A Sustainable Approach to Energy — Points of Agreement, Disagreement

A reader comments: Come on Craig, admit it, you and (conservative reader) MarcoPolo are really one and the same… Gotcha didn’t I?

Lol.  Kind of like Clark Kent and Superman, I suppose?

No, in fact, MarcoPolo and I disagree on almost everything.  In particular:

• He’s not aware of how far we are along technologically in terms of the cost-effectiveness of renewable energy.

• He doesn’t see the role of government in promoting a solution to our environmental problems.

• He doesn’t see the need to internalize the externalities of fossil fuels.

• He thinks that the concept of doing the right thing morally vis-a-vis sustainability is just an opinion, like one’s favorite color.

The only places we agree are:

• The path to sustainability has to be financially sustainable; ultimately, cleantech needs to be profitable or it’s going to fail.

• There are a lot of crackpots in the world, and this can be pretty amusing at times.

• You should build one of your machines, operate it profitably, and draw investors to it based on those profits.

In terms of writing style, it’s pretty close, though he tends to use exclamation points, where I almost never do.  To me, if something is an exclamation it should speak for itself.  I don’t use them for the same reason I don’t laugh at my own jokes; if other people find them funny, they’ll laugh without being told to.