J. Craig Venter's Energy Confusion

In a recent interview with Popular Mechanics, geneticist J. Craig Venter offers his thoughts on energy and climate change. He displays an interesting contradiction.

On the one hand, he claims that "Had we followed intellectually where we were back in the Carter era, we wouldn't have a lot of the problems we do today. We've had a lot of short-term thinking from administrations that basically trades off the health of the planet for economic gain for the business community—and for their own re-election. We don't reward our leaders for making long-term beneficial decisions for society. It's like the stock market—all that matters is the next quarter, not where you are 10 years from now."

In practically the next breath when asked about a sort of "X-Prize" for advanced batteries, Venter responds, "Industry is very motivated to make new batteries. Whoever makes a better battery is going to make a fortune, and having a government incentive to do that doesn't necessarily move it along. In fact, if it's like the human genome project, it could just slow it down."

Indeed. But should policymakers incentivize alternative fuels? It would seem that researchers in the private sector and the academic community have every incentive to find and develop market-competitive alternatives, as an MIT team may have just done with solar.

The current energy situation is unlike the supply shocks of the 1970s. True, political forces unnaturally constrain supply and subsidize demand and monetary policy exacerbates the effects for Americans, but growing demand as the developing world exits poverty and the exhaustion of many low-cost sources of traditional fuels means that high prices are likely to persist.

When government action distracts intelligent, creative, productive people from their activities, it hinders progress and makes us all poorer.