Tom Friedman’s interview with the Huffington Post does an excellent job distilling the arguments for massive investment in green tech. This interview, taken together Van Jones’s excellent The Green Collar Economy lay out the immediate need for what Friedman terms “overwhelming force” in moving our energy economy away from fossil fuels. Particularly trenchant is Friedman’s first response:
With oil or coal, no one ever said there had to be a payoff you had to pay it back in five years, but with something green, “What’s the payback? What’s the payback on that Prius?”
Well. What’s the payback on your Hummer?
The argument against massive investment in green-tech is often an elaborate version of “it’s way too far off, and our infrastructure isn’t ready for it.” However, when JFK said we were going to the moon, our space program was in a similar state. But the scientific community rallied and got it done. Technologies like fuel cells and electric vehicles have been paid lip service in States of the Union addresses for decades now, but if we’re serious about energy independence, we need to make it reality now.
