EnerMeter

From Alex Steffen at WorldChanging:

When We Talk Zero, We Sound Crazy. When Bill Gates Does It, Bankers Pick Up the Phone.

On Friday, the world's most successful businessperson and most powerful philanthropist did something outstandingly bold, that went almost unremarked: Bill Gates announced that his top priority is getting the world to zero climate emissions.

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And Friday, Gates predicted extraordinary climate action: zero. Not small steps, not incremental progress, not doing less bad: zero. In fact, he stood in front of a slide with nothing but the planet Earth and the number zero. That moment was the most important thing that has happened at TED.

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Yet another wingnut email. This one is somewhat plausible, but wrong none the less. I have no idea what Lowell’s comment about the environmentalist when he forwarded it on means , but the most likely outcome for “all that power” is that it stays in the ground.

Thanks to the environmentalist,  How do we get rid of all that power?

Lowell M

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Read the whole report especially the end. This is real eye opener.
Subject: FW: Bakken Oil --More than the rest of the World combined

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Cap and trade is the target of this wingnut email. One of my “conservative” friends keeps sending inflammatory emails. The one today appears to be designed to scare ordinary folks into thinking that Obama will steal your house, and maybe your firstborn child. No mention that you already need to meet various requirements to get financing.

HAVE YOU HAD ENOUGH YET.  THIS IS WHAT HOPE AND CHANGE IS ALL ABOUT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Subject: FW: A License To Sell Your House per Obama

I looked this up....it is currently in the Bill!!!!!!

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This radical idea comes from John Michael Greer on his blog in a piece titled: Facing the Deindustrial Age

Thus it's one thing to try to find some way to power today's industrial system with renewable sources while leaving intact the structures of everyday life that give our civilization its extravagant appetite for energy. It's quite another thing, and much closer to the realm of the possible, to use renewable energy to meet the far more modest energy requirements of an agrarian society. Especially in North America, restating the question in this way opens up immense possibilities. Very few people who live on this continent, for instance, have noticed that it's only our energy-wasting lifestyles that keep us dependent on imported oil -- with all the unwelcome economic and political consequences that brings. Even 35 years after its own Hubbert peak, the United States is still one of the largest producers of oil on Earth. If the average American used only as much energy per year as the average European, America would be exporting oil, not importing it. Only our insistence on clinging to the dysfunctional lifestyles of an age that is passing away keeps such an obviously constructive goal off the table in discussions of national energy policy.

I will repeat the money line for emphasis: If the average American used only as much energy per year as the average European, America would be exporting oil, not importing it.

Of course, cutting consumption is not the only thing we should be doing. We should be adding renewable energy sources as fast as they can be manufactured until only the most basic transportation needs are powered by oil. If we limit the use of fossil fuels to powering airplanes, we probably have enough to last quite a long time.