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But in addition to that, if you were going to ask me, do we have what is needed today to reduce our carbon emissions by 80, 90 percent and still enjoy the standard of living we enjoy, the answer is no. We need better technologies. But I'm pretty confident that we can figure this out. Necessity is the mother of a lot of inventions.

Most electricity is generated from coal. How do we get off coal?
We can have renewables. We have nuclear power. During the nighttime when there's less demand for electricity, we'll be plugging our cars into these and charging them up so that that nuclear power can be used in a much better way. Storage technology will be incredibly useful and needed as transient renewables become a larger portion of our energy budget.

But they're all more expensive than coal?
That is true. Wind is so far the most competitive. The cost of electricity generation by wind has gone down by almost a factor of 10 in the last two decades. It will continue to go down. What you should talk about is what is the real cost of the energy?

There's wind, solar, geothermal. Which technology will get us out of the fossil-fuel trap?
Ultimately, it's going to be some form of solar energy. But as to which technology 20 years and 30 years from now will be the dominant one, I don't know. On that time scale, we have to work on carbon capture and storage. Nuclear energy I think has to be part of the portfolio in this century. And then going back to the other thing: efficiency. We now make refrigerators that are four times more energy-efficient than the refrigerators of 1975—for half the inflation-adjusted cost. The energy we save with these refrigerators is more than all of the wind and solar photovoltaic energy we produce in the United States today. Just refrigerators.

Even if the private sector can produce all this alternative energy, you need to get it to the people who need it. How do we rebuild the grid and make it smarter?
What we have today is like what we had in the highway system in 1950. States were responsible for the roads. If you wanted to drive across the country, you would have to wind your way through essentially local roads. And so what President Eisenhower said is that for the sake of national security, we need a national highway system. And today we have one of the best highway systems in the world. [Today] we have local power companies that are regional. No one is really thinking about transmitting energy over 1,000 miles, because that goes out of their domain. So that's why you hear a lot of talk about the need for a much smarter grid system. Ideally, I would think you'd want the private sector to do that, and you adjust the conditions to encourage the private sector to think about a national system.

Do you feel like the political struggle is your biggest challenge?
I don't actually think in those terms. Our dependency on foreign oil, our national security, our economic prosperity, and the climate-change issues—these aren't ultimately political questions. This is a way into the 21st century, a way to regain our technological leadership, regain our high- quality manufacturing leadership that we have lost, all of these things, as well as helping save the world.

© 2009

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Member Comments

  • Posted By: TZ192583 @ 05/14/2009 3:12:02 AM

    Nothing is manifested bootless by Almighty Creator???s repository of attributes. That ???s why, 71% off-shore of our Planet. The Human Earth, pertaining to divine blessings of Oceans actually impacts on developments of climates, equipoisingly designed wih erection of gigantic Forestry naturally acts as smartest ???environmental-shield??? counterbalancing with 29 % of Lords-Land on-shore.

    Let we protect & utilize our natural resources fascinated for us as ruby-&-Coral, within our Oceans along with Forests, as simple as environmental friendly Part
    of Eco Equation.

    The disorganized & jumbled growth of ??? ungles should be ancient part-of-history when we were Tarzan . Now, we are so smartly cultivated with ultra smart technologies, that we can also work out on smartest planning of our Forests to manage with such as well-planned Road-Mapping of cutting-edge infra-structure developments of our Forests to bring all out of the wood without unnecessary cutting of pointless wood; so that we our CTL i.e. Coal To Liquid Plants, to turn our vast Coal Reserves into barrels of Oil , our Coal Power Generation Plants and allied Industries having environmental-reservations becomes more environmental-responsive by absorption of excessive greenhouse gases like CO2, within these industrial Sights we will especially select inside these Forestry on our planet .

    However, such an economical GREEN GROWTH Planning also demands mitigation initiative, enabling us to take our honest responsibility campaigning to mobilize all to come forward to foster environmental friendly Plants & coconut & other sea zonal type of Trees which can be cultivated along Sea Side by Side of of our Industrial Port cities.

    The above mentioned Cultivated Road-mapping will ever be count as Sustainable International Development leading to creation of a huge number of new job opportunities, too.

  • Posted By: TZ192583 @ 05/14/2009 3:05:05 AM

    Nothing is manifested bootless by Almighty Creator???s repository of attributes. That ???s why, 71% ???off-shore??? of our Planet ??? The Human Earth, pertaining to divine blessings of ???Oceans??? - actually impacts on developments of climates, equipoisingly designed wih erection of gigantic ???Forestry??? - naturally acts as smartest ???environmental-shield??? counterbalancing with 29 % of Lords-Land ???on-shore???.

    Let we protect & utilize our natural resources fascinated for us as ???ruby-&-Coral???, within our Oceans along with Forests, as simple as environmental friendly ???Part-of-Eco-Equation???.

    The disorganized & jumbled growth of ???Jungles??? should be ancient part-of-history when we were ???Tarzan??? . Now, we are so smartly-cultivated with ultra-smart technologies, that we can also work-out on smartest planning of our Forests to manage with such as well-planned Road-Mapping of cutting-edge infra-structure developments of our Forests to bring all out of the wood without unnecessary cutting of pointless wood; so that we our CTL (Coal ???To-Liquid) Plants to turn our vast Coal Reserves into barrels of Oil , our Coal Power Generation Plants and allied Industries having environmental-reservations becomes more environmental-responsive by absorption of excessive greenhouse gases like CO2, within these industrial-Sights we will especially select inside these Forestry on our planet .

    However, such an economical ???GREEN ???GROWTH??? Planning also demands mitigation initiative, enabling us to take our honest responsibility campaigning to mobilize all to come forward to foster environmental friendly Plants & coconut & other ???sea-zonal??? type of Trees which can be cultivated along Sea Side-by-Side of of our Industrial Port cities.

    The above mentioned Cultivated Road-mapping will ever be count as Sustainable International Development leading to creation of a huge number of new job opportunities, too.

  • Posted By: lucy321 @ 04/20/2009 1:58:04 PM

    Oh, yeah, rampant capitalism has worked out fabulously for the poor. Please don't speak for the poor. Please.

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