Bailout Nation USA, bailout my climate change too, what can $700bn change?

To many people one of the more fascinating aspects of the unfolding spectacle has been the bewildering amounts of money made available by governments to avert financial catastrophe. And no one knows yet whether it will all be worth it.

The same could be said of climate change. No one really knows how bad it will get, but as the Stern Report concluded in 2006 doing nothing about it now is going to massively increase the costs of mitigation further down the line.

But the amounts being talked about and spent on climate initiatives by governments is dwarfed by the bailout package.

Take, for example, a statement issued by the World Bank at the end of September which revealed that 10 leading industrialized nations -- including the United States, Japan and the UK -- have pledged a total of $6.1 billion to help "Climate Investment Funds". That's around $675 million per nation.

This sense of skewed priorities was recently put into perspective by rock star Bono. Speaking at the Clinton Global Initiative, the U2 front man made a damning comparison. "It's extraordinary to me that the United States can find $700 billion to save Wall Street and the entire G-8 can't find $25 billion dollars to save 25,000 children who die every day from preventable diseases," he said.

So what would happen if governments ignored the un-capitalist cries for mercy spilling out from Wall Street and put the money towards climate change instead? What would $700 billion buy?

Let us start at the margins of common sense. You could buy 100 billion energy saving light bulbs. At the other end of the scale, $700 billion would contribute a third of the cost towards a geo-engineering project which imagines deflecting the sun's rays away from earth. Astronomer Roger Angel believes that the bill for his idea of a vast array of space mirrors would be around $2 trillion.

A slightly more plausible idea might be to oversee a comprehensive insulation program for 700 million homes or perhaps fund domestic solar panels. A $10,000 photovoltaic solar array could be installed atop 70 million homes.

Much of the responsibility for our future energy needs rests on the fortunes of large-scale renewable solar and wind projects. Why not roll out a comprehensive program now? For example, the 40 megawatt Waldpolenz Solar Park in Bolanden, Germany is due to be switched on in 2009 at a cost of $180 million. The Wall Street bailout would pay for nearly 3,900 such solar farms.