**Editor's Note: This piece was written in response to a question asking panelists to choose the best of six proposals on how to move forward on climate change. Read More Panelist Views**

Scott Barrett’s research and development proposal is the best one, since he treats the key issue as one of science rather than sin. Despite their scientific pretensions, too many other proposals are based on the popular notion that carbon emissions constitute original sin, for which expiation should take the form of emission reductions.

Scientific advances are taking place on a scale unrivalled in history. The climate models of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) include several parameters, but exclude the most important parameter of all: the ability of scientific advances to change all parameters. Scientific advances in geo-engineering might one day enable us to control the temperature of the earth, turning it up and down like a thermostat. I know that sounds like science fiction. But so, too, at the start of the 20th century, did space travel, nuclear bombs, and the Internet.

Continue »