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1 down for politics, 1 up for business in the quest for sustainable D.

Sara Wolcott | Saturday 25th July 2009

I've gotta admit that I was disappointed that India said no to climate mitigation this past week, as Dane described in his blog. I'm not surprised, and I understand the economic argument, but if I wanted to leapfrog the West, I'd invest heavily in green technology for export and at-home use. I'd see it a cutting edge work with added diplomatic benefit - and the potential to shame the West into reducing their carbon emissions which, if they don't, will be disasterous for India. And while some compensation is important, I doubt it will be that reliable. As Climate Change worsens, developed countries will only have so much money and political will to 'bail out' developing countries. after a certain number of almost certain disasters, a lot of pockets will undoubtably run dry.

So I was particularly excited to learn that there are now 'hybrid ships'. As a teenager, my biggest fear about climate change (besides everything burning) was not being able to travel. Like Ruchira's recent blog, I'm addicted to travel, and during July, I'm bound to get itchy feet. Now the Auriga Leader is the world's first freighter to be partly powered using solar energy. That's a big ship. Which means that, besides carrying Priuses from Japan to the United States earlier this month, the technology clearly exists for rapid transportation across the ocean even if someday I won't be able to fly.

So political climate negotiations aren't going as well as I'd like, but green innovations are doing well. Does this mean our attention should really focus on business solutions? We don't have time for either-or, we only can afford both-and. Politics is necessary to survive - it certainly 'Solar Sails' on Cargo ships

counts as good work. But I'm glad I can also be engaged in the private sphere!

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Dane Pflueger 25 July 2009

Thats brilliant--a hybrid cargo ship carrying hybrid cars from Japan to the US!!! Stuff like that makes me feel better when everything else is going so bad.