Michael Rock, an economics professor at Bryn Mawr College, held a lecture this past week concerning America’s lack of continued green technology development. He fears that we are on the way to losing our place as the forerunner of this industry just as we did in the automobile industry. Daniel Weiss, director of a DC-based climate think-tank, said “China, Germany and Spain are far ahead of us in creating green energy technology.”
Along with China, other Asian nations such as Korea and Japan are leveling off and reducing their CO2 emissions while US emission levels continue to rise. China is taking the lead in developing electric vehicles, wind turbines, and solar panels in an effort to reduce their overall carbon footprint. Chinese car producers have plans in place to export electric vehicles to the US by the end of the year at nearly half the price of comparable US-made models.
What has America been doing in response? Not a whole lot. Despite the fact that clean energy-related jobs grew nearly three times as much as traditional jobs over the last decade, America is still falling behind in renewable energy. America’s solution so far has been to try and pass legislation limiting carbon emissions. Such a bill failed in Congress about a year ago and another similar bill (proposing either a cap-and-trade system or a carbon tax) is being formulated by a tri-partisan Senate committee now.
Is legislation by itself enough to help reduce our carbon footprint? That is hard to answer. However, DuPont has decided to not sit around and wait for laws to be passed. They have actively committed their company to reduce their carbon footprint and develop new technologies to stimulate green industry, including developing new solar panel materials, biofuels research, and environmentally-friendly refrigerants. DuPont has the right attitude in taking an aggressive approach at improving our world. If America continues to remain relatively passive about climate change and greenhouse emissions, we will be left in the energy “dark ages” by countries that have taken a proactive role in changing the status quo. All industries in America, from small businesses to the giant cement industry, should be looking for ways to improve their energy efficiencies in order to help keep the US on the forefront of clean energy technology.