As someone who writes and speaks about alternative and renewable energy, I often get asked about climate change.  What do I think about it?  What is true?  Who to believe?

There is so much noise about it.  The media knows it is an important topic to many and they know that controversy prompts viewership so they create controversy.  The U.N. Copenhagen Climate summit is the current case in point.  TV in particular provides superficial, breathless coverage of registration problems, conflicts,  walk-outs and somewhat angry talking heads arguing points of view.  So what to think?

The most cogent description of the four general points of view concerning climate change and humanity’s causality of it was in a column in the New York Times.  It was written by Stewart Brand.  Stewart Brand is best known for creating the “Whole Earth Catalog” and also for being one of Ken Kesey’s Merry Pranksters.  It can – and has- been argued that Brand and the “Whole Earth Catalog” created the beginning of the environmental movement and the cultural underpinnings of Silicon Valley.  He is that significant of a cultural figure.  After all it was Brand who, in 1968, asked the straightforward question:  “Why haven’t we seen a picture of the whole earth?”

Stewart Brand has been a hero of mine for the last 40 years.  It therefore gave me great comfort to read his column and find that of the four positions he describes around climate change that he and I are in the same one: “Warners”.

Brand describes …

Last week the House Energy and Commerce Committee approved the most ambitious energy and global warming legislation ever debated in Congress.  That is very good news and a good first step.  Of course, since Congress has never been anything close to providing leadership in the areas of alternative energy and climate change, the comparison to past non-action doesn’t mean much.

The other action last week that was a good first step was the announcement by President Obama that a deal had been made with auto manufacturers to impose new mileage and emissions standards for all cars and truck sold in the United States starting in 2012.  While this is very good, it is incremental improvement towards a necessary elevation of mileage standards if we are to gain independence from foreign oil, really lessen oil use  and resultant greenhouse gas emissions.

A growing number of energy, environmental and climate scientists have been providing evidence that even if humanity stopped all greenhouse gas emissions today, there would still be an increase in CO2 particles per million in the atmosphere during the next several years.  So complete stoppage would only start to slow this upward trend.  That is why incremental decreases in fossil fuel consumption will not end or alleviate the global climate change dynamics it will only slightly temper them.  All said, the new mileage and emissions standards are certainly a step in the right direction.  A step that should have been taken a decade ago, so this is just playing catch …

The Great Recession of 2008-2010/11 is going to be a very tough time economically.  As I wrote in my Forecast for 2009, this economic collapse brings four words to mind.

The first word is contraction, which is the standard way to view a recession.  Economic activity contracts and we are in a recession, economic expansion represents the end to the contraction.  The contraction was severe in the fourth quarter and will be so in the first quarter and second quarter. Output and consumption are in a deep fall right now and will remain so.

The second word is cleansing which in this context means that old ways of doing business, of looking at only the upside, of embracing debt and extreme leverage must and will be cleansed from both the economy and the way that people think. The casino capitalism of the past 20 years will soon be viewed as an unsustainable exercise in individual and corporate greed.

The third word is reorganization.  To quote from the linked column …

The year 2008 will obviously go down as one of the most eventful years in recent history.  It was the year that Barack Obama was elected President of the United States.  It was the year that the Internet replaced print and TV as the driving force in a presidential election. It was the beginning of the end of 15 years of divisive cultural politics in America.

2008 was the year of the worst economic collapse since the Great Depression.  This collapse was the first one since the beginning of the new global economy and thus showed how humanity and all of its nation states are financially interconnected in a historically unprecedented way.  This global financial collapse is historically significant for several reasons.  First it did show that money and finance knows no national boundaries, and that nation states can no longer individually deal with major financial crises.  Second it is the start of the process to cleanse the global and particularly U.S economy from over leveraged, debt oriented mindless growth and consumption that has been a result of the mindless support of unlimited growth without thought of personal, national and global consequences.  Third it represents a clear albeit disruptive and painful part of the transition that humanity is now making from one age, the Information Age, to the new age, the Shift Age.

2008 was the year when people around the world, and most strikingly Americans, make a sudden and profound switch from consumption, debt and spending to, thrift, saving and shedding …

The last 50 years of humanity’s mindless consumption of fossil fuels has helped accelerate global warming. The total lack of a cohesive energy policy and program in America has given us $4 a gallon gasoline with $5 and $6 a gallon a practical certainty. There are millions of new riders on our mass transit systems at a time when many of these systems are in crumbling decline due to decades of neglect and total lack of strategic initiatives. Solar and wind power are extremely exciting and coming on line quickly. Globally, and nationally we have backed ourselves into an energy corner.

Nuclear energy is one of the sources that now must be better utilized in the U.S and around the world. Contrary to trailing popular perception, it is a relatively safe energy source. Fewer people have died working at and around nuclear power plants in the last 20 years than have died in coal mining accidents in the last three years. France obtains 50% of its energy from nuclear. Now that we are passing through Peak Oil we have only decades left of petroleum. All energy options must be explored, made safe, and made affordable if we are to avoid the tearing apart of the social, economic and cultural fabric.

When we think of the Middle East we think of petroleum. However, the rulers in that region know that the bonanza they are currently enjoying will be coming to an end by mid century. Even countries in the Middle East are looking …