Michael, thanks for kind remarks. Don't think the CCC is a threat any more than Kyoto was - these UN-type agreements are unenforceable anyway. Better to have the principals agree on principles, as it were.

Bigger issue is what will happen with accelerating warming and drought which have been very evident since the 80s - first the equatorial belt (steady growth of Sahara, Sahel & other desert regions) but now also in temperate zones. The brightest think tanks our side of the pond, DARPA, the Rand Corp., NASA, NOAA, Brookings, CSIR all agree we will be dealing with huge drought and refugee issues. The Pentagon has extensive contingency planning for global drought, inundation of low-level areas, and massive migration. There will be conflicts over basic resources like drinking water. Not to be too Cassandra-like but there is no scientific doubt about these trends, even if we act immediately. I believe the quick fixes are more techno-economic than political, but politicians can help by improving regulations and giving proven technologies free tax breaks, as well as agreeing on triage scenarios. It irritates me to hear our Wall St. types muse "wouldn't mind New York being warmer in the winter" - a change of just a few degrees will cause huge economic dislocation, transmigration, re-arrangement of borders or even entire nations - our military is convinced of this, been planning for it since the 90s. So these symbolic agreements are merely band-aids, not tourniquets.

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Amen, brother! On the scary side, the UK's Lord Monckton has blown the whistle on the upcoming environmental treaty. It will create, as it is worded in the document, a world government which will override our Constitution. Apparently, the extreme left has taken over several enviro groups and is using them to further an extreme left agenda. Leaving a lot of us squarely in the middle, with no place to go.

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Don't believe in Utopia; will settle for survival of the biosphere. Was in W.Africa (Burkina) and S.Africa (Lesotho) with USAID; also TDY'd several neighboring countries for various projects (including solar panels donated by NASA back in the 80's for grain mills & medical fridges).

God help any President in these times. Ours says good things; then has meetings with bank and oil and healthcare executives where he fails to hold them accountable and they come out inflexible as ever. Hopefully it's a crafty way of saying "I tried to include you" and later move on, but the financial powers are so huge I'm afraid nothing will happen. Yesterday's "we are in this together" was nice but a tautology IMHO; very wealthy people understand they have to live here too, but hardly know the urgency of true want.

There are several companies that have developed nanotech solar nearly production-ready. Stunning to me this administration hasn't declared a tax-free zone, like there used to be for the Internet, for this technology. Entrepreneurs would have a field day and we could take the lead and export to the rest of the world. Everyone I've spoken to, right and left, agrees this is a no-brainer: If you don't love the planet or your kids at least love your economy.

(notable exception - oil speculators who drone "drill, drill, drill" should have their heads examined in the same fashion - cancer on the system, produce nothing of value)

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Jonathan for President! You are right, and we could have Paradise on Earth -- except the oil companies wouldn't make any money out of it. Are we so completely owned by them that we can't break the chains? Would be very interested in knowing more about that you have seen and where you have been. Maybe you should be on the Care2 team.

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With universal solar, indoor washing and drying and most other needs could be readily met. There's a French-Algerian consortium NEAL which estimates converting the southern, Saharan part of Algeria into solar and thermal would provide more than our current global energy needs - 1.6% percent of Earth's land area would suffice. Big project, but Sarkozy the French President is serious about investing in undersea electric cables from North Africa to Europe. We should listen to the French; they obtain 90% of their energy from nuclear, not oil. Not my renewable of choice, but it shows what can be done (they started 30 yrs. ago).

Dear CARE choir, please hold our politicians' feet to the fire because it's unbelievable in the USA that we are not doing major energy reform as part of the stimulus. I wanted to interject the economic argument and some 'Realpolitik' because it's so pressing and so obvious, but no-one is talking about it on a national level! Our way of life is profoundly threatened here and, in the 3rd world where I've seen many development projects come and go, the scale of human and animal suffering and death I observed is inconceivable. Add global warming and drought to the equatorial regions and I think future casualties there could be in the millions or billions if we don't do something like, today.


"Shout it from the rooftops...Unscrew the locks from the doors! Unscrew the doors themselves from their jambs!" - Walt Whitman

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My back yard is now completely overgrown with ground ivy and the clothespoles have rotted away. The downside to outdoor drying is birds. There were a lot of local plants that produced purple bird crap, which didn't wash out.

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Brainstorm! Do you think that we are not creative & imaginative enough to solve our problems so the money keeps taking over?
(In my head I see money with legs marching down the street taking over the nation and sucking our minds dry to dust.)
That is why we still use yucky oil.

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Michael,
My clothes hang in good weather. I have mint and lavendar plants like the renaissance underneath. Cool, huh? Beats the dryer.

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Jonathan, you're 'preaching to the choir.' I doubt very much if anyone here disagrees with you. Now, if we can get a free clothesline with each solar panel purchased...

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Oil and coal companies are spending almost as much lobbying against renewables and carbon caps as healthcare companies are against the public option. They have good reason to be scared to death of renewables, especially solar.

That's because solar power in particular is potentially one of the most democratizing phenomena in human history. With slightly improved technology almost anyone could have solar strips on their car, the roof of their house, their porches, garages and sidewalks if our government would at least partially subsidize it (instead of Wall St. bankers) and, all that surplus power could be sold back to the grid for credit and we'd have to import less oil. The manufacture and installation of solar tech on a national scale would provide tremendous economic stimulus in job creation and in energy cost saving for all sectors.

The Obama administration has discussed tax cuts for both solar companies and consumers, but have been blindsided by global corporations like Exxon, who stand to lose the $40B. net profits they made last year extracting, transporting, refining, and distributing oil mostly from overseas - very costly and cruddy stuff.

With solar, power is at your fingertips and every mom and pops' small business, and the oil and coal companies' stranglehold on the economy vanishes forever. Oh yes, and so would the awful petrochemical pollution that is so bad for life on earth.

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