Want to save the world? Make it a stated priority.

In the late 1960s a good chunk of the world’s brightest minds and fanciest labs were devoted to one thing: space exploration. When NASA’s funding peaked in 1966 the organisation employed 400,000 people and consumed more than 4% of the US federal budget. Three years later, after less than a decade of serious investment, man was on the moon.

These days NASA spending makes up just 0.5% of the same budget. Scientists who once would have designed rockets or tested spacesuits have largely moved into the private sector.

The space race might be a thing of the past, but the basic economic model still makes sense: massive, targeted investment in research & development remains the best way to make startling technical leaps forward and solve mankind’s greatest challenges.

The Paris climate talks have so far seen two major pledges to this end. A group of 20 major countries – representing 75% of the world’s emissions – have promised to double their clean energy research over five years. To complement this, Bill Gates has announced a coalition of top business figures committed to achieving a low carbon economy through investing “patient capital” in these new technologies. This follows calls earlier this year for a Global Apollo Programme to address climate change.

In absolute terms, there is lots of money involved. However, total R&D makes up just 3.6% of the US budget in 2015, and spending on renewable energy makes up less than 4% of that. That’s a little more than US$5 billion out of the total US$134.2 billion R&D expenditure. Compared to the effort and outlay to put a man on the moon, this is orders of magnitude smaller.

But the problem today is much bigger. Governments must be more proactive and, in line with recent research, we should use public money to direct millions of scientists and engineers towards solar power, electric transport or better batteries. It won’t deliver a “man on the moon” moment, but this investment is the only way to truly end our dependence on fossil fuels.

This is recognised and addressed in part by “Mission Innovation”, but in order to understand why this is still not enough, it is helpful to understand recent advances in our understanding of the economics of innovation.

Green won’t come out of the blue.Many influential economists such as Yale’s William Nordhaus or Harvard’s Gregory Mankiw, want to fight climate change with a carbon tax. The problem is taxes do a better job of preventing bad things than encouraging better replacements.

Standard economics simply considers greenhouse gas emissions as an “externality” – an economic consequence experienced by a party who did not choose to incur it. Negative side effects such as pollution can be addressed by putting a price on them and forcing those responsible to pay – if your factory produces emissions, it’ll cost you. This is the idea behind carbon taxes. It is assumed that, by making polluting technologies relatively more expensive, the market will adjust, generating low-carbon innovations.

But innovation isn’t as simple as this. In particular, the development and spread of new technologies depends on what has gone before and you can’t simply expect a jump into renewable energy, for instance, when everything is geared towards fossil fuels. This idea of “path dependence” is fundamental to understanding technological change.

1300+ Reddit comments:

https://reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/3vaj0d/we_need_a_space_race_approach_to_saving_the_planet/

Well, we can run down the hill and save some of the things on some of the planet (and make the really important things worse) or we can walk down the hill and save all of it.  

I think the problem with the global alarmists is that they don't know what's important yet (it's definitely not rich people's beachfront property), how everything works together (are you really going to take all the carbon out of the atmosphere--how is that going to affect the carbon eating crop production?), or how long it should take (every ice age before now has had a run up of global temperatures, why is this one any different?). 

Technology is going to improve dramatically and rapidly.  Same with our understanding.  There's no sense rushing into bad, globe affecting solutions that aren't solving the *right* problems based on premises of things that haven't happened nor over a  long enough period of time to prove they are. 

I'd say the progress we're making is doing just fine. 

I like that metaphor of walking down the hill:

https://www.quora.com/profile/Adam-Rifkin/Posts/Two-bulls-are-standing-at-the-top-of-a-hill-overlooking-a-pasture

Thanks for keeping me optimistic, Greg.