Another approach suggests that government should be entirely forsaken because of the free-rider problem and shortcomings with consensus, and instead innovation, entrepreneurship, and investment in sustainable technology should be focused on.<ref name=":4" /> This is largely proposed because of the free rider problem of countries defecting from international agreements for their own economic gain in the short run. This is compounded by the non-excludable harms and benefits of mitigating climate change, where penalties harsh enough to sufficiently incentivize countries into taking action may not be practical, and countries will not act unless sufficiently incentivized.<ref name=":4" /> Under the failure of governance argument, the problems facing governance are massive and it would be less costly to invest in innovation and technology rather than governance.{{Citation needed|date=July 2021}}
== The Reduce is not Zero problem ==
Bill Gates' 2021 [[How to Avoid a Climate Disaster|Climate Book]] states the world is failing to meet goals due to a fundamental flaw in approach. He refers to this as "Reduce is not Zero". Reduce involves working on each hydroelectric dam or wind farm separately; whereas Zero involves handling the entire batch of needed equipment at one time. Equipment primarily includes hydroelectric dams, wind farms, solar panels, and nuclear reactors. When one works with a large batch, they can justify factories that mass produce. Additional factory automation is helpful since it allows one to handle large volumes at low cost. In order to implement Zero, one needs a [[Low-carbon economy#Decarbonisation plans that get to zero CO2 emissions|plan that describes how to get to zero global CO<sub>2</sub> emissions]]. Currently, the world does not have a plan, and is doing Reduce.
The Manhattan 2 Project's [https://www.manhattan2.org/global-decarbonization-initiative Global Decarbonization Plan] is an example of a plan that gets the world to zero emissions. It proposes that the US Government spend $10B/yr to develop factories that mass produce green energy production equipment; and give the designs of the factories away for free, to facilitate global decarbonization. The US gives instead of sells for selfish reasons -- it does not want harm to come to its shores due to climate change. The plan utilizes factory automation to drive down the cost of green energy to a level below carbon-based fuels. This causes others to go green since it saves them money. This approach uses a combination of mitigation framework, market forces, automation engineering, and free factory designs to facilitate global decarbonization. From a foreign policy perspective, the US gains influence by injecting key technology into international markets.
The disadvantage of a plan that gets us to zero is it involves trillion of dollars of equipment, and very few people, both inside and outside government, feel qualified to deal with such large numbers.<ref>{{Citation|last=Gates|first=Bill|title=How to Avoid a Climate Disaster|date=2021|url=http://worldcat.org/oclc/1237289604|pages=195..216|publisher=Penguin Random House Audio Publishing Group|oclc=1237289604|access-date=2021-07-12}}</ref>
