That is so frustrating. So many links in that article. All to Fast Company and not anything actually useful like a source.<p>Mark Z. Jacobson and Mark Delucchi, the two authors, have been publishing about this topic for more than two years.<p>Here is the pop science writeup in Scientific American from 2009 (PDF): <a href="http://www.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/Articles/I/sad1109Jaco5p.indd.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://www.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/Articles/I/sad11...</a><p>The considerably wonkier paper, published in Energy Policy this year (two parts, PDFs): <a href="http://www.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/Articles/I/JDEnPolicyPt1.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://www.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/Articles/I/JDEnP...</a>; <a href="http://www.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/Articles/I/DJEnPolicyPt2.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://www.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/Articles/I/DJEnP...</a><p>Here is a page collecting everything Mark Z. Anderson published or said about the topic: <a href="http://www.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/Articles/I/susenergy2030.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/Articles/I/susen...</a><p>That should hopefully reduce the amount handwaving involved.
Ambitious and completely impractical. All that it requires is that everyone change everything they do.<p>Here's a better idea, invest in efficiency. If we insulated buildings properly they wouldn't need any heating/cooling - See passivhaus. If we designed cars properly they'd get 50+mpg already (See europe). If we did things bit by bit to improve efficiency we could easily become energy independent and even an exporter.<p>Have a look at the rejected energy portion of that graph. The worry isn't creating more energy, it's doing more with what we already have.<p>1. <a href="https://flowcharts.llnl.gov/content/energy/energy_archive/energy_flow_2009/LLNL_US_Energy_Flow_2009.png" rel="nofollow">https://flowcharts.llnl.gov/content/energy/energy_archive/en...</a>
I've heard the line several times: "Costs the same so long as you add in total system cost." Then they proceed with estimates for everything from accidents to climate change related costs. This sounds like handwaving to me. You could make anything cost competitive with variables that large.<p>What is the total system cost from throwing out an entire nation's infrastructure?
The article makes some big assumptions. Like for example the idea that switching to the renewable energy sources referenced in the article would solve the phenomenon of global warming. The article references human inertia as the only obstacle left but one of the fundamental assumptions made is that simply switching to the alternative sources referred to would allow the environment to recover before it collapses. That's another kind of "inertia" (karma). I have never seen any any solid proof presented by mainstream scientists about the actual cause of global warming. Is there a concrete chain of cause and effect that relates by quantity the amount of emissions with the exact changes in Earth surface temperature?<p>Besides all this, lots of the renewable energy sources turn out to require more energy to produce and set up than they are able to recover over the span of decades (like wind farming, which is very costly to mine the materials, ship them out, set up, and get going). The article mentions the fiscal cost of setting up these alternative sources but apparently that's not the only thing standing in the way either.<p>My point is that this article paints a highly idealistic portrait. We don't have enough time left for that!