Monday, December 8, 2008

Low Carbon Energy: A Roadmap

This Worldwatch Report (WORLDWATCH REPORT 178) by Christopher Flavin finds that: "Concern about climate change and rising energy prices have sparked a nascent transformation of the energy business, with engineers, entrepreneurs, and investors who would have been focused on the Internet and biotechnology a decade ago now focused on energy. Their skills, energy, and commitment to solving one of the world’s greatest problems is likely to prove as revolutionary as their great-grandparents’ work to build a carbon-based economy a century ago.

Rebuilding the global energy system will be expensive, but it can also be transformative. And its sheer scale would create thousands of new businesses and millions of jobs for decades to come. At a time of serious economic troubles, volatile oil prices, and instability in many fossil fuel producing regions, building an efficient, low-carbon energy system can become an engine of economic recovery,
job creation, and international cooperation. Climate change, energy security, and economic development should be viewed, in the words of Common Cause founder John
Gardner, as 'breathtaking opportunities disguised as insoluble problems.'"

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