Long ago, when we were still figuring out how this country would work, we encountered a problem. We shall call it Problem A. Problem A could be any number of things: lack of a power source, road surfacing, you name it. And when we encountered Problem A, we came up with Solution A (fossil fuels, asphalt). And because the USA was a capitalist country from the very beginning, Solution A was selected based on two major metrics: cost and labor.
Why do we cover our roads in asphalt? Because when all the issues of production cost and maintenance are considered, it was the cheapest and easiest road covering available. Why do we power our cities with coal? Because compared with wood and whale oil, it's cheaper and easier. And nowadays, nuclear is even more cost-effective than coal!
Capitalism requires us to consider cost, labor, and nothing more. However, it is becoming clearer and clearer that we can no longer afford to choose our solutions based on only two metrics. We need to open up our decision-making process to include such things as carbon emissions, human health, and a greater global good. We might find, when we add a third metric to the equation, that Solution A is no longer the best option, and Solution B, though more expensive and more labor-intensive, is in fact the option which brings us the greatest global good.
Many of you will have heard of the Solar Roadways Indiegogo campaign. It hit the internet as a viral sensation late last month, but the initial wave of excitement and enthusiasm has been followed by a second wave of articles criticizing the practicality of the technology. (Extreme Tech is perhaps the most readable of the detractors.) These critics have raised a number of excellent issues with the technology. They point out that solar panels are more expensive than asphalt, and always will be. They point out that the roads would (probably) break often, and would need to be maintained more than traditional roads.
These are excellent points, not to be ignored. But do you notice something? They are entirely concerned with cost and labor. They are evaluating Solution B against Solution A and finding it wanting. And that is because they are failing to consider the additional metric which Solution B is designed to address.
This pattern is going to play out over and over again in the coming decades. New technologies developed to address and limit climate change will be criticized for their price, for their maintenance needs, for the time they take to install or show results. We've already seen it with wind power, with solar panels, and now with the call to install scrubbers on coal plants. But we cannot let these dinosaurs of capitalism triumph; we cannot let them hold back all our Solutions B because they fail the two-metric equation. Climate change needs to become the third metric — it needs to haunt every decision, every problem seeking a solution faced by every government and every family from now on. Because it's true: Solar Roadways are more expensive than asphalt, and they will (probably) require more frequent maintenance. But when fitting a Solution B in where a Solution A used to be, we need to realize that the third metric outweighs such concerns. If it didn't, we wouldn't need Solution B in the first place.