Cleaner air and water.

REPLY: The air and water has never been cleaner. It's no longer 1949! Reply: Both can always be even cleaner.

--Reduced dependence on foreign energy.

REPLY: By Drilling for our own OIL, and developing alternative energy over the long haul.

--Solid Job creation at home in developing the new technology.

REPLY: By cutting taxes, NOT by capping and trading carbon, which is what these two losers running for president want to to do.

--lower costs down the road to the consumer (initial costs may be high).

REPLY: We need proof of this. And the New Scientist with their usual agenda is not the one to provide it.

and as a side note, you want to solve the world financial crisis? Cut taxes, and stop loaning money to people who can't afford to pay a mortgage. And stop voting for these morons that allow it! In BOTH parties!!!! And forget about GLO-BULL WARMING!!!!!!!

1. I do not see enough evidence to prove in a court of law of Global warming caused by mankind. I see the sun being the factor in the earths heating up and cooling down and I do not see anything man can do to change that!
2. I am for clean air and clean water just as I am for clean living such as spelled out in the 10 commandments. How you get the whole world to abide and follow.....well good luck!

Apparently Iceland is energy independent, they no longer use fossil fuels for energy and they don't have nuclear plants nor do they use coal. They use geothermal, and hydropower.

"Iceland the First Country to Try Abandoning Gasoline"
http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/story?id=1518556

Unfortunately, recently Iceland apparently has gone bankrupt.

"Iceland Goes Bankrupt"
http://www.businessweek.com/the_thread/economicsunbound/archives/2008/10/iceland_goes_ba.html

The first step in a clean energy economy has to start with oil. The Americas are generally self-sufficient in the other existing and likely energy sources.

Oil is a primary driver in the trade imbalance, empowerment of countries that do not wish us well, and competition with China and India (who are not natural enemies of the US).

Simply putting a tax surcharge on all imported oil from outside the Americas (with appropriate audit trails to ensure Venezuala doesn't import oil from abroad and then resell it) would increase the price of oil within the Americas and would spur conservation and alternative fuel development. It would incidentally improve air quality and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Simultaneously, the US should team up with Europe, India and China to jointly develop and market clean energy alternatives to oil in particular and coal secondarily.

A successful program to reduce worldwide dependence on oil would be the biggest driver for world peace that the world has ever seen. The Middle East would be reduced to just being a crossroads for transportation again and Russia would need to develop a diversified economy.

Hmmmmm....
Cathy Zoi, CEO of The Alliance for Climate Protection, chaired by Mr. Al Gore himself. I'm sure there is no bias in Ms. Zoi's article.

Benefits.....
--Cleaner air and water
--Reduced dependence on foreign energy
--Solid Job creation at home in developing the new technology
--lower costs down the road to the consumer (initial costs may be high)
What do you think?

If we're talking about focusing on nuclear power (no CO2, no pollution, nuc waste can be handled), I'm all for it.

If we're talking about throwing a huge amount of tax $ and mindless mandates into expensive and unreliable renewable technologies, here's my view:

- It will not result in cleaner air and water. The EPA already presides over very strict air and water pollution standards (CO2 is not a pollutant)
- we can reduce our dependence on foreign energy by focusing on clean coal and nuclear, using our own fossil sources in the near term (offshore drilling, natural gas, oil shale), and transitioning to electric powered transportation over the longer term
- the job creation argument is pure fantasy - the jobs in new energy tech would simply be shifted from other industries put out of business by higher energy costs - it would ultimately cause a net loss of jobs in the U.S. Reply: I disagree.
- lower costs to consumers down the road - you're kidding, right? There are no credible studies indicating lower energy costs "down the road" if we implement cap and trade and mandate the use of renewables.

When the majority of americans realize what cap and trade and renewable mandates will do to their utility bills, taxes, and the economy, this nonsense will come to a screeching halt.

One of the closing remarks to the article: I don't know if this shift to a clean energy economy will solve the world's financial hole, but ........ says it all .....it even contradicts the title!!!!

Reply: Paul, those closing remarks are mine. Not from the article.

With comments like this, it's clear that this "report/project" is void of any integrity, responsibility or accountability!

Sounds more like a speech that we would hear at beauty pageants when contestants offer their "profound" thoughts on global poverty, starvation and war .......all in 60 seconds!

Dear readers

I understand the concept of 'less emissions' and the use of more efficient, cleaner fuels in order to contribute to the reduction of global warming.

However, it makes me wonder if all the economic, sociological and political efforts are fruitless, particularly when there are so many conflicts wars)going on throughout the world.

Wars are so financially demanding, producing what must also terrific levels of pollution that it is in turn more than likely that it be the most serious contributor towards Global warming and economic recession.

Surely, the most important thing that the worlds more technically advanced nations (East and West)should be tackling is the 'War v Peace' issue.

Technically advanced countries will inevitably suffer as a consequence of so much global conflict and severely damaged economies! as well as lesser developed countries, terrorist organizations and the like.

