"Google is also purportedly committed to reducing computing power guzzling by at least 50 per cent by 2010. Search us about how they intend to pull that off though."
Theoretical snide answer:chrome, let the user's computers do more work.

And oh, america doesn't just start wars about oil, there's also natural gas (afghanistan).

Nuclear (even fusion) power plants will produce waste that requires tens of thousands of years of security to safeguard. Even plastics havn't been around nearly long enough to know if they can contain these things for that peroid of time. Let alone, name a government that has been around for over 10,000 years. Some of this stuff will be radioactive for over 100,000 years.

Natural Gas cannot be removed from the Power Grid, due to its function therein. Natural gas plants can be "spooled up" in a matter of hours. It can take upwards of 3 years to get a (new) nuclear reactor up to full power. Nuke can offset dirty fuels like coal, Nuke cannot replace Natural Gas.

Yes, approaches like Canada's reactors can extract more energy (and thus, reduce radioactivity) from waste out of US Nuke Plants....I doubt that outsourcing will ever happen. We wont even use the reprocessing facillitys that we used to make our mass arsenal of "bombs" to improve the functioning of our nuke reactors. Some of the beneficial output of that (like medical isotopes) we outsource to any other country on the planet willing to do it. We just take it for granted, without providing ourselves and using our own safeguard definitions.

While yes converting the national grid to run more efficently to handle power properly from wind (let alone solar) is a huge challange; doing nothing in the long run costs more. Just as much as the poor efficency ratings on those solar panels you rail against (and they are poor) could be improved, having accomplished that, without improving the means to move that energy accomplishes nothing.

In the end, if we can address these issues, get renewable energy from as many sources as feasably, reasonably, transport that energy efficently... We could all be driving F350's. America has a great deal of land space to draw this energy from.

Biofuels are a waste, we dont need it. We're only killing our own, and our neighbors food prices. While reducing MPG.

Gosh, if America removed all sources of carbon burning, it would be green.
What a revelation ! What insight ! What inspiration ! Remove the problem and you have solved it. Brilliant !
Well duh. Did he mention the process by which all those coal-burning plants will be replaced, and what will replace them ? Did he mention the efforts Mr Joe Onthestreet is going to have to make to buy a new, eco-friendly car when his house is still mortgaged and, thanks to the financial disaster area that is the sub-prime market, he can't sell it or get a new loan ?
And did he, by any chance, mention some new, as-of-yet unheard of incredibly fantastic increase in efficiency of solar panels, woefully stuck under the 30% efficiency bar in transforming light into electricity ?
Because I'm willing to wager that this jet-setter has no mortgage on his house, more than one car in his garage and enough private property to let him not care about the efficiency of solar panels.
The rest of us will have to wait for reliable fusion and the commercialization of short-charge batteries to make the switch.

Augustine, you have just killed this comments page by invoking Godwin's Law. Good night.

Nothing ever gets done because we the people who do all the bitching do nothing but bitching..

He is a dreamer and he has a point but there is an easier way a way to get all the fuel we need, and have a ready supply of taxable income, while ensuring that marijuana stays out of the hands of kids.
Legalize Cannabis around the world, all the bio-diesel we need, all the cellulose ethanol we need, all the food we need to feed the starving, enough fibrous material to clothe the world, bio-degradable plastics, cheap clean fuel, and lets not forget raising the quality of life for those stricken with wasting syndrome from chemo, and AIDS drug side effects. 

How does all this equal keeping it out of the hands of the kids, when something is illegal is is uncontrolled by the state or fed, leaving the control of said substance and it consumers up to the black marketeers, who care not about age. Like tobacco and Alcohol are regulated by the state and fed so should cannabis. Unlike tobacco and alcohol cannabis has never killed anyone. Control it ensure that it is sold to adults alongside tobacco and alcohol, and stop wasting my tax money on a war on a freaking flower.

Save the Weed, save the world!!!

Why are all the "experts" so wrong?

Solar power is incredibly inefficient, they wear out quickly, and manufacturing the solar panels is horrible for the environment.

Wind farms require constant maintenance, take up tons of space, and aren't suitable for every area.

Hybrid cars kill the environment with their Lithium Ion batteries. They have 2 separate drive trains and thus harm their own efficiency with all of the added weight.

Plug-ins require electricity from the grid, of which the majority comes from burning coal.

We've got ethanol in our gasoline now, making our mileage worse while the price stays the same, and more needless corn is grown, driving up the cost for other foods.

We're being told to use natural gas, but that requires new infrastructure, isn't very efficient, and we really don't know how much of it we've got. 

We can't drill to get our own oil, even though the environmental impact would be minimal (or positive, with all the regulations and forced rebuilding).

We can't build new refineries to refine petroleum more efficiently, more quickly, more cleanly, and more cheaply.

We can't build hydroelectric dams which provide huge amounts of stable power, and can run for decades (or centuries) with no intervention or maintenance.

We can't build nuclear reactors even though nuclear power is safe, clean, and abundant. Storage of nuclear waste is NOT an issue - any radioactive waste is (guess what) radioactive. It can be used in lower-yield reactors. We dump it because it's not the high-yield stuff. Even if we don't use it, it can be sealed and stored safely, and a leak doesn't mean the end of the world. It means a clean up crew suits up and goes in.

Man, oh man, will I be glad when I get my GMC Denali Pick-up finally paid off a year from now. Then I will be able to pay down some of the interest on the many maxed-out credit cards that have me paycheck every two weeks. I don't know how many years that will take, because I don't have collateral to refinance all of that debt, because, there is so many cards, which gave such high credit limits. Apparently, I also owe them for outlandish insurance charges for my card, which I can no longer benefit from. As it is not the policy of the perennial red state Republicans to grant pay raises, which do not keep up with inflation pre-war or presently, I've fallen way below the poverty line. I can only hope that foreigners might buy me an electric car and the higher insurance required for its light structural weight. Then when half of us former guzzlers are plugging in, I hope all the additional coal burning won't come under scrutiny. It takes so long to get a shedload of Nuke reactors running, and nobody wants that runnoff in their state, or on their roads. And then if I'm away at university, certainly they'll have to hook me up, so me charges won't leak over time. Who's going to pay for that and the charge layovers for long trips. Oh who is me? They'd have built more overcrowded debtor prisons for us all by then. I'm just so silly. And it's not likely that I'd need to buy other things like robots or chips. Oh and the government wants so many new toys as well. And we like to give presents to foreign countries. I just don't know if China and the UAE are going to continue to float us. Bad Credit to the bone. BTW, I would gladly pay you Monday next, for a happy meal today, if I only could afford my meds. Search me oh liards.

Whenever someone says that a change of such proportions is merely a math problem shows his inepness in real-world problems.

It really gets old when someone who's succeeded in his field tries to tackle the same way every other problem, or alleged problem in this case.

Technocrats are nothing but over educated morons. One has to wonder why half of the Nazi SS officials were PhDs.