June 24, 2008 | posted by Michael Baxter in Climate change |

As the price of oil continues to occupy gravity defying heights, talk turns to cars run on electricity.  But there is a snag with these cars; batteries are heavy, and heavy means inefficient cars.

Fret not, US presidential hopeful John McCain has come to the rescue.    He is proposing a $300 million prize to anyone who can develop “a battery package that has the size, capacity, cost and power to leapfrog the commercially available plug-in hybrids or electric cars.”

Mr McCain wants to wean America off its addiction to oil, and his ideas are bold.

“For every automaker who can sell a zero-emissions car, we will commit a $5,000 dollar tax credit for each and every customer who buys that car. For other vehicles, whatever type they may be, the lower the carbon emissions, the higher the tax credit,” he said yesterday.

Of course, in the run up to elections big promises are made. 

But Mr McCain has ventured some interesting ideas.

It seems there are two schools of thought on how we deal with global warming.  We can all stay in more, buy local produce, stop jetting off for our holidays, and if we want a night out, settle for the local shindig.

Alternatively, we can look towards technology. 

It seems our real failure to find commercially viable sustainable alternatives to oil, has been lack of will – or, put it another way, lack of money.

According to James Martin, in his book, The Meaning of the 21st Century, “The world’s reserves of oil, not counting the undiscovered ones, have a value of about 60 trillion USA dollars… coal reserves have a similarly-high value. If humanity set out to save energy, and move to non-carbon forms of energy… much of this vast amount of energy would be abandoned. Both oil-rich countries and petroleum companies want to hang on to their potential wealth.”

Mr McCain’s proposals are interesting.  It really is the glass is half full way of dealing with climate change – it is born of optimism, of faith in our ability to innovate out of danger.   But there are plenty of reasons to believe this approach may well pay off.

And if he gets in, let’s hope he enacts these proposals, and this isn’t another of those “watch my lips” moments.