Bill Gates answers the question about energy politics in his trips to Washington: “The politics are hard. Anybody who thinks that once upon a time you just called up George Washington and he solved a messy problem like this- it’s never happened that way.
- The most important thing is to start working on the long lead-time stuff early. That’s why the funding of R&D feels urgent to me. If you said to me, ‘Hey, you can get R&D now in return for a carbon cap eight years from now, that would be a pretty good trade.’ The key thing about R&D is, it causes you to build energy plants when the ones you have wear out. That’s a 30 year decision, what you’re putting in that place. If people knew there will be a carbon tax during the life of that plant, that really starts to change the decision.”