Good Ideas in Sustainability and Clean Energy Won’t Happen in the Absence of Good Leadership

A great number of folks wrote in, commenting on my recent piece in which I outlined Plans A, B, and C, i.e., three broad-level ways in which our society could deal with its sustainability issues vis-à-vis energy. Many people commented that a hybrid approach can – and should – be taken.

Good suggestions include integrating:

• A holistic approach to transportation that reduces overall fuel consumption and the number of individual cars and trucks in service

• Energy efficiency and conservation technologies (two different though related things), along with public education and incentive (e.g., time-of-use metering) to encourage use

• Population control: family planning, and especially education; on average, a literate female will have far fewer children than her illiterate counterpart

• Realistic ways of phasing out fossil fuels over a period of time, while aggressively developing and deploying renewables; an energy policy that states this clearly would be a good start

Of course, this last item points at the real issue, i.e., there’s a reason this isn’t happening. Our leaders happily take advantage of voter ignorance and apathy, while they rubberstamp the wishes of their paymasters in the traditional energy (oil, coal, and nuclear) industries. We need to communicate that our leaders have two options: 1) make this stuff happen, or 2) get a new job.