Creating the Permanent Energy Revolution

Keynote Address by Dr. Martin Hoffert; Commentary by. Dr. Morgan Bazilian and Dr. James White

Katherine Peters

          On August 1, Dr. Martin Hoffert’s message was eye opening: catastrophe looms ahead.  We are producing too much CO2 and we don’t currently have the technology necessary to curb our CO2 emissions while providing enough energy to fuel our ever-expanding world.  Although some people don’t believe that we have enough evidence to prove that such a problem even exists, others believe that the problem is already so large that we can’t begin to fix it.  “I believe that there is an alternative course,” said Hoffert, “but it requires a sense of urgency… similar to what we had in World War II.” 

       Hoffert declared to a packed audience that we can prevent a serious climate crisis, but only if we treat it as a crisis and spur our government to action.  “Only if we begin to create massive programs, Apollo-like programs and Manhattan-like programs, to research, develop, demonstrate, diffuse, and deploy alternative energy systems in the United States…do we actually have a chance of preventing the catastrophe that is looming.”

            Hoffert, Professor Emeritus of Physics and former Chair of the Department of Applied Science at New York University (NYU), began his talk with a video clip featuring the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and Hoffert’s response to their recent report.  In contrast to the IPCC’s view, Hoffert sees the climate change problem as “an engineering problem on a global scale.”  He believes that we have the technology to start to solve the problem, but not enough to actually solve it. He thinks we need to consider more radical solutions.

            Unfortunately, people are resistant to drastic change.  Hoffert believes that this resistance is due in part to our instincts, which tell us that our ability to survive and thrive is of central importance.  We know that as our climate changes we can adapt.  But we worry that doing something drastic to seriously limit our CO2 emissions would limit our economic growth, thus threatening our way of life.

            When Hoffert and his colleagues began studying global warming in the 1970s they thought about it as a scientific problem.  However, “the way the problem evolved in the United States is that it became a political problem.  It became a political litmus test.”  The U.S. electorate equates belief in global warming with a desire for strong centralized government control.

Hoffert jokingly concludes, “but what [our political beliefs] have to do with how molecules and carbon dioxide absorb inferred radiation is beyond me.”

Many people in the U.S. believe that the technology necessary to avert serious climate disaster will develop naturally out of the pricing system of the market, not from our government.  Hoffert disagrees, asserting, “it is a myth that is deeply embedded in our government.”  He believes the myth originated “when Ronald Reagan took over the White House from Jimmy Carter… The first thing he did was to rip the solar panels off the roof of the White House and subsequently disassembled Carter’s alternate energy research and development program.”  Reagan believed that the government was not supposed to be in the business of technology, but that the market would develop technology better, faster, and more reliably than the government. 

    Hoffert dispelled this myth by citing examples of major technology that came out of government research and development: gas turbines, jet airplanes, satellite telecommunications, large scale integrated circuits, nuclear power, computers, and the internet.  He contends that we need such a revolution in engineering to solve the global warming problem.  In the past, such revolutions have only come from government projects, and only when there was a sense of urgency.  In World War II, when we needed the ultimate weapon, the government’s Manhattan project developed the atom bomb.  Hoffert left the audience with the following message: To develop the necessary technology, we need to feel a sense of urgency to stimulate our government to act.

   Next to speak was Dr. Morgan Bazilian, who agreed with Hoffert, saying, “I don’t think we’re lacking the ability to meet the challenges, but we are lacking the inertia and will.”  Dr. Bazilian is the Chairman of the Program Board for the Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Partnership (REEEP), an international secretariat based in Vienna, Austria. He is also the Department Head of Renewable Energy Services for Sustainable Energy Ireland.

See Energy Revolution, Page 8