Kyoto?

W described climate change as a “serious challenge” in his State of the Union speech last week. What he actually means by that and what he aims to do to address this challenge remain to be seen.
The UN environmental agencies are drawing to a close a major study on global climate change. The news wires report that the study is expected to predict a 3.0 C (5.4 F) warming of average annual temperatures between now and 2100. This report is to further attribute this warming, with some 90 percent certainty, to the activities of humans.
While far from perfect, the adoption of the Kyoto Protocol by much of the industrialized world has enjoyed some success in putting the brakes on what the best science in the world believes to be the cause of this problem.
The US government has sat idly by while many of our friends and allies have worked to reverse this problem. The excuse given by the Bush administration was that adopting the Kyoto Protocol would cost Americans jobs. I have to ask, how many American jobs does the purchase of foreign oil create? How would cultivating a domestic biofuels industry be bad for the economy?
Given the speed of government and the fact that Kyoto runs-out in 2012, it may be Kyoto’s successor that turns on the heat under the US. In conjunction with the UN’s new report on global climate, there is a redoubled effort to hold a new summit on climate. UN scientists are lobbying Secretary General Ban to hold such a summit in September. Given planned discussion of warming-related concerns like the flooding of coastal cities, perhaps the Bush administration will suggest New Orleans as a venue. Perhaps not.
Can we wait for the government to stop talking and start acting? The US and its neighbors to the north and south have enormous agricultural resources. We have the potential to move toward energy independence by producing ethanol and biodiesel for transportation, but the entrepreneur, not the bureaucrat, must realize this change.
American industry has been stymied by a government of the oil, by the oil, and for the oil. Perhaps if we stopped creating an infrastructure so lopsided in favor of petroleum, other sources of energy could compete in a free market. McDonald’s could start marketing McDiesel, made from all of that used fry oil, and Mr. Daniel could start selling Old No. 7 high-performance fuel for hogs. Or is that “hawgz”?
We need more consumer demand and new policies that don’t hand so much to oil companies.

Priorities

The National Academy of Sciences recently published a report that raises concerns over US resources for observing and predicting weather and climate. NASA has suffered a loss of some half a billion dollars with respect to its programs that observe the Earth, while NOAA is suffering through cost and schedule overruns on some of its own critical Earth observation programs. These are critically important programs that require adequate funding.
In his State of the Union speech, the President called for Congress to “control spending in Washington”. Given the push to balance the budget without raising taxes, gutting the civilian government would be necessary, since there is apparently no effort to control spending in Baghdad.
It's too late to spend the cost of facilitating civil war on the kinds of science that forewarn of a Katrina or put the climate change debate to bed. Any more words spent on "could've, would've, and should've" are wasted energy.
The President paid lip-service to the development and use of biofuels. The public should applaud him for his about-face on this topic. The implementation of biodiesel, instead of a plan to supplant fossil fuels by funding research into a horizon technology* like fuel cells, is a sound decision. However, the ponderous “diversification” of energy sources to yield a 20% reduction in gasoline use over the next 10 years, as the President suggests, is inadequate. Government is not the solution. Like so many environmental problems, the answer lies with entrepreneurs.
Given the enormity of the US agricultural sector, why is it that biodiesel isn't available from every filling station in the country? New businesses require demand. As long as we accept only what we are offered, businesses have little impetus to change.
Clearly, the government’s values and long-term plans are flawed. We have collectively chosen to spend money fighting a war for oil, rather than investing in energy independence and in our environment. Demand more and be part of the solution.

*It is not the author's intent to disparage fuel cell technology, nor to question its technical feasibility. It is characterized here as a horizon technology because of the difficulty in commercializing it.