'How can we afford to transform our whole economy in order to prevent climate change, when climate change could turn out to be a hoax or a fad and we could misallocate all that capital?,'  my answer is always the same: If climate change is a hoax, it is the most wonderful hoax ever perpetrated on the United States of America.  Because transforming our economy to clean power and energy efficiency to mitigate global warming and the other challenges of the Energy-Climate Era is the equivalent of training for the Olympic triathlon: If you make it to the Olympics, you have a much better chance of winning, because you've developed every muscle.  If you don't make it to the Olympics, you're still healthier, stronger, fitter, and more likely to live longer and win every other race in life.  And as with the triathlon, you don't just improve one muscle or skill, but many, which become mutually reinforcing and improve the health of your whole system.

• alternative energy
• climate change
• usa
• life
• power
• change
• capital
• america
• energy
• energy efficiency
• other

With oil at $200 a barrel OPEC could potentially buy Bank of America in one month's worth of production, Apple in a week, and all of General Motors in just two days.  Up to now, Persian Gulf-based sovereign wealth funds have played a very healthy, stabilizing role in the 2008 American subprime mortgage crisis.  But it is hard to imagine over time that their economic clout will not get translated politically.  After all, that's what America and Britain did when they had financial clout: They used their money to advance their national interests abroad.\n\n 'So what am I saying?  That we need to bankrupt all these oil producers?  No, I don't want to bankrupt Saudi Arabia or Kuwait or Egypt or Syria or Russia or Indonesia.  That would only cause a different kind of destabilization, born of impoverishment.  Besides, the price of oil is not going to drop to zero any time soon, even if we all drive plug-in hybrids.  We will need petroleum-based products - from plastics to fertilizers - for as far into the future as anyone can see.  But the world will be a better place politically if we can invent plentiful renewable energy sources that eventually reduce global demand for oil to the point where even oil-rich states will have to diversify their economies and put their people to work in more innovative ways.

• energy efficiency
• oil addiction
• saudi arabia
• usa
• time
• work
• will
• america
• future
• russia
• money
• energy

'Today we can substitute knowledge for raw materials in so many more ways.'  No, you can't build a building with computer bits and bytes like cement bricks and mortar, but with smarter materials and smarter designs you can build a building with a lot fewer bricks and a lot less mortar.  You can build a building with tighter windows and a lot better insulation.  You can make steel with so much less iron ore and so much less heat.  You can make buildings that retain heat or cooling so much more efficiently.  You can grow more food per acre. All it takes is knowledge.'

• energy efficiency
• knowledge
• food