Would I be wrong to think that we could put together two ideas?

S&N is claiming that non-incremental abatement is impossible
Clinton Global Initiative is planning to innovate on long-term financing to incentivize renewable development and production today. (Because the savings are mostly long term. So you want to translate that into a revenue stream that turns quickly positive.)

Suppose S&N are really right that the technology isn't there. Then if we pass a cap-and-trade bill of around 80% GHG reduction, it will be impossible to fulfill in the time frame. So the carbon price will approach infinity.

Given those odds, if that's really true, why can't we combine that situation with innovative long-term financing and give companies all the incentive in the world to achieve R&D breakthroughs?

It may be that it's just not how things are done, so we couldn't count on it. But maybe it's at least plausible.

A breakthrough in what - perpetual motion?  Identify the energy source first, then the cost of access.  There are only a few low-carbon sources big enough to supply humanity - molten magma, moon gravity, nuclear, wind, and solar.  Solar is the largest and most widely accessible.  Current solar technology has 90% collector efficiency (80% system efficiency).  The costs start at $15 per oil barrel equivalent.  Cogeneration with 41% efficient $1/Watt HIPV is available today.  What is the definition of the so called "breakthrough"?

Breakthroughs are needed, because pushing further with everything we have now won't solve the problem.  We also need to do everything we can with existing technology.  We need both efforts, and for each side to attack the other side is counter-productive.  

Absolutely we need to reconfigure towns and cities and turn suburbs into town centers, and public investment could help with that too -- public transit is an important first step, because it often leads to high-density building near transit stops, but I would be all for public investment in housing as well.

As far as whether one trillion dollars per year (or some portion of that ) would get you enough solar and wind to make a serious dent in coal use, well, as they say, that certainly needs some research, and it should be a topic of discussion, but it certainly would get us much closer.  I don't think we need to hold our breath waiting for the market to get around to the determination that solar panels, for instance, make a lot of sense (or zero-emission buildings in general).  If they are a few cents per kwh more than coal, so what?  They're obviously much better, so just do it.

They do not use terrestrial thermal and cogeneration solar.  I do not get my efficacy information from Grist and NRDC.  It comes from decades of looking at the sun.

To me reducing CO2 is very simple:  just reduce the amount of burned hydrocarbon. It could be coal, charcoal, fuel oil, diesel, gasoline, ethanol, natural gas, propane, or whatever.  

Face it, folks, there is no technology that can reduce CO2 after you set something on fire. In fact for years, we invented catalysts and all kinds of contraptions to turn pollution such as CO into CO2. To even say there was or could be a technology to remove CO2 and destroy it is voodoo science at its worse.

Oh, you can make less CO2 or store some in other ways, such as underground, but that's not reducing CO2. The fact it, we need to replace burning of fossil fuels with KNOWN technologies. It is very a very simple concept.

So the technology argument doesn't work ... let's face it, you're going to have some unhappy campers in the fossil fuel industry, which is where the policy and politics come together.

Onward through the fog

I'm almost through the S&N book.   It's all a discussion on why there hasn't been a change to noncarbon energy sources.  They spend so much time describing why it hasn't happened and just can't think of anyway to make it happen, they think our carbon energy use is inevitable.

It's about Paradigm thinking.    Paradigm thinking is our thougth patterns, things we think about without considering alternatives.

I think there is one important thought pattern with the carbon-noncarbon fuel question.

That is tax money for government services should come from sales, property, income, social security taxes and others and not from taxing fossil fuels.

We tax 4 trillion dollars from Federal, State, and Local taxes in a 13 trillion dollar economy.   Almost none of this comes directly form cabon and fossil fuels itself.   And yet, fossil fuels is the polluting and depleatable resource.   As an example, farmland, who's owner pays property taxes, will be here 50, 100, 500 and a million years from now.   But the fossil fuels used to plant and harvest crops will be gone in a few decades.   Yet we tax the thing that will be here forever instead of taxing the depleatable resource so as to conserve it for future generations.

The problem is the idea of not taxing fossil fuels and only taxing property, sales, income, social security and other, is such a strong paradigm, we can't make the change.   Let's change the taxes that states have on sales taxes and more that to a fossil fuel sales tax.   Don't pay it at the sales tax at the restautant or store product, but on the fossil fuel burned.  We should do a tax trade.

The mistake S&N makes is that they think nothing can change, even our thinking.   Well, they are wrong.   Things can change, expecially our thinking.    And it is the thing that has to change.   Are there forces against it?   Sure.   But changing our thinking is the most important thing in the world.

"S&N's go-slow approach to climate, as first advanced in "The Death of Environmentalism," ...

Someone please explain what Romm means with this statement.  I see in none of S&N's work an argument for a go-slow approach. I see in S&N's work a compelling argument for massively increasing and SPEEDING UP our investments in alternatives.  Romm's critique smacks of someone whose ox has been gored; his supposed "debunking" confirms everything that S&N have been saying about our current environmental leaders.  If anyone is holding up meaningful progress in addressing global warming, it is the Romms of the progressive movement.  
Romm: do you or do you not support massive increases in investment in alternatives?
Do you support the buy down of alternative technologies through investment of the US government, just like the Dept of Defense did with both computer chips and the internet?
What proportion of major environmental groups funds,time and effort should be invested in LIMITS  BASED SOLUTIONS and how much should be invested in  INVESTMENT AND GROWTH BASED SOLUTIONS. Better yet, how much time and effort is the Center for American Progress spending on investment based initiatives, and how much is it spending on selling another Cap and Trade scheme.  Further more, why has the Democratic-controlled Congress been so completely and totally lame in regards to the Apollo Project and other ambitious attempts to create non-limits based solutions to America's critical issues?  That's the mystery here, and S&N  are providing us some real answers.  Answers, by the way, that point at the Romm's and Pope's of the environmental movement.
One additionl point: while there is certainly a role for a techological "reality check," the problems that S&N are trying to solve are the issues inherent in the environmental movement that prevents it from re-prioritizing growth and investments over limits.  
Perhaps you could address these substantive issues  before you begin the ad hominems.  
 

Blaming S&N and Lomborg is futile. The activist community has allowed them to sidestep the urgency of drastic rapid reduction in energy consumption by echoing their claims that the public is not ready to accept higher energy prices or restrictive mandatory conservation and efficiency.  As long as this mantra persists, those of us who know we must focus hard and immediately on curbing energy demand will be on the defensive. Meanwhile others besides them will pick up the same argument - that we must not disrupt our life style and behavior - and run with it. And like S&N&L we will be dismissed as unrealistic dreamers who want to completely redesign society. But of course that is PRECISELY what has to be done! Whatever the inconvenience, hardship, sacrifice, and cost, fiddling around at the margins or praying to the sun god for energy break-throughs is only hastening the economic break-down that is going to occur sooner than we think.  Clearly we have failed to persuade even ordinary people of the emergency situation; when some of us parrot the pathetically poor
excuse for energy legislation in congress - 80% reduction in CO2 by 2050, we give citizens the signal that we DO have time to bring new technologies on line to avert catastrophe. This is a LETHAL LIE. We don't have the time. The scientists know it. Why aren't we getting our house in order and pushing for the radical reductions we know are needed in the coming decade? What are we afraid of? Being called un-American? Being called commies?