In the final entry to my four-part explication of the negative repercussions that will result from the Obama administration’s adoption of the Gang of 31’s proposals, (see one, two, and three) I will briefly discuss the disincentives to the development of new technologies that will inevitably stifle progress and hinder development. 

To see what makes this outcome highly likely, we need to look at the broader activities of the environmental groups that will ensure that the energy technologies of the future will be even less likely to actually be developed.  Specifically, many environmental groups and developing nations are leading the charge to force the developed world and the owners of the intellectual property rights to the technology to allow access to these new technologies for free, or at such a substantially reduced licensing fee such that there would be little incentive to develop much needed technologies.

It has been repeatedly proven, in energy and other sectors, that a lack of protection for intellectual property rights acts as a disincentive to further research and development.  A balance must therefore be achieved between patents and developing nation access to climate-related technologies to facilitate technology transfer to developing nations.  These groups are simultaneously asking the U.S. to re-engineer its economy to address climate change while also demanding that the U.S. and other developed countries give away any real economic value such re-engineering would generate.

Addressing climate change should be about providing a structure that develops and deploys the technologies that will reduce CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere while at the same time providing the new sources of energy to run the economies of the world. The Gang of 31’s proposal coupled with the environmentalists’ demand for the free transfer of intellectual property to developing countries is a prescription of energy, environmental and regulatory chaos.