"With concerns over climate change intensifying, electricity generation from coal, once reliably cheap, looks increasingly expensive in the face of the all-but-certain prospect of regulations that would impose significant costs on companies that emit large amounts of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.

As a result, utilities' plans for new coal plants are being turned down left and right. In the last two-and-a-half years, plans for 83 plants in the United States have either been voluntarily withdrawn or denied permits by state regulators. The roughly 600 coal-fired power plants in the United States are responsible for almost one-third of the country's total carbon emissions, but they are distinctly at odds with a growing outlook that embraces clean energy."

The Times piece goes on to discuss the expense of the technology to capture and store carbon and the expense and unreliability of renewable sources of energy. This is a worn out argument. The article also presents the usual environmental and industry advocates arguing on each side of the issue. The Edison Electric Institute can be relied on to argue that new technology will cost too much and threaten our electric supply. I wonder what old Thomas Edison would say if he knew that his name is now being used to oppose the development of new technology?

Why does this tired argument keep getting repeated? The cost figures on carbon capture and storage are based on assumptions that cannot be tested. We don't really know how much this will cost. The estimates that carbon capture and storage will more than double the cost of coal fired power plants is clearly too high. Since it hasn't been done, it's easy to see why investors would believe that the first ones will be quite expensive. I'm sure that's true, but it's not really relevant. The private sector should not and will not pay the cost of developing this technology. Government will need to subsidize this until it becomes cost effective.

The debate on carbon dioxide regulation seems caught in the same rhetoric we saw in the 1970's and 1980's over more conventional environmental regulation. There was similar discussion about how arbitrary and sudden government regulation was going to shut down American business. Anyone who actually observes regulation in this country knows that the "business of America is business". Regulations are implemented slowly, with negotiated schedules and great care. Businesses are given plenty of time to clean up their act. Moreover, regulations and rules allow the good guys to do the right thing and compete on a more level playing field. And without environmental regulation there is no pressure to develop new and cheaper technologies that produce without polluting.

As for the cost of renewable energy; solar power, wind power and battery storage prices will also come down as the technology develops. Think of computers. The computer I am writing this on sits on my lap and is more powerful than the million dollar plus mainframes of the 1960's. As mass markets are developed and technology is refined, prices come down and today's infeasible ideas become tomorrow's everyday experiences.

How do we get this done? How do we go from here to there? In the case of computers, a lot of the basic Research & Development came from the Defense Department and NASA. Our rockets, missiles and space capsules needed smaller, more powerful computers. And then there's the internet that was also developed by government: Our military computers needed to communicate with each other. One thing led to another and eventually we had an internet. Government paid the costs of development and then it was turned over to the private sector and a new industry was created.

Sometimes national security drives the development of technology- sometimes it is public health. Cities like London developed sewers and indoor plumbing to prevent disease. Cities like New York developed a hugely expensive water supply system because local sources were polluted. I'm sure someone was saying: Do you know how expensive this indoor plumbing will be? We will all go broke installing these pipes and pumps everywhere!

More recently we had some of the same arguments raised against paying the cost of installing air pollution devices on cars and power plants and against spending billions of dollars on sewage treatment plants. We did all of that and the economy continued to grow. In fact, the economic benefits of cleaner air and cleaner water far outweighed the costs.

Here is the fundamental truth that it is time to face: Just as we needed to develop new public health technologies to survive in cities when they went over a million in population, we must now invest in world-scale technologies to survive on a planet of seven billion people. The climate problem is the first planet-wide stress we know about. Others will surely come. We need to learn how to develop and implement the 21^st century equivalent of indoor plumbing.

We are capable of making this transformation but it requires that we escape from the environment- economic growth tradeoff paradigm we see on the front page of the Sunday New York Times Business Section. We need to work on the push and pull of carbon dioxide reduction. We need to regulate and set a cap on carbon dioxide.  This should be done with mandatory reduction targets, a tax on fossil fuels and a trading system to allow the most efficient reductions possible. In addition we need to spend money on the basic and applied technology of carbon sequestration, renewable energy, energy transmission and energy storage. We need cheaper and smaller solar receptors and cheaper and more efficient batteries.

Clean coal may be a fiction in 2009, but if we are to use coal for electricity, we must develop better ways to mine and burn coal. As my Columbia colleague Klaus Lackner eloquently argues, no matter how fast we develop renewable energy, we will continue to use fossil fuels for many years. He estimates the costs of sequestration will come down dramatically as technology and a mass market is developed. The problem is developing the technology and mass market. Government can and must stimulate the technology and market.