Eventually, because of financial limitations Global conflicts will become localized. All the good intentions and efforts of those who advocate on behalf of minority groups, subjugated populations and suppressed peoples will have been in vain.

It is time we, as presumably! the most intelligent and productive species on earth, took steps to reduce our contribution to the destruction of this beautiful planet.

If governments can utilize billions of pounds of Tax payers, money to effect global financial recovery, then perhaps the same can be done to eradicate global conflict.

This note could go on and on, considering a multitude of variables, but perhaps it has at least given some food for thought. Particularly, by those who have a genuine respect for life and the health of our planet.

John Roberts

Cleaner sources of energy are indeed noble goals. The problem is that the current costs of cleaner energy would place an even higher burden on industry and consumers alike which would only serve to inflate the cost of everything. That would be bad for all economies of the world, especially the poorer ones. Adopting a national policy like this would be suicidal.

What is "climate-warming carbon"? Is this a new element on the periodic table? When did carbon take on this magical property, "climate-warming?" Going after carbon is simply wrong-headed since it is emitted in the form of CO2 which is harmless (actually beneficial) to the environmnet. Devoting scarce national resources to slay the imaginary demon, carbon, reminds me of Don Quixote attacking windmills he mistook as monsters. The same thing will happen to us as happened to Don Quixote - we will fall on our arse.

I think that the sentiment is well placed and the idea is honorable.

Problem is that it is not feasible to replace all of our energy and the simple fact is that all four of the benefits noted are already in place.

Besides that, the important question is how a clean energy economy will save the planet from the threat of global cooling.

So,
Enviormentalists are now energy experts? If anything, our reliance on foreign oil will increase over time as more land is made off limits to drilling and coal mines are closed. The energy has to come from somewhere, and today niether solar, wind, or ethanol comes even close to meeting our daily requirements. As we speak there are a dozen lawsuits filed in federal court prohibiting the running of new transmission line pylons to solar cell farms in the Southwest. Most areas along our coasts are tourist sites, and the state goverments have mainly prohibited the construction of wind-mills. In the Plains, thousands of acres would have to be taken out of farmers hands in order to construct large wind farms, and again new transmission towers would have to be constructed. And don't even talk about nuclear power. But more importantly, none of these private energy concerns can even make a profit without a huge injection of public cash. Even ethanol has to still be heavily subsidized after 30 years in the running.

As far as "cleaner air' (I'm assuming they meant less CO2 in the air), I''m not so sure this will happen. Cap and Trade and Carbon Credits haven't prevented the rich from traveling in private Citations, or building 25,000sq foot mansions. Industry will just pay the fines and chalk them up as another expense, or pass them off to consumers. MLB has salary caps, but that doesn't prevent the Yankees from spending $250 million on thier payroll.

what financial crisis?

Its just a natural cycle, probably linked with the solar activity!

http://www.crikey.com.au/Business/20081001-Keane-There-is-no-evidence-for-a-human-induced-credit-crisis.html

Many think we can beat the climate change issue without reducing our consumption in the developed world. (ie material living standard). But NO we cant!

This recession come depression is a necessary path to addressing the issue and as climate advocates we should embrace it.

DCAN!

I love the generalization "alternate energy". It's a pipe dream that doesn't exist. As far as the benefits listed, if they were real, companies would be investing already, right? But they aren't, because investing in "alternative energy" loses money. Even T. Boon needs government subsidies. Create jobs? If it costs more to produce energy from "alternate energy" than from coal or gas, then is will lose jobs. Just ask from what project are you stealing the money to give it to alternative energy. Those projects will lose jobs.

The only energy source we could shift to is nuclear energy. We would need about 50 more plants. I think there are 5 on the books with the first one ten years away (if it survives the law suits). We are stuck with coal and gas, so let's get realistic about it. Regards.

I wonder how many of these people have ever held a real job.

Brett, following is a quote from an article in today's NYT:
"Even so, wind power is not yet a panacea for the country�s manufacturing sector. Job gains from wind power are modest compared with the huge losses from traditional industries."

The full article can be found here:
http://greeninc.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/10/13/a-gust-of-green-jobs/?hp

Cap and trade and renewable mandates will, for certain, increase energy prices and taxes. The mess that is our current economy cannot take on the additional burdens of yet higher energy cost on top of the recent increases and higher taxes. I remain convinced that the AGW energy agenda will ultimatley cost the U.S. jobs.

John Roberts,

"If governments can utilize billions of pounds of Tax payers, money to effect global financial recovery, then perhaps the same can be done to eradicate global conflict."

Well John, although, sad as it may seem, the world's economies are built on and propped up by military contracts and conflicts.

With a world, who's thousands of years of history and ideololgies, having been constructed on several wars always going on at any given moment, it would be near impossible to think of global peace happening anytime soon.

When the rich, famous and powerful are the one's who control the world's purse strings and are heavily invested, directly or indirectly, in the perpetual war machine, it's not something they will let go of easily, if at all.

No one, ever, in our history has been able to advance global peace. If you can't stop your local neighbors from shooting each other over a fence encroachment or a trespassing, how do you plan on stopping countries from doing the same?

