Newsweek has a story this week about the blurry line separating true climate scientists — the sorts of people with doctorates who build huge models to run on supercomputers — and the activists, so-called climate change "deniers" and advocates for change alike. The story mentions James Hensen, a pioneering climate researcher at NASA, who has become so impassioned about the issue to resort to civil disobedience tactics to convince politicians and other officials to take action. But I'm beginning to think these advocates are allocating their efforts inefficiently. Europe's cap-and-trade scheme has done little to curb carbon dioxide emissions. The Copenhagen climate talks accomplished virtually nothing. And the public has little appetite for even weak climate change mitigation policies, such as President Obama's proposed cap-and-trade system. This leads me to believe climate change activists would see more success by channeling their energy toward making carbon-free energy cheaper, instead of seeking a policy-driven solution.

As Bill Gates put it in his TED talk last week, if we can make carbon-free sources of energy cheaper than carbon-emmiting sources of energy, climate change skeptics will make no difference in our ability to protect the environment. Instead, when people go to buy a car or an HVAC system, they'll buy the cheaper, non-polluting option, and the planet will move closer to a climate change solution as people naturally reduce their consumption of carbon-emitting goods and services.

Admittedly, this kind of market-driven solution would be more effective with government involvement. Carbon dioxide emissions due to the consumption of goods and services are what economists call an externality; that is, the cost of carbon dioxide emitted by a gallon of gasoline or a flight from London to Madrid is not included in the cost of the carbon-emitting good. As such, economic theory tells us that we would be better off by internalizing that eternality by, for instance, imposing a "carbon tax" on goods like gasoline. This has the fairly obvious effect of accelerating the market-driven switch to carbon-free goods and services.

But, despite the best efforts of activists, I see little chance of the US government providing this sort of policy jumpstart to a market-driven solution to the climate change problem.

Which makes me think climate change advocates should be channeling their efforts toward driving down the cost of carbon-free goods and services relative to their polluting counterparts, rather than trying in vain to reach a policy-driven solution. I realize that support of business is anathema to the beliefs of many people advocating for climate change legislation. But unless the political climate changes, I honestly believe advocates would be more effective in staving off global warming by helping startups and researchers gain funding to develop and bring to market their ideas for cheaper, cleaner goods and services.