In the long run fossil fuels will be more expensive than other sources.  Fossil fuels are finite and must be mined from within the planet. They will get harder to mine and scarcer and for those reasons will eventually be more expensive. We need to accelerate the development of the new technology of energy. Let's end these 20^th century debates once and for all and get on with the job.

With this in mind, we spoke to a leader in the private sector who is one of these new sustainability professionals--Wayne Balta, Vice President of Corporate Environmental Affairs and Product Safety at IBM. Balta has global responsibility for environmental leadership at the company.

Founded in 1911, IBM now works in 170 countries and employs more than 380,000 people. Balta, who holds a Master of Science Degree in civil engineering from MIT, began working at IBM in 1984. He's been in his current position since 2001.

According to Balta, IBM has a long history of trying to "get it right" with the environment. Former CEO Tom Watson Junior issued IBM's first environmental policy in 1971, long before terms like "environmentally friendly" became buzz words. In 1974 the company called for energy conservation when it issued its first energy policy, and IBM has voluntarily published a corporate environmental report every year since 1990.

Balta says IBM has been proactive about environmental stewardship for two reasons. First, "Protecting the environment is the right thing to do, and that has always been consistent with IBM's historical stature as a responsible company." Second, IBM has long recognized that good environmental management makes good business sense.

For example, since 1990, when IBM began documenting its carbon dioxide emissions, the company has saved almost 300 million dollars by conserving over 4.5 billion kilowatt hours of electricity. They also avoided over 3 million tons of carbon emissions in the process.

Today, IBM has several environmental initiatives underway. Recently, the company set up a congestion pricing system (sound familiar?) for Stockholm, Sweden. The system, which involves 18 points of entry into Stockholm's city center, charges vehicles based on use of the road and time of day. Balta notes that the results have been very promising, showing a 25 percent reduction in peak hour traffic and a 15 percent reduction in carbon emissions, since people are driving less.

One of the company's latest environmental initiatives came out of a worldwide "InnovationJam"--basically a massive online brainstorming session--held in the fall of 2006. The topic, according to Balta, was how IBM could "help the world innovate in areas where innovation would really matter in the coming decade."

"For one calendar week we invited and encouraged all IBMers, all over the world, at any time of day, including their family and friends, to get on an IBM web-based system, and "jam," or collectively talk to each other, submit ideas, blog, post, whatever you want to call it."

More than 150,000 people from just over 100 countries participated, posting tens of thousands of ideas. "One of the topics that came up over and over and over was the environment," says Balta.

In response, IBM launched a new business unit called Big Green Innovations. "It's all about . . . setting aside a group of IBM technical leaders, researchers, others with greater business skills, to think about how IBM could apply the skills inside the company to innovate in areas for the environment," explains Balta.

The unit is looking at a broad range of areas, including water management and high performance computing to model scenarios for the world under a changing climate.

It becomes clear when talking to Balta that IBM's environmental accomplishments come from integrating the ethic of sustainability into the "fabric of the business," rather than relegating environmental responsibility to just a staff function.

"[I] don't design computers," Balta says, "but there's a bunch of IBMers who do. . . and they're the ones who can make decisions to design those computers to be better for the environment, whether it involves the materials that are used, the energy that's consumed, or the extent to which it can be used at the end of its original life. When we integrate it and get those people involved, that's when it sticks."

One key to this integration is IBM's global Environmental Management System, which identifies and manages the potential environmental impact of IBM's operations. In fact, when asked to name one of IBM's top environmental achievements, Balta says IBM's Environmental Management System is the most important.

"If you're going to be a leader on the environment," says Balta, "you've got to identify the way in which you're involved. You've got to measure your impact. You've got to manage the results of what you found out, and you also need to be transparent and report it, and . . . make known how well you're doing, or how well you're not doing."

"All of the eventual [environmental] results that happen, they're really due to the global environmental management system, because that's the foundation, that's what sustains our focus, and that's what drives our performance over decades."

As Balta points out, the environment is a long-term issue, with long-term importance. "It transcends generations, and getting it right really, really matters," he says.

If you look at a list of the world's 100 largest economic entities, you'll find more corporations there than countries (51 versus 49). Simply put, corporations are big and powerful. Their size means they have a big impact on global issues, including the environment. It also means they have tremendous resources that can be rallied to actually do good for the environment. We see this at IBM, we see it here at Columbia University and we are beginning to see it in many large organizations. Going green may have started as a public relations gimmick, but as the price of energy and water continue to rise, it's starting to take root with those responsible for managing production and facilities.