Why do people always invoke Carter's Cardigan to slam the idea that "less is more" and wastefulness is morally degrading?  As if somehow having to put on a long-sleeve shirt in the middle of winter was an extraordinary burden and that no human being should have stoop to that level.  How do we start to counter the notion that consumption makes us happy?

All energy sources have a downside.  A wrongly sited wind power "forest" would certainly disrupt bird migration patterns and wildlife habitat in general.  Plus they're really ugly.  The "forest" around Palm Springs is a good example of desert disruption and a blight on the landscape that should bring a tear to anyone' eye.  But, we've got to maintain our current bankrupt debilitating mind-desparing lifestyle at all costs!  Bill McKibben's new book "Deep Economy" tries to quantify our lack of happiness despite our accumulation of stuff.  I set my thermometer at 67 degrees F and I believe am fashionably layered in mostly reused clothing, although to be honest most people think I look odd.  Oh, and I have the occasional hot flash which helps.

"We'll use less oil," and switch to "clean coal," and "it is certainly arguable that all subsidies to oil companies should be eliminated."  While arguing that the paradigm has changed, these guys are fairly timid in proposing solutions.  It's not only arguable that all oil subsidies should be eliminated, but highly desirable.  We should aim to use no oil, not less.  And did nobody see the MIT paper on enhanced geothermal power for baseload uses?  This is the technology that needs development assistance, not clean coal.  For the same cost, we could get a free, endless, safe supply of energy that doesn't destroy whole counties.  Plus there's no guarantee that sequestered CO2 won't cause problems (or leak back out) in the future.

The proposed CO2 cap and trade scheme, reducing the cap 1% per year, "might need to be strengthened over time."  Actually, if you look at climate predictions, the proposal need to be srengthened right now.  Why not give energy the security they need to plan wisely based on both the ability to predict carbon costs and moving towards a goal that will actually stave off out-of-control climate change (unlike 1% per year reductions)?

As for utility companies as engines of efficiency, the best results have been from publicly owned utilties (Seattle City Light, Austin Energy, Sacramento Municiapl Utility Disctrict, etc.), not investor-owned utilities.  (The California efficiency programs are operated under contract by utilities but are state-funded and state-mandated, so the utilities are not demonstrating any leadership.)  How about changing the rules by municipalizing all electric utilities, so that they have the structural incentive to reduce internal operating costs instead of maximizing external profits?  Or instead of giving efficiency subsidies to private utilities, how about giving energy subsidies to end-users for improvements?  What a thought, returning tax dollars to energy consumers to improve our own quality of life and our own economic situations!  But we should probably leave it up to the big companies -- just like Henry Ford, they've always listened to good scientific advice and led the way out of our nation's biggest problems, right?

And in all this great talk about the energy future--I see not a mention of the over and ever growing population problem.

one of the things that enviro's like to do most is point the finger at everyone and say how irresponsible they are.

i will admit it gets old, because no one is perfect, and the list of problems is so long that there's always something more we all can be doing to protect the planet.

this being said, allow me to indulge... grist, what were you thinking to allow GE banner ads about clean coal???  people go to an environemntal website and think clean coal is green and is a part of the solution.

this is absolute nonsense.

i understand we all need funding, but have you no standards?  where is line at which our words and actions contradict enough to make us hypocritical?

coal can NEVER be clean.  if you consider how we get it (BLOWING UP MOUNTAINS), how we ship it, how we spend energy to convert it, and how it needs to be transmitted over power lines, about 3% of the energy put into the process is used for electricity for consumers. and no, i didn't make up that statistic.

shame on the coal industry for even thinking they could call themselves clean. shame on GE for supporting such lies.  it makes me sick to think of the destruction coal has done to Appalchia-- a place where clean water comes only in bottles, where peoples' lives matter much less than the pieces of black rock under the mountains upon which they live-- and how unapologetic the industry continues to be.  And now, even places like Grist provide a venue for this industry to continue to hoodwink the world into thinking that coal can be clean.  

for god sakes.

Generally, I agree with the gist of the essay...

