Then and Now: 120 Bioeconomy Pioneers look at yesterday, today, inspirations and challenges

James Rust

Then: I was a retired Georgia Tech nuclear engineering professor studying global warming.  I thought if carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels was causing catastrophic global warming this would be a good reason to revive our flagging nuclear power industry.  After studying temperatures and carbon dioxide concentrations over quarter million years I decided changes in carbon dioxide concentrations had negligible effects.

Now: I am an energy and climate change policy advisor for The Heartland Institute.  The Heartland Institute is involved with many studies of which one is to educate the public about the effects of carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels on climate change.  The effects are negligible.

Lesson Learned: I am not sure about the advanced bioeconomy having positive effects on the world. Promoters are saying carbon dioxide from burning our abundant, inexpensive, and geographically distributed coal, oil, and natural gas are causing catastrophic global warming (climate change).  They want to replace fossil fuels with alleged renewable  solar, wind, ethanol from corn, other biofuels, etc.  These energy resources are expensive, unreliable, have severe environmental problems, and require vast land areas.

Challenges: The advanced bioeconomy would not exist without subsidies and mandates for their use. I am skeptical of using energy sources from the advanced bioeconomy because they are more expensive than current fossil fuels and will harm our economy and ability to compete in international trade.  Energy sources should stand on their economic merit in which our abundant fossil fuels are far superior.  The government should only do a limited research on renewable energy sources and eliminate all subsides for energy resources.