The Financial Times Review of Climatopolis
This Financial Times Review is perfectly fair. Yes, I do believe that climate change will accelerate certain directed technological change.
As people begin "to see" climate change over the next 30 years, even political moderates will become more supportive of carbon mitigation policies. This shift in the median voter's priorities will send clear signals to venture capitalists to invest in technologies that decouple energy consumption from greenhouse gas production.
On the adaptation side, climate change will accelerate technological advance for engineering breakthroughs and products that allow urbanites to remain comfortable and productive and safe in our riskier world.
This doesn't mean that "climate change is good for technological progress". If our nerds are focused on helping us to adapt to climate change, then this displaces their efforts from other problems they could be working on (perhaps human cloning?). It does mean that technological advance focuses on issues where there can be significant profits earned and collective concern with adapting to climate change will create a large market. Note the role of expectations here. The expectation that there will be a world market for products that help us to adapt create increases incentives for entrepreneurs to design those products today. Expectations affect investment patterns and investment patterns affect the probability of a breakthrough. Once we have a breakthrough, it can diffuse widely and reduce the costs of adaptation.
As people begin "to see" climate change over the next 30 years, even political moderates will become more supportive of carbon mitigation policies. This shift in the median voter's priorities will send clear signals to venture capitalists to invest in technologies that decouple energy consumption from greenhouse gas production.
On the adaptation side, climate change will accelerate technological advance for engineering breakthroughs and products that allow urbanites to remain comfortable and productive and safe in our riskier world.
This doesn't mean that "climate change is good for technological progress". If our nerds are focused on helping us to adapt to climate change, then this displaces their efforts from other problems they could be working on (perhaps human cloning?). It does mean that technological advance focuses on issues where there can be significant profits earned and collective concern with adapting to climate change will create a large market. Note the role of expectations here. The expectation that there will be a world market for products that help us to adapt create increases incentives for entrepreneurs to design those products today. Expectations affect investment patterns and investment patterns affect the probability of a breakthrough. Once we have a breakthrough, it can diffuse widely and reduce the costs of adaptation.
posted by Matthew Kahn at 4:09 PM
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