Al Gore and Technological Progress

In his book "Earth in the Balance," Al Gore wrote that the people who were
denying the global warming in 1980s were going to be penitent later for what
they had done. He made an error common to humanitarians: Of overestimating
people's character. As it stands, these people are not only not penitent but are
aggressively denying reality of global warming even as we speak. And they have
been maliciously attacking not only Al Gore, but also science itself, to which
they owe their entire lifestyle, from TVs to computers to trucks and cars to
phones to supermarkets; to which business owes everything that it sells; and
without which capitalism would be nothing more than exchange of most basic
commodities as it was in medieval Persia.

There are people who continue equating oil and dirty coal with progress. They are
practicing a Big Lie. Oil and dirty coal are no more progress now than horse and
buggy was in the beginning of 20th century. True progress means moving to better
technologies - smarter technologies - technologies that maximize utility and
minimize destruction and waste. And that means, moving from oil and dirty coal to
better technologies such as the Hydrogen Transmission Network. The stance of the
oilman is in no way the stance of progress; it is the stance of the Luddite who
wants to do away with progress because he thinks that with progress he will not
have his job. Technological progress in early 20th century did not result in
vast loss of life and property as is predicted by anti-clean-energy people; it
resulted in vast growth in prosperity and jobs. The exact same stands to be
expected of conversion to clean energy.

Capitalism, like all things human, can be done in any number of ways and carries
potentials for all sorts of outcomes. There is a shortfall in present definition
of capitalism: It fails to compute environmental costs. And this is responsible
for the worst features in capitalism: Its failure to be incentivized away from
blind, stupid, destructive practices such as burning the rainforest - and toward
prudent, intelligent, practices that build upon innovation and ingenuity to
maximize utility for people while minimizing destruction of what people have not
created and cannot conceivably recreate.

No, it is not intelligent, nor is it right, to burn down rich, essential
environments such as the Amazonian rainforest to build ranches that will become
useless in two years. No, it is not intelligent, nor is it right, to leech gold
out of mountains with mercury and kill the people who live downstream. No, it
is not right to spew out vast amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere so
that it accumulates in the middle atmosphere to create an environmental crisis
and goes into the ocean to kill all the fish. Humanity is smarter than that; and
humanity can and should do better.

Far be it from me to advocate going away from technology or economics. Rather
real progress must be embraced to move away from destructive technologies to
better technologies. And economic activity must be done in such a way as to
maximize ingenuity, intelligence and utility to the consumer while minimizing
stupidity, destructiveness and blindness that destroys what one has not created
and can't recreate to arrive at utility minimal to null.

Clean energy is progress, and anyone who claims to believe in progress has a
logical duty to embrace clean energy. The anti-clean-energy stance is the stance
of the Luddites. As for the claims that clean energy is "anti-human" - human
being is not defined as "the being that burns oil." Far more essential to human
advancement has been innovation, intelligence and ingenuity; and that means
progress toward better technologies - progress in the energy sector as much as
in all others.

The truly rational, human, progress-oriented stance is therefore an enthusiastic
embrace of clean energy and its widespread implementation. It is this that will
move the economy out of the doldrums and into real economic growth. And it will
also minimize blind destructiveness and short-sightedness, preserving what people
have not created and aren't capable of re-creating while maximizing utility and
economic growth.