Paul Werbos wrote:

>The goals of this "Apollo project" are certainly worthwhile and urgent. But
>-- having
>stood at the real front lines... I would say that the planning mechanism
>sounds as effective as picking up
>tin cans was.
>
>
I get exactly the same feeling - there's far too much emphasis on
conservation measures, and in the renewables too much of a focus on
local generation. Focusing on conservation measures reminds me of
something Malthus said about China in the 1820's - he had noted that a
large proportion of their rice production went into producing alcohol,
which seemed very much like a waste. Except that in drought years, they
could cut back on alcohol production and have plenty of grain to feed
the people. "Waste" is at least sometimes an insurance policy - what
allowed California to survive their recent summer of blackouts, for
example - what you need to focus on is not the waste so much as making
sure the fundamental underlying energy sources (in our case) are sound.
I just exchanged some emails with Marty Hoffert concerning the Union of
Concerned Scientists, which also seems to suffer, very unfortunately,
from a similar myopia.

>But what IS a politically realistic way to move towards real progress here?
>
>I have a paper on this, in the CD section of State of the Future 2003
>(see www.stateofthefuture.org).
>
Hey, looks interesting - I just ordered the book :-)

> Some extracts:
>[...]
>IF HUMANITY SO CHOOSES, the methanol transition could be well underway in 5
>years in large parts of the world.
>
>And methanol is certainly the best hope for the oil industry in the future...
>
>
>
I get the feeling there are a lot of logical steps, which would
admittedly require government decisions to implement, that seem to be
roundly ignored. Why is it so hard to get the best solutions out there
and under discussion? Worse than pinball, I think!

>===========================================================
>
>Now what about space solar power?
>
>Objectively, there is certainly an opportunity there. But the "pinball
>game" is incredibly complex.
>[...]
>
>**IF** we could get electric cars to mass market in 10 years... then the
>challenge is to upgrade the electric power grid
>and raw electricity supply, in parallel, to make sure we can take full
>advantage of this option.
>
>That IS where SSP comes in. [...]
>
Agreed, and definitely agreed on the need to get R&D work moving now...
Lots of good ideas there. Now perhaps we can get them out there? Marty
tells me the NY Times may be saying something about this next Tuesday;
let's write in support of SSP after that comes out (NY Times letters to
the editor should be < 150 words, so keep it very tight), and try to
spread the word beyond there.

The arguments are there - we just need to be less shy about making them!
Thanks for the comments Paul,

Arthur