Two Google engineers are reporting that the company pulled out of its ambitious renewable energy funding initiative in 2011 because it didn’t think known technologies would get far enough, fast enough to avert runaway climate change.
But in an essay in IEEE Spectrum, Ross Koningstein and David Fork express skepticism about government policies that would tip the balance faster between fossil fuels and renewable energy.
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“This harkens back to an old dispute among people thinking about how best to tackle climate change—between those who think we need major technological revolutions to solve the problem, and those who think that existing technology plus incremental progress plus better efficiency plus the right mix of policy can curtail emissions quickly and drastically,” Plumer writes.
“Obviously, it’s also possible to believe both things would help, but people seem to enjoy splitting into camps.”
