Who are you to say that people have some sort of right to the air we breathe. People should be charged for air.

The big icky problem of climate change remediation is that all the really good solutions are actually quite simple. When we look at this partial list.......

Energy conservation. Off the shelf, all of it.
Geothermal: off the shelf, no pollution, no toxics, no fuel.
Geo-exchange thermal management. Off the shelf and offering huge energy savings.
Light Rail: Nineteenth century technology.
Sail transport. Still works
Solar Thermal: ready to install
Solar PV: ready to go
Wind. Ready to go.
Bicycles. 19th century again.
Airships.
Monorails
Stirling Engines
Organic Farming.
Permaculture
Terra Preta
ok I missed a few dozen other installable improvements.

......we can see that most of the solutions were actually invented in the 19th century. Sure they've been refined and all but the seed has always been there.

The real problem is that the Coal, Oil, Natural Gas and Nuclear people have been able to make money and control populations by controlling energy flows to those populations. It's what makes rich and powerful oligarchs rich and powerful. They play "Vladimir Putin at the gas valve" until we agree to buy them a fourth mansion, a personal jumbo jet and a yacht the size of a destroyer.

All the solutions work by distributing both the power generation and reducing the need for that power in the first place at an irrevocably retail level. It takes the political and economic power away from the current powers-that-be. The cooperation of mass numbers of skilled laborers would be required to make a distributed power, production and transportation network function. You couldn't just fire them if they demanded better wages or conditions because local conditions would require localized skills. How inconvenient.

It spreads out both the means of production and consumption so that the number of choke points that can be exploited are reduced. It requires, as an absolute, that the solutions are made available to everybody regardless of need or current ability to pay because many poor people can negate the resource conservation of a few of the wealthy. A billion old refrigerators make 100K new super-efficient ones moot on any global power budget.

It requires that we (shudder) lift up the poor at the expense of the wealthy. Not just socialism but universal socialism. Who will be left to degrade and exploit if they produce their own food and power at home? Sure we would be able to buy fewer items but needs would dictate that we could invest some quality into the things we do buy. Is anybody really thrilled by the quality of the crap at WalMart?

Frankly, I think we'd all just rather see the planet turn into a steaming ball of acid rather than give up our SUV's and repair the slum housing of the world. At least until Climate Change comes after OUR house.

Put the Carbon Back

It may be easy being green but why don't you try being blue? It's also easier than you think.

http://www.economist.com/daily/columns/greenview/displays ...

http://www.blueplanetsociety.org

You are right - moving to a green world is definitely achievable. What's not going to be achievable is the diplomatically unprecedented task of convincing the whole world to agree on making some real changes.

We've just posted a blog entry on this subject: http://www.talkclimatechange.com/2007/12/12/the-way-ahead ...