Policy Innovations contributor Roy Morrison weighs in on alternative global warming solutions and related policies to finance them. He calls for a 20-year plan to transition to renewable resources:

The popular wisdom is that a global emissions reduction agreement through cap and trade or taxation is humanity's last best hope before the consequences of melting ice and methane hydrates make irrelevant further human efforts to stop global warming. If that's true, we are in grave danger indeed. We should instead focus on a workable global investment and jobs plan to build the global renewable resource infrastructure that can sustain global prosperity while slashing global greenhouse gas emissions.

The plan will draw upon existing and emergent renewable energy technologies. These technologies range from the now-familiar wind turbines, photovoltaic solar arrays, hydropower dams, and geothermal plants, to new solar concentrators and medium-temperature geothermal systems running organic Rankine cycle generators. These will be combined with electric and renewable-fueled hybrid vehicles using their lithium batteries for energy storage. Renewable systems are characterized by rapidly improving energy conversion efficiency and declining cost.

We should understand that the problem is not that we do not have sufficient renewable resources. This is a plan that will create millions and millions of new jobs and global markets for our products and at the same time free us from the fossil fuel curse and its economic, ecological, and security threats..