R&D, It grips my soul

As a researcher I think that a little experimentation and a lot of data analysis can find the answers to solve the world’s problems. Therefore in our quest to solve our environmental crisis and other crises, I believe that there is only one real solution and that is new technology. I know that most environmentalist groups push for energy conservation and stuff like that, but lets be realistic here people like to use things and do not take to kindly to expending effort to conserve. While yes I believe that we should conserve, I think most people will not expend this effort. I hate to say this but I like to think that I am a rather big proponent for the protection of the environment, but I unfortunately do not take the extra two minutes when leaving to house to turn off the lights or schedule my trips so that I do not have to drive as much. Therefore if we want to start a conservation effort it has to be effortless, such as recycling has become in most areas. But more importantly I think that new technology can allow us to continue our natural tendency has human beings to conserve only energy, recall simple physics. If I have an electric car that does not pollute and an energy source which is always in abundance, then what does it matter if I do not schedule my trips most efficiently.

So then the problem becomes how we develop this new technology. Currently there are two main sectors for innovation, the public and the private. There is quite a bit of mixing between them based on funding but essentially they can be broken down that way. Private institutions are primarily driven by a quest to develop marketable technologies which can advance the aims of the company, but there is still some room for personal research. However because they do not get that much direct funding it makes it more difficult to take risks which may or may not produce a product. That is why most of the cutting edge research is done by publicly funded institutions, which can do research without the aim of making a product just a publishable discovery. Unfortunately government money and donations are not floating around it an abundance which would allow every great idea to be tested and also there are not enough scientists to adequately explore everything. Therefore our approach I think needs to be two fold, first increasing the number of scientists and engineers that are committed to research of new ideas and produces. Secondly we need to increase the amount of funding available for all institutions, both public and private, so that they can explore more ideas.

How can we solve those two problems? I will give my input tomorrow but do you have any ideas or am I missing some other piece of the puzzle?