Can We Meet the Environment and Energy Challenge?

From "The Power of Green" in NY Times Magazine by Thomas Friedman

"Here are seven wedges we could chose from: “Replace 1,400 large coal-fired plants with gas-fired plants; increase the fuel economy of two billion cars from 30 to 60 miles per gallon; add twice today’s nuclear output to displace coal; drive two billion cars on ethanol, using one-sixth of the world’s cropland; increase solar power 700-fold to displace coal; cut electricity use in homes, offices and stores by 25 percent; install carbon capture and sequestration capacity at 800 large coal-fired plants.” And the other eight aren’t any easier. They include halting all cutting and burning of forests, since deforestation causes about 20 percent of the world’s annual CO2 emissions.

“There has never been a deliberate industrial project in history as big as this,” Pacala said. Through a combination of clean power technology and conservation, “we have to get rid of 175 billion tons of carbon over the next 50 years — and still keep growing. It is possible to accomplish this if we start today. But every year that we delay, the job becomes more difficult — and if we delay a decade or two, avoiding the doubling or more may well become impossible.”

I was just thinking recently that the world wasn't moving fast enough to address the need for greater energy efficiency and reducing CO2 emissions and other pollution.

It's depressing that we sort of new this was coming back in the 1970s and didn't embrace change back then - today in 2007, we might be already seeing that pay off.

But we didn't, we went the SUV and Hummer route, more gas guzzling and general energy in-efficiency.

Really, we need some major technological breakthrough that could both remove CO2 from the atmosphere as well as provide abundant pollution-free energy in a safe manner.

This whole move toward ethanol seems kind of like coming up with a pseudo-solution to our energy problems. Ethanol combustion still emits CO2. It's source may be regenerating - sugar or corn, but that seems more like just coming up with a new way of subsidizing farmers. And you would still want to build vehicles that got much better ethanol mileage than our gas-powered cars get today.

My '99 Honda accord ex gets about 25 mpg in the city, and lately I mostly drive around the city - Toledo, Ohio, a sprawling bunch of suburbs, really. And I'm surprised, if dismayed, at how quickly I rack up the miles just driving locally. Everything is so spread out and sprawled out. If only we could convert our cities to compact city centers. But it's not possible. We're stuck with sprawl.

But anyway, in 2007, it's pathetic that my car only gets 25 mpg in the city. I used to own a little honda civic in 1989 and it got 50 mpg highway. A shameful lack of technological progress, really.