December 11, 2015

As at Copenhagen, the sticking point in Paris is money –who is going to pay how much so the entire world won’t look like Beijing during a red-alert smog storm. The real issue is not money per se but that the world’s powers are reluctant to simply walk away from oil and coal and the fabulous wealth and power they represent. If they truly are as committed as they say they are to do what it takes to save us humans from becoming extinct, all the U.S. and China have to do is switch to hydrogen as outlined in Plan A; at first for generating electricity and later for mobile applications. This is not complicated. Hydrogen is clean, renewable (and thus inexhaustible), and its precious byproduct, water, can transform the driest desert into a dense forest. No fuel can do that (hydrogen is an energy carrier, nature’s battery, not a fuel).

Everyone knows there is an intractable, stubborn Republican opposition to treaties or agreements that would threaten the wealth of their constituents, and that some among them are more than eager to ensure the President fails to achieve anything, particularly a legacy-defining project. But nothing prevents the government from partnering with other nations as a form of foreign aid, for example, to outsource the production of hydrogen. Competition is a basic, powerful element of free enterprise. Used correctly it should encourage others to do the same.