BUT- A carbon tax would work SO MUCH BETTER than any of the alternatives you've suggested.  I know, I know, cap-and-trade would get industry behind you.  But that's only because it's a massive hand-out to existing CO2 emitters.  It still creates complex, overlapping regulations that are bound to distort the market and encourage one carbon-fuel over another.  Why not just tax/discourage all carbon emission equally?  Beautiful, simple.  The environment's happy; the market's happy.

(And let me go ahead and agree with the "clean-coal" comments above.  Grist?  Hello?  You're a website devoted to green readers-- who all know "clean" coal is anything but.  It doesn't look good when you take advertising money from the bad guys...)

Reality check: right now, alternative energy accounts for about 0.05% of worldwide energy generation (not counting hydro, which is only renewable for the limited life of a given dam and is doubly threatened with decline due to global warming induced changes to the water cycle in key regions).  If we could wave a magic wand that would allow us to produce as much new alternative energy generating capacity next year as is installed worldwide today (which we can't) and the rate of new alternative production doubled every years for a decade (compared to the 30% growth rate the solar industry is going all out to maintain), alternative energy would account for less than 6% of today's energy demand, which, of course, is steadily growing.  On the other hand, we could simply swap out our incandescent light bulbs for CFLs, ease up on the accelerator, turn off computers that are not in use, and a few other simple adjustments that would save, say 1% of the energy we are using today and simply maintain those little adjustments without doing anything more for through the year 2018 and more than double savings the completely unrealistic growth in new, "clean" energy I have suggested.

So, why are we fed a steady diet of hype about alternative energy programs and investments?  Simple.  It's a great way for investors to make money, so investors are all revved up about a situation in which demand will almost certainly outstrip supply for decades to come, especially when the level of demand keeps getting inflated with subsidies and government requirements and goals.  In turn, those in government and consulting to government are getting blitzed with money from the big business and investment entities that are spending what amounts to pocket change to keep the snowball of hype growing.

Don't get me wrong, I am all for investing in newer, cleaner, more durable, and more efficient ways to produce energy.  But if that continues to be the focus, instead of investing in ways to reverse the growth in energy demand and actual start using less energy worldwide, no amount of investment in new energy is going to lead to reductions in greenhouse gas emissions in the foreseeable future, new energy rules or not.  No, what we need is some education about the many fold benefits of conserving energy with technology that exists today, coupled with some serious investment in properly implementing that technology and, especially, making it available to the hundreds of millions of consumers who cannot afford the upfront costs of buying it but who would add up to huge energy reductions if they were all able to save a substantial amount of their individual uses of energy over the years.

It's either that or be forced into a dead end of more "clean coal," new and improved nukes (with less and less hope for reasonable waste security and storage), and continuing to waste trillions of dollars and millions of lives scrapping over a declining supply of oil that is central to many worsening problems I thought we were trying to solve.

Eliminate the subsidy for producing ethanol.  Direct money saved to research alternatives that actually make sense.

All this legislation is wonderful - I support it wholeheartedly...BUT...why is no one mentioning the 3 billion pound gorilla in the room -- HUMAN OVERPOPULATION!  I do not need to indicate the prime offenders - everyone knows who they are, anyway.  So what are THEY going to do?  Point their fingers at the United States, I see.  Well, those fingers pointing BACK at you are your negligence in controlling your population growth and all the attendant misery it brings.

Now, we can quibble and piffle about auto emissions and coal, and there is, of course, scientific truth to this.  But, let's get REAL folks - WHO REQUIRES ALL THIS ENERGY AND FOR WHAT?  Mmmm-hmm, I thought you'd say that.

I will ultimately, down the line, be proven right on one thing.  We should go back to horses!  And after human overpopulation has wreaked the havoc that it inevitably WILL - meaning less people, then the world can slow down, and cars will be a thing of the past.

The human race managed for centuries without SUVs or their ilk.  Remember I said it here - when you find this file in some old archive or the other.  When you walk out to saddle up your mare or hitch up your team.

Think I'm crazy?  Wait until you create a world where cockroaches are the size of SUVs!  And you will, if you keep breeding like you are.

Heed my screed.

Selene Paris

And an easy rule to change (because it does not require action by the auto companies) is simply:

Allow us American consumers to import the efficient cars they have in Europe that get 55 mpg and more.

