Yet our funding on energy conservation and efficiency technologies is comparatively small. But I argue that these are small numbers in comparison to the really great technology projects that have moved our economy and our nation around before. The two other big issues our government should act on are credit mechanisms for early emissions reduction efforts, and mechanisms for trading emissions reduction credits both between nations as we stood so firmly for at Kyoto, and between companies inside our own country. Some early work on early action credits has already been done in a report released a month ago by the Pew Center, and as a founding and interested member I take to occasion to promote both the Pew Center and this initiative. As we contemplate this problem, the last thing we should remind ourselves of are the long tails of the decisions we make today.
Buildings routinely last a half century or more.
Vehicles today exceed a decade. Airplanes three decades. And we are lots less likely to, and it's more expensive to modify in-place assets than to get them right in the first place. And the research to put improvements in place in the first place is characteristically a long term process. For example, although the first production fuel cell powered vehicles were anticipated a year ago as early as 2002, a better date now looks five years later.