New energy: climate change and sustainability shape a new era (CS Monitor)

[pinto]

CSM staff put together a great issue of their weekly. Two thumbsup. ~ pinto



New energy: climate change and sustainability shape a new era

A new energy revolution – similar to shifts from wood to coal to oil – is inevitable as climate change and oil scarcity drive a global search for sustainability in power production. But even the promise of renewable energy holds drawbacks.

By Douglas Fox / Correspondent / November 8, 2010
San Francisco

"Tonight I want to have an unpleasant talk with you," a somber President Jimmy Carter said gravely into a television camera on an April night in 1977.

...on this night, he ratcheted up his tone: Warning of an imminent "national catastrophe" and scolding Americans for selfish wastefulness, the president declared it time for Americans to curb consumption of oil, which he said had doubled in the 1950s and again in the '60s – time to end their dependence on imports.

But his vision – to push America and the world into a new energy era as significant as the shift from wood to coal that fueled the Industrial Revolution – never materialized.

As Americans come to grips with current energy problems – this time with climate change as the looming threat – it's also a good time for perspective. Over the past 200 years, the world has seen about a dozen major transitions in how it obtains or uses energy. Looking back at those transitions provides some surprising hints about how the next 50 years will unfold. Our energy future will look very different from what most people imagine.

Energy revolutions have usually been slow, starchy, conservative affairs, not overnight explosions; and the next one promises to be, too – never before has humanity replaced 15 trillion watts of worldwide energy production. Our success in making it happen quickly enough to stave off climate change will depend every bit as much on strategic use of fossil fuels now as it does on flashy new technologies in the future.

http://www.csmonitor.com/Environment/2010/1108/New-energy-climate-change-and-sustainability-shape-a-new-era