Where does that leave us?
(1) Do nothing and stay on the current path, which means increasing use of coal (electricity usage is growing fastest in India and China; both get 80% of their electricity from coal). And so we burn.
"We" do 'we"? Who is this "we"? How is "we" to reach a decision on this? Everyone wants to talk about "we" (or "humanity") because that lets them utterly ignore (a) the political issues involved and (b) the constraints on decision making by individual enterprises that I mentioned in earlier posts.
Frankly, it is near lunacy to argue endlessly about what "should" be done without subordinating that discussion to the political issue of how actual decisions may be made and carried out.
I was immensely impressed by Chuck's posts: about the best written and the most illuminating that have appeared on this thread.
But Chuck too prefers to talk about what should or shouldn't be done without really facing in any concrete way the problem of gathering decision-making power into hands that can decide without invisible constraints on their decisions.
A couple decades ago the Eureka Corporation, founded in Bloomington long ago, gave its last remaining employees (all other manufacturing had already been moved to the Mexican Border) a choice: accept nearly a 50% cut in wages & benefits or the last operations in B/N would be closed. The employees rejected the plan and the plant (just built about 2 decades before that) was closed.
Suppose the Eureka management had been by some miracle beautiful souls, in love with and loyal to the population of Bloomington/Normal. So they decided to stay in B/N and continue to pay top wages. Probably the Eureka company would no longer exist. THAT is "the problem" if you want to use that word ("problem") which should be confined to elementary school texts and not used by adults).
Carrol