I don't follow

I completely respect you guys for pointing out that you act out of convenience.

What gets me is the smug politicians (cough*Al Gore*cough) or commentators (cough *Arrianna Huffington* cough) who burn hundreds of thousands of gallons of jet fuel traveling to campaign on a platform or give speeches about the evils of the internal combustion engine and greenhouse gases and how the planet is doomed.

Clearly everything we do impacts the planet in some way - it's all a question of trade offs. What's better what's worse is always in debate with new discoveries always changing the calculations - recent debates over ethynol have been interesting, whether it takes more energy to create etc.

Honestly I think the best solution is diversity both in our fuel mixes and practices - At least then it's easier to switch when something proves to be detrimental

Does (or rather, did) California ever use MTBE in their gas mixes? Arizona used to. What was supposed to be a huge step forward in clearer air was found to be a huge step backward in polution in the water table.

Sure did - some of the dug up gas stations (to remove leaky underground tanks) have yet to come back in service

What's interesting is how politics changes things. Do you recall back in the 2000 election how several of the Democratic primary candidates were lauded as brave visionaries for standing up to the corn lobby and calling ethanol a boondoggle?

I think a revolution in portable power is well on its way to coming (hybrids, fuel cells, hydrogen, biodiesel, etc.). The big problem I see is that we're not yet undergoing the painful process of redesigning our fixed power grid. I'm all for increases in wind and solar but really think we need to convert a significant portion of our power grid over to nuclear.

Agreed.

One other problem is refeuling stations for cars. CNG (compressed natural gas) isn't a bad alternative to normal gas, and conversion of cars to CNG isn't that difficult or expensive (though the gas tank must be significantly larger). Phoenix had a huge push on this, including massive tax rebates related to the purchase price of CNG vehicles.

With all of that, though, the entire metro Phoenix area has exactly four CNG refueling stations.

It's a good theory, but scaeagles points out the big pitfall with that strartegy, at least when it comes to transportation. There's gotta be some good proof that it's an option that's gonna be around for the long haul, otherwise there's not economic incentive to make it available in massive fueling network that's necessary to support our transportation-dependent society.

I don't know that we'll ever get completely "offgrid" but definately the grid needs to be more dynamic - with some household producing more energy than consuming (through wind, solar, fuel cell, or even micro-turbin). I've no problem with nuclear - worked at the local nuc plant so I'm fairly secure about how they are operated - but the spent fuel problem probably has to be addressed first before any new development can go on.

I'm thinking more power grid than the transportation sector - but yeah I see your point. Still as the price of gas rises, I bet we'll see more hybrids and alternative use vehicles, perhaps even moving away from single passenger vehicles to conveyances that use other fuels. Believe you me, ridership has been noticably increasing latelyin my own anectdotal but empirical observation on the metro.