So, if you want to know whether Dr. Hutton, who does not do any original climate research is right, you have to go to a librray and read a real climatology journal.

Or maybe, you just have my name. That’s cool. I’ll let you borrow it.

I want it back when you’re done.

Nice meeting you/me.

Cordially,

Justin Robinson

Thanks for stopping by. I appreciate the harsh criticism as it helps me grow both in terms of the number of perspectives I am able to hold and as a communicator.

I think you make some good points in your counter-argument. But I’ll get to those in a minute. I am going to knock off the hyperbole – the easy stuff – first.

First, you say, “the view that somehow the private sector fuels innovation is silly and ignores the facts.” Tell that to the engineering & business students graduating from Stanford (known for its deep connections to industry and for its entrepreneurial spirit) who this very moment, right now as we speak, are writing green business plans to pitch to VC’s. Tell that to General Electric, Apple, IBM, Microsoft, Google, 3M, General Motors, Disney, FedEx, Cirque du Soleil, Nintendo, Cisco, IDEO, General Motors, Toyota (maybe a bad example this quarter, but you can bet they’ll come back), BMW, Proctor & Gamble, Virgin, Facebook, Lockheed Martin, Research in Motion, and the countless others who advance systems, technology, ideas, culture and capabilities while putting millions of people to work in the process.

Is that really the line of argument you want to take?

It’s ridiculous.

You also claim that “corporations are focused almost entirely on performing better in the next quarter.” Frankly, having worked for a few corporations (and not for a university), I’d have to say this just isn’t true (although I can understand why it’s tempting to think so).

Capitalism, as you’re aware, is future focused. It looks ahead to the long term and the short term and tries to identify a confluence of variables supporting the ability to create and exchange value. Usually, those opportunities are not so far off that it is impossible to imagine the pathway to get there, but they do not have to reside only in the next quarter – quite the contrary. That is why the original iPhone was in development for four years. It’s why it took 16 years to make Avatar, why Twitter still isn’t making money, and why the Chevy volt has been in development in one form or another since the late 90s. It is also why companies like GlaxoSmithKline and Merck have been working on a vaccine for HIV (not to mention the cure for cancer) for over 20 years.

This is especially true of the oilsands business, where the enormous capital costs, a lengthy public consultation process and other factors cause projects to advance at an almost glacial pace. Most oilsands startups don’t see any cashflow from production for five years or more, and it takes another decade or so on top of that to become profitable. So I’d say, these companies have a long term view.

A number of home grown, Alberta based oilsands startups are developing recovery technologies that reduce the energy intensity of their projects. They’re also finding ways to reduce the surface footprint, minimize water use, and generally provide energy more “elegantly”. Some of these technologies are at the demonstration stage right now, some aren’t even there yet. But you can bet some of them will be proven to be commercially viable. It’s just not going to happen in the next quarter. (Sorry to disappoint).

Now, I am going to make a startling admission here. Markets are not always perfect. Sometimes market failures and externalities exist. Sometimes we end up with things like pollution, bank failures, security issues, etc. that we didn’t foresee. Wow. What a revelation.

Which means, that yes, sometimes, although we should remain reluctant and hesitant about it, a case can be made for government intervention. Your example of massive US investments in a decentralized communications infrastructure is one such case (although from what I understand these investments mostly supported some kind of long distance game of dungeons & dragons between a few eccentric programming students at NYU and Stanford, whereas the real potential of the internet was developed later by the Cisco’s and IBM’s and many nameless dot coms who didn’t survive the bust).

But we need governments to support and enable problem solving in ways that minimize their entrepreneur-killing, business-butchering, pork-barreling, slow-moving, wasteful, bureaucratic ways. And this is not what yet another tax on the oilsands – no matter whether you call it a severance tax or a tax on jobs or just a plain old oilsands tax – as Das proposes, will do.

And that is exactly why an incentive based structure is preferable to another tax. I don’t find that comical at all, and I don’t think it in any way refutes my argument. If government feels that innovation is a priority, if it wants to support greener technologies as the way of the future, then it should do so by getting out of the way and letting entrepreneurs do what they are good at.

You claim that governments are efficient and effective at managing innovation, but I’ll tell you what. I’ll put my trust in the entrepreneurs.

I have a Sheltie and he rocks!

The statement that “government is largely ineffective at managing innovation” simply isn’t supported by the facts or common sense.

What of the very forum you are using to advance this opinion? Without massive US gov’t investments in decentralized communications infrastructure (which some might have called wasteful at the time), we wouldn’t have the internet.

The view that somehow the private sector fuels innovation is silly and ignores the facts. Most R&D – especially pure research – is not financed by the private sector. Canadian universities receive 80+ % of their funding from the government, without these universities and this funding, we would have FAR LESS research and development and the resulting innovation.

But in an almost comic manner, you seem to you seem to refute your own argument by calling for “incentives” – which we all know means GOVERNMENT MONEY via tax breaks or direct grants.

If governments are so bad at funding, and thereby managing, innovation why do these companies need their “incentives” to innovate?

In truth, private industry is only interested in innovation that directly, and quickly, impacts the bottom line. This should come as no surprise to anyone. In many cases, companies spend nothing on innovation because they’ve “found something that works” (i.e. that increases shareholder value).

And for some strange reason (maybe buying into convenient “government doesn’t work” mythology?) you don’t want the industries that will directly benefit from these innovations to pay for them?

In short, we need government to review, fund and manage LONG TERM innovation because corporations focused almost entirely on performing better in the next quarter than the last will rarely do so as effectively or efficiently as the government can.