A Way Out of This Mess

As New York City gears up for Climate Week NYC,  four experts lent interesting insight into climate change policies yesterday evening at an event hosted by Columbia University's Climate Center.

The opinion of Mark Fulton from Deutsche Bank was inspiring and refreshingly, completely market-based.

He said, to paraphrase, the way out of this mess is to:

1. Get rid of coal

2. Firm up natural gas as the transition fuel

3. Ramp up renewable energy to hammer down costs

4. Hit energy efficiency hard

Later, he repeated that the cost of renewable energy must come down, and stressed that grid-level storage is key. It is the Next Big Thing. We solve that, we're in good shape. Three cheers for Mark.

Michael Gerrard of Columbia Law School got the blood flowing when he opined that if Obama loses in 2012, we might as well invest in gas masks and health insurance.