at the University of Colorado and the author of the new book The Climate Fix: What Scientists and Politicians Won’t Tell You About Global Warming, which advocates energy innovation, writes that when climate policy is seen to get in the way of development and economic growth, climate policy loses."

2. "We need to put in the money and the time to develop significantly better and cheaper forms of green energy, first in the lab and then in the real world. Just as American scientists created the atomic bomb, pioneered the space program, and launched the information and biotechnology revolutions, they can create the energy solutions needed for the future. We just have to give them a chance—which we haven’t yet. Here’s an astonishing statistic: Since the beginning of the 1980s—around the time climate change began to become a concern—federal investment in energy research and development has generally shrunk. Temporary stimulus spending aside, the U.S. government spends less than $5 billion a year on energy research and development, compared with more than $30 billion for health research and more than $80 billion on military R&D."

3. "Of course, at a time when climate-science denial seems to have become a badge of honor in the Republican Party—which also wants to take a guillotine to government spending—perhaps this approach is doomed to failure, too. But eventually, hopefully, our collective national fever will break, and when it does, we need to be ready with the right energy policy: one that can appeal to more than just a narrow band of bright greens. Amplified energy research won’t be the whole show. Efficiency standards, smarter cities, and perhaps eventually carbon standards—we’ll need a royal flush of policies to stand a chance. But it has to begin with innovation, not regulation."

From "Cap and Trade is Dead. Now What?" by Bryan Walsh