Francis Moran & Associates — We bring technology to market

By Francis Moran

It might be an oversimplification on my part, but from where I stand, much of the global debate around what to do about climate change has split along a fairly classic left-right axis. Those on the progressive end of the spectrum have embraced the environmental benefits of reducing anthropogenic climate change and often cast the debate in traditional liberal terms such as mitigating the impact on the poorest people on the planet, cutting our dependence on fossil fuels and the often-corrupt regimes governing countries where such fuels are to be found, and halting runaway consumerism. For many on the farthest end of the spectrum, fighting climate change is a natural outgrowth of their anti-capitalist convictions.

People on the right, on the other hand, are over-represented among the climate-change skeptics and even when they do acknowledge that something untoward may be going on, they consistently sound dire warnings about the economic disruption that will surely befall us all if we do anything significant to address the situation. Free marketeers and advocates for the smallest-possible level of government involvement in our lives are practically default members of this side of the debate.

There are always exceptions to be found but I don’t think it’s any coincidence that it was a Liberal government in Canada that signed the Kyoto Protocol — albeit without ever doing anything substantial to meet our treaty obligations — while it is a Conservative government that has swiftly back-pedaled away from making any concrete commitments. Similarly, south of the border, the last Republican administration wanted to have nothing to do with the issue while the current Democratic president and Congress are far more engaged in the debate.

I don’t want to belabour the point but a quick Google search finds the following two rather representative comments among hundreds of blogs whose writers have opinions about global warming, its causes and what we should do about it that align rather predictably with their self-identification as liberal or conservative.

“Now world leaders, and even some liberals, are calling man-made climate change what it truly is, a hoax.” — Conservative Politics Today.

“Physical evidence of global warming is widespread and startlingly significant.” — U.S. Liberal Politics

As with many left-right splits on issues of compelling human interest, I find myself a bit bewildered by the near-complete binary nature of this one. While I have no difficulty understanding the motivation and point of view of the left-wing campaigners, I am astonished that those on the right can’t see that, within what I believe is an incredibly urgent requirement that we swiftly and decisively move to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and mitigate the impact of climate change, there resides an almost unprecedented economic opportunity that ought to warm the cockles of the fattest-cat capitalist.

That’s why I so so enjoyed a blog post I read over the holidays by Ron Pernick, managing director of Clean Edge, Inc. and coauthor of The Clean Tech Revolution. In a column titled, “Don’t think of a solar panel,” Pernick said we need to reframe the debate so as to attract the support not just of “Birkenstock-wearing, back-to-the-earth, environmentalists” but also of the innovators, the entrepreneurs and, yes, the nakedly capitalist and return-hungry investors (my terms, not his) who will underwrite the massive changes that must take place.

“We should be framing the clean-tech revolution not in the context of something as amorphous as climate change and as divisive as cap-and-trade, but instead on job creation, economic competitiveness, energy independence, and national security,” Pernick wrote. ” Instead of leading with carbon offsets, cap-and-trade, and climate mitigation, we should be focusing on energy independence and security; clean-technology innovation; green-job creation; and global resource management and leadership.”

I’ve never made any secret of my socially progressive political views.Indeed, I have often joked that from where I sit on the political spectrum, Canada’s sort-of-socialist New Democratic Party looks dangerously right wing to me. And yet, at the same time, I am a business person, an entrepreneur and an investor of capital in technology and other companies. I see no contradiction in this whatsoever. Reframing the climate change debate as Pernick suggests leaves no contradiction for others who, like me, can’t identify with either the left or the right on this one.

Technorati Tags: Clean tech, climate change, innovation, entrepreneurship, Ron Pernick