Yesterday, I heard a very controversial but very interesting talk at the Fortune Brainstorm Green Conference here in Pasadena. It was by Bjorn Lomborg, and he spoke about some of the economic issues of going green. He strongly challenges many of the traditional assumptions people have about what they can and should do to make a difference. The most eye-opening to me was the ideas that the only way we are going to make a real difference is to invest on a monumental scale in new technologies that are wildly disruptive. I had a gut feeling that this was a good way to go, and that’s why I try to work on, but he had some economic arguments supporting his thesis that were very persuasive.

The strongest argument he made — in my opinion, at least — was that rather than have a Kyoto protocol, or carbon tax or cap and trade to spur investment in new technologies, why not just invest DIRECTLY in new technologies. He proposed a miniscule 1/20th of 1% fraction of GDP from all the major countries going into a major $25B per year investment fund to invest in new technologies. He claims that that would make 10 times the difference, and cost 1/10th as much (in other words, 100x more effective) than the indirect method. He also said this would be more fair by country, because countries with much bigger GDP’s would contribute so much more.

It was a very compelling argument. He had 5 others that were compelling. He’s very controversial, but now I want to read his book and test his thoughts with some more rigor.

His talk alone made the conference worthwhile — but there were 50 other great speakers to make it even better. Fortune Magazine did a great job on this one, and I hope Marc Gunther and David Kirkpatrick decide to do this again.