Here is a small list of military contractors that serve the NATO communities. This list does not include the tens of thousands of support companies that feed these contracting technologies, or the government bureaucracies and investments built up around them, worldwide.

http://www.army-technology.com/contractors/indexAtoZ.html

Anyone looking for insight on the flaws and the solution (major overhaul) to the fix the system can find them on http://coinage.me

It goes into detail how the summary information needed to actually manage a fiat currency system is not available and therefore cannot be properly managed.

Furthermore our information system systems are not designed correctly to support such a system the data is all disparate.

The is referenced by one of Obama�s advisors and can be read at the Obama link below.

http://tinyurl.com/52bczy

I agree. It's truly amazing to me how little our right-wing friends know about economics. Their entire view of the economy is old, outdated and one-dimensional -- cut taxes for the wealthiest, and have the crumbs trickle down to the rest of us plebians and we'll all live happily ever after. Apparently they still think it's 1980 and that Airplane is still in theaters. Someone forgot to tell them that median wages have decreased since 2000. I guess we'll have to wait a long time for those crumbs to trickle down.

Most economic booms begin -- and are driven -- by brand new industries and new technologies. The next boom will be driven by biotechnology, alternative energy and the concept of sustainable business. That's where the ideas are. That's where the intellectual "energy" is, no pun intended. It's not in oil. The only new ideas coming out of the oil industry are fancier ways to poke holes in the ground.

Governments can help emerging industries by helping them build economies of scale. Here again, the right-wing has a different viewpoint: they believe that the government should provides subsidies to mature industries which already have economies of scale, namely the oil industry. For those who criticize "subsidies" for alternative energy, get a clue -- the oil industry gets ten times more subsidies from the government than alternative energy does. That's a travesty.

There will be another economic boom in, say, five to ten years from now and it will be driven by the factors I just discussed. It's going to take a couple years to completely recover from this recession. The Reaganite institutions are crumbling and do not apply to the globalized world we live in now. A new economic paradigm will take effect.

By the way, there was a time when the world preserved their food with salt. In fact, we preserved our food for 6,000 years this way. Then this little thing called refrigeration came into existence. It took nearly 100 years of research before we had a product called the refrigerator being sold in stores. And guess what? When it first came out, a refrigerator cost twice as much as a car. Can you imagine what the Denier populace would have said back then? I can:

"MINE HERE, MINE NOW, MINE OFTEN!!!"

"SALT IS KING!!!"

"Refrigeration is never going to be anything but a bit player. We need more salt."

"Why...they want to take us back to the stone age and starve us. MINE, BABY, MINE!"

There are lots of salt mines in Europe that are tourist sites now. By 2050, many oil fields will follow suit.

One of the most overlooked changes we could initiate, the paperless office, could also be the most beneficial economically. Eliminating paper would save energy by:
1.eliminating enormous energy and water use in its' manufacture.
2.eliminating fuel consumption in its' transport.
Paper is very heavy.
3.eliminating energy used in to process it, everything from printing to filing.
4.eliminating the energy consumption for equipment to process paper,i.e. copiers, toners, printers, filing equipment,& office space requirements
5.eliminating energy for secondary transport,i.e. postage energy consumption.

At the same time eliminating paper would increase business productivity and control. After an intial investment, businesses would save substantially and become more efficient. Besides the energy savings, paper and paper related expenses consume as much as 70% of office product and equipment expenses. Office space can be reduced as desks can be smaller and filing equipment eliminated. If the U.S. became the leader in offering new technologies for this change, we could improve our balance of payments by selling it overseas.

Can anyone suggest how we could speed up this shift which is occuring, albeit very slowly? I would love to get involved in such an effort.

-Steve G.

Hydrocarbons extracted from the earth are, and always have been, a finite resource. They have provided us with a bridge of cheap energy to develop the technological sophistication to create a more sustainable energy base for civilization. The problem is that we've already harvested nearly all of the low-hanging fruit. Beyond this point, we will be incurring an ever-increasing "calorie deficit". Our civilization will be required to devote an ever-increasing percentage of its collective resources and effort for a diminishing return on investment.

The time is now for us, collectively through our governments, to vigorously push for the transition to a sustainable energy base before the effort required to continue extracting hydrocarbons has so consumed and weakened our economies that we'll be unable to make that transition at all.

ROFLMAO........need I say more?

All are admirable goals.

One has to be careful on the last goal - lower costs down the road to the consumer (initial costs may be high) -. Initial costs are high for a nuclear plant, as well as off shore drilling, yet these are proven technologies for energy development.

Initial costs are higher for wind or solar, but these have only been marginal producers of energy to date. Others have not even been marginal as of yet. What if we pour billions into these and other purported clean projects, and we still have to purchase oil overseas, and we have not met our needs for electrical generation? It will be both an energy plan and financial disaster.

The answer is to not develop a one dimensional solution to our energy needs, and do not abandon our proven technologies, including coal power plants.