Foreign Policy Blogs

Clean Tech Calling

Sorry if I seem to be (relatively) blithely indifferent to the many and varied blows that climate change legislation, international agreement and even climate science appear to have been sustaining over the past several months, but I remain quite hopeful that legislation and diplomacy will continue to advance and, even more so, that clean tech is calling us forward.  The signal is loud, clear and resonant.

I wrote about this in my last post and I have written about it many times before that, including here where I restated what I’d heard Amory Lovins say – that the “renewable revolution had been won” – and I also quoted Siemens chief Peter Löscher:  “The green revolution has started…”

Here’s a perfectly wonderful, articulate letter from today’s FT.  It says, in a word, what Lovins and Löscher attest:  that we’re already in a “third industrial revolution.”  (See Jeremy Rifkin’s work along these lines, for instance.)  The letter says this transformation is happening and that “…all major global companies, including financial institutions, have placed their bets…”  and it “… is in full swing and doesn’t need a justification on grounds of climate change. It is simply sound economics to save on scarce costly resources, including energy fuels, to increase energy efficiency and tap resources that are everywhere and abundantly available, such as wind, sun, water and biomass.”

Works for me.

 

Author

Bill Hewitt

Bill Hewitt has been an environmental activist and professional for nearly 25 years. He was deeply involved in the battle to curtail acid rain, and was also a Sierra Club leader in New York City. He spent 11 years in public affairs for the NY State Department of Environmental Conservation, and worked on environmental issues for two NYC mayoral campaigns and a presidential campaign. He is a writer and editor and is the principal of Hewitt Communications. He has an M.S. in international affairs, has taught political science at Pace University, and has graduate and continuing education classes on climate change, sustainability, and energy and the environment at The Center for Global Affairs at NYU. His book, "A Newer World - Politics, Money, Technology, and What’s Really Being Done to Solve the Climate Crisis," will be out from the University Press of New England in December.



Areas of Focus:
the policy, politics, science and economics of environmental protection, sustainability, energy and climate change

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