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Incentivizing Innovation: The Key to Solving Our Climate Crisis
Scientists have been sounding the alarm on climate change for decades. Presidential administrations Congressional leaders on both sides of the aisle have struggled to find common ground when it comes to solving the climate crisis. You’d think there would be more cooperative spirit; climate change is agnostic to political ideology and doesn’t care which party has the majority in Congress.
When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) announced in April 2020, “the Accelerating COVID-19 Therapeutic Interventions and Vaccines (ACTIV) public-private partnership to develop a coordinated research strategy for prioritizing and speeding development of the most promising treatments and vaccines.” Known as Operation Warp Speed, Congress initially allocated $10 billion of funding through the CARES Act (Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security) for vaccine development. Within less than a year, Covid vaccines hit the market and were being distributed. While the rollout was less than seamless, it is important to recognize that the Covid-19 vaccination effort is unprecedented in scale, and never before has the world seen such rapid analysis of a pandemic disease and development of a vaccine.
And it was all possible through the power of private sector innovation. While Operation Warp Speed…
