Revkin nails it:.
Panel’s Latest Warming Warning Misses Global Slumber Party on Energy Research
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Andrew Revkin, New York Times
In the long slide presentation shown at the Copenhagen release (of the latest IPCC report), somehow the panel failed to fit in a single graph like this one from the International Energy Agency showing how utterly inconsequential energy research is in advanced democracies (the O.E.C.D.) compared to budgets for science on other things we care about:
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Click to enlarge
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Justin Gillis’s news article on the release captures the main points:
At current growth rates, that budget is likely to be exhausted in something like 30 years. Yet energy companies have already booked coal and petroleum reserves equal to several times that amount, and they are spending some $600 billion a year to find more. Utilities and oil companies are still building coal-fired power plants and refineries, and governments are spending another $600 billion directly subsidizing the consumption of fossil fuels.
By contrast, the report found, less than $400 billion a year is being spent around the world to reduce emissions or otherwise cope with climate change. That sum is smaller than the revenue of a single American oil company, ExxonMobil.
… until climate and energy analysts get realistic about conveying the full scope of what’s needed, including a sustained investment in energy science sufficient to build the basis for a grand energy transition, the global slumber party, and global warming, will continue.
“There’s a cliché among policy wonks, which also happens to be true: The budget is policy.”
