Climate 411

Blogging the science and policy of global warming

Interviews with EDF President Fred Krupp

Sheryl CanterThis post is by Sheryl Canter, an Online Writer and Editorial Manager at Environmental Defense Fund.

Last week I wrote about the TreeHugger interview with EDF President Fred Krupp and Miriam Horn about their new book. Earth: The Sequel is an engaging look at emerging technology in the fight to stop global warming.

Fred has been getting around quite a bit lately. This week he also was interviewed by Forbes, Newsweek, and Mercury News. Each had a slightly different focus. Here are some excerpts:

On why a carbon tax won't work, from the Forbes interview:

There's no example of an air pollution problem anywhere in the world that has been solved without a cap or legal limit on how much of that pollution can be dumped into the sky. A cap gives you that legal limit, where a tax allows people to potentially keep on paying a modest amount and keep on polluting.

On biofuels, from the Newsweek interview:

I think we've come to understand that the current generation of biofuels has problems and that we need a whole new generation. In the short-term, turning sugar into fuels other than ethanol would have many advantages, given the infrastructure problems ethanol creates. In the long-term, we are much better off when entrepreneurs develop ways to turn wood and fiber, not food, into energy.

On the power of markets, from the Mercury News interview:

Last night, we were up on Sand Hill Road. Somebody told me he had been walking around in a kind of funk, a depression. But, he said, now that he's seen this future, he's already starting to feel better. It's not a message that we can disengage. It's not a message that technology can solve it. It is a message that if government does the right thing, and if we put that entrepreneurism to work in service of a new profit motive that's been designed to create the very things we need to have a future, wow, watch what happens, such as a $1.9 billion order for Applied Materials to make solar cells.

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