Excerpts from Interview with Climatologist Stephen Schneider

Shortly before Stephen Schneider’s untimely passing, Jamal Modir, an associate at EcoTech Law Group, P.C., interviewed Mr. Schneider, a Stanford climatologist, author of Science as a Contact Sport, and co-recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize. The interview touched on issues ranging from the cleantech industry, to the government’s role in green-related policies, and the future of our transforming earth. Below are notable excerpts from this interview.

What is the role of the government in the cleantech field? Is it a good use of the taxpayer’s dollars to support it?

To this, Schneider somewhat hesitantly says yes. Was it in taxpayers’ best interest to bail out a bunch of greedy bankers? Maybe not, he says. But at the same time, the Internet did not invent itself. Nuclear power did not invent itself. Both were largely government funded. And for that matter, any major technical innovation has always involved pump priming.

Even coal plants are deeply subsidized.  And Schneider thinks the coal industry has no room to feel that it’s absurd and ridiculous for the government to prop up solar industries and create competition.  “Excuse me ‘coal,’” he says sarcastically, “You’re still to this day not charged an externality fee for sending kids to the hospital with asthma, raising the sea levels, and destroying the fish in Minnesota with mercury.”  For coal, government funding has only come as a result an inability to perform due diligence when assessing market price. 

Because he believes it’s the role of the government to foster technology that better serves industry and the economy as a whole, Schneider believes using tax dollars to support green technology is appropriate. Coal and nuclear power have a hundred years head start. It’s not such a terrible thing for a few decades to give way to a greener, cleaner and potentially more sustainable alternative, but it needs a boost out of the starting gate. In Schneider’s words, “you’ve got to give some pump priming to those entrepreneurs.” After a while, he thinks, the government will start withdrawing that and hopefully alternative energy will be able to thrive on its own. 

What will the face of renewable energy be in the future: solar, wind, nuclear, carbon capture, tidal?

There is no way to know for sure. Schneider likens it to placing bets on who’s going to win the Super Bowl in the preseason. A combination of methods will likely yield the best results, but only trial and error or “learning by doing feeding frenzy,” can distinguish the true market leader. At the moment, we can’t yet tell which of these options are going to scale up, lose or gain social acceptability, or even remain cost effective. Nuclear industry would be ready to scale up if it were not so socially unacceptable an energy source. Who wants a power plant in their neighborhood? The same goes for wind farms, which many see as an eyesore. But even that can change. Wind farms located offshore obviate a lot of those issues.

In reality, our potential with new energy is boundless. Recently, inventors have found ways to engage in use carbon capture and sequestration, bio char, algae, and negative fuel. We don’t know that we can scale those methods up. Schneider states. “I am for trying. I hope they work, but they’re not going to fund themselves.”

While Schneider sees solar energy as having the most potential to replace coal, it has yet to solve a massive problem—storage. We need energy when the sun isn’t up.

Regardless, with so many options to help fund, investors should diversify. While it lowers ROI, before the kinks are ironed out, many of these energy sources may present problems and difficulties we have yet to think of. Lowering the global average of CO2 emissions is really the end goal.

When will all governments come together and finally work cohesively to affect climate change?

At this, Schneider laughs. His answer: “When a hurricane takes out Miami and Shanghai. We have to be kicked in the teeth, if not three feet higher. We are not good at dealing with long-term crises. When did we have national and international mobilization for serious climate policy? The 88’ heat waves. The liars and spin doctors in the fossil fuel and auto industry, and some bankers, and the chamber of commerce all got together and pulled millions of dollars into the global climate coalition. They lied their way into getting everybody to believe the problem was solved while all climate scientists said the problem wasn’t solved and they succeeded, and they’re doing it again.”

While heavy-handed, Schneider’s opinion perhaps accurately reflects that palpable natural disasters, as perceived by the media, are required to validate the work of climate theorists and mobilize a response. According to Schneider, the ’88 heat wave was one such disaster; Katrina could have been another, but, according to Schneider, Bush, his administration, and the congress were so entrenched in denial that they wouldn’t have reacted even if the public had believed. All hurricanes are random; they were just more intense because the gulf was warmer.

(Stephen Schneider was one of the leading advocates for advancement of our nation’s—and world’s—cleantech policies.  We at EcoTech Law Group wish his family our deepest condolences.)