Thats illegal, by law, now. Just tear down that wall!

This is a very bad article.

It promotes coal and biofuel.  While paying lip service to renewable energy and conservation.

With leadership like the fellows who collaborated on this article, we are all doomed to the gas guzzling, massive energy wasting status quo.

Bottomline corporate group think.

The only suggestion that is worthwhile is going digital with the power grid.  

For this reason though.  To allow a whole wireless broadband internet to use the power grid as both a conduit and an antenna.  This elimination of duplication in cell phone, broadcast, cable, and other industries would boost productivity to more than pay for a complete grid upgrade.

It allows the integration of distributed renewable generation and storage into a stable system, with each source of power able to respond to demand on a scale of microseconds.  And those productivity gains will pay for the distributed grid upgrade.

The internet/grid combination is also needed to pay customers that sell solar panel electricity (for instance)onto the grid and charge customers to recharge their plugin cars and pay for the kwh consumed, all with internet enabled financial transactions.

But it is not needed to move renewable or non renewable energy across the continent like the national highways system.  

Regional movement will be plenty of power line transmission to smooth out renwable power generation.  This is corporate speak code for:  let's revive the enron strategery of trading energy and manipulating markets to feed the bottomline.  

Just as cap and trade is corporate speak gibberish.  Another excuse for big "free" market rippoffs.

Instead of any mention of plugin hybrid cars, or geothermal heating/cooling, the main ways to conserve energy, instead biofuel is touted.  And "clean" coal to keep up the massively wasteful air conditioning and fossil fuel heating of our buildings.

It is clear that these leaders either do not know much about present or possible energy use and GHG disaster or they choose to ignore the facts.  Either way, we need new leaders who DO understand.

Al Gore comes to mind as the only politician that understands energy and climate change.  And Lester Brown is the only renewable energy leader who understands.

Gore/Brown for presidency of the environment in '08!  Let US hope Hillary or whomever is the next president taps them for those jobs.

playadelisa states that windmills are ugly.  What is ugly to me, and the majority of citizens in my state, are the tall smokestacks that spew cancer causing pollution and CO2. In my state of Delaware, we have decided to go with offshore windfarms for the next generation of power generation.  To us, windmills are beautiful, generating clean and cost stable electricity, as well as jobs. Their placement will be out of the way of migratory birds and have a positive impact on fisheries by creating artificial reefs.  

Representative Nick Rahall, D-WV, is trying to kill the wind power effort across the country with HR 2337. His main argument has to do with placement of wind towers that might be harmful to birds.  Well, there are choices as to where to put the towers that minimize that effect.  On the other hand, Rahall's coal plants put dangerous pollution into the air that harms wildlife and people in whole regions of country.

Give me wind anytime.

Much more important than changing the rules is changing our habits. It is nonsense to think that we can go on doing what we are doing only by becoming more efficient and getting off of fossil fuels. We have to power down, in a big way.

Why keep addressing the symptoms - global warming, oil reserves, mineral reserves, ...
Address the cause: we are trying to manage a biosphere with a measurement system "economics" that does not relfect the science of a finite planet and shows no respect for future generations. Our current economic model rewards and encourages rape of natural resources to the extent that they shall be inaccessible to future generations; corrective actions become un-economic or at best patches.
All activities must comply by the Produce Use Sustainability Index, PUSI, if they do not the economoic system must relect that the activity is unsustainable.
PUSI: for an activity if the time to Produce (clean, refurbish, ...)a natural resource is less than or equal to the time in which the activity Uses the natural resource (poluted, degraded, ...) the activity is not sustainable.
The new economic model must put the appropriate cost on all natural resources such that energy from sources outside the biosphere (solar radiation and lunar and solar gravity) and recycling of mater within the biosphere are "economic".
You know it must be satisfied.

How much more energy would we be using if everyone all of the sudden ditched their current not-so-efficient cars for highly efficient cars? How much energy does it take to get a car from Europe to Michigan? How much energy does it take to MAKE that new car (approx. 2340 gallons of gasoline)? What would we do with all of the old cars? Are those efficient European cars so efficient that they could make up for all of the initial energy use in their lifetime? I don't know the answer to that. I'd really like to know.