Thursday, January 3, 2008

Birth of an Energy Debate

An interesting article in Scientific American this month on an all-solar energy strategy. This, coupled with Bob Zubrin's book advocating a viable ethanol/methanol strategy, represent an important trend: The advocates for real technologies are finally engaging the public in realistic debate.

I have no problem with placing more than one bet on an energy technology but I'm more and more convinced that a completely scattershot approach won't solve the problem. We're going to have to bet big on not more than two technologies. Should it be solar? Alcohol? Nukes? Clean coal with sequestration? The only way to tell is to get the details of the programs in front of the public and have our usual sloppy, silly debate that somehow turns out to exhibit at least some of the wisdom of crowds.

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