Michael G Richard’s Recent Comments

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  Speaking of Lester Brown

  Just wanted to let you know that he has started writing guest columns for Treehugger.com

  His first one is here:

  http://www.treehugger.com/files/2006/08/us_leads_world.ph...On A self-endorsed celeb fights for the planet posted 3 years, 3 months ago 4 Responses

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  The wrong horse?

  Hi Dave. Thanks for posting this. Interesting tangent.

  I guess that what I really meant is: We must be careful not to back horses that seem like losers for the wrong reasons. If we were pushing hard with coal plant carbon sequestration because it seemed really promising (instead of because of industry ties, lobbying and the fact that other solutions (efficiency, clean tech) are not as profitable to certain people), I'd say "no problem".

  But when you look at even the best case scenario, it seems like too little, too late, too risky, at too high a price and only temporarily. Coal companies can invest as much of their money as they want into this, but it bugs me when a lot of taxpayer dollars go there instead of to more promising things, making it artifically more competitive against wind/solar/wave/etc, and when the public opinion is misled into thinking that coal is okay "cuz the problems are going to get fixed any day now".

  By "backing the right horse", I had in mind clean energy (and efficiency) as opposed to fossil fuels with a few band-aids (I'll leave nuclear out of this one, it's another debate). Let science and the market pick which mix of technologies will power the future, but lets move past the idea that to power our society we need to mess with our air, water, land and climate as fast as possible.

  Does it make more sense that way? Do you think I should edit my post to make it clearer, or are you the only one who reads closely enough to raise such questions? ;)On Picking the right horse posted 3 years, 4 months ago 11 Responses