Debate, Negate, Continually Unsolved
By Marion Geiger

BOSTON—With increased hype about global warming and energy efficiency in the media, economy, politics and science, the 25th Great Debate at Boston University generated a lot of defensive energy and hardly a clear solution from each side. It was after the debate that opinions and solutions became clearer.

The question Wednesday evening was, “should biofuels and the renewables be a critical component of U.S energy policy?”

The two closing remarks were given by R. Brooke Coleman, president of New Fuels Alliance and the Founder of REAP (Renewable Energy Action Problem) Coalition, and Kenneth P. Green, a resident scholar and scientist at American Enterprise Institute. The main difference between their arguments seemed to be whether the US needs to think about the here and now or if the U.S. needs to pour money into research and development of potentially better solutions than what are offered now.

“We are stuck. We built our civilization on concentrated energy,” said Green after the debate. “We’re not going to be able to just cut and go ‘cold turkey’ on it,” he added.

Green does not think the answer is ethanol, which is what the debate mostly revolved around rather than also focusing on other renewables.

Green believes that there needs to be a focus on new developments such as space-based solar energy, which would involve capturing solar energy from outer space via satellites and then transmitting it wirelessly to Earth. Green also mentioned the absorption of carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, from the atmosphere through algae ponds. “We can already do this” Green said, adding that removing carbon dioxide from the air, “is no more rocket science than anything else. I think we’ll get there.”

On the other hand, Coleman said, annoyed, “they think we can leap over biofuels as a solution,” referring to the idea that his opponents preferred sticking to the current fossil-fuel method until something better is found.

Coleman said that he is not against development of better energy sources, but he also said, “There’s nobody out there in the venture capitol community, in the private equity community with the banks that are funding companies to make space solar a reality.” He added, “We say biofuels play a part here.”

Bob Zelnick, the chairman of the debate and a professor of journalism at B.U., said, “I think that [this debate] has been one of the most informed and informative that we have had in quite some time. And I think our participants should be congratulated in that.”

“He simply made negative arguments against the negative arguments. And two negatives in this case don’t make a positive,” said Green referring to Coleman’s argument, which he found surprisingly defensive.

Coleman seemed to think Green and his team were not defensive enough, he said, “I wasn’t very compelled by them, honestly, because I think they kind of hit on the imperfections of an energy source, and that’s pretty easy to do because there are no perfect solutions to the energy crisis we’re in.”