Please leave your suggestions here on what can be done to stop the disastrous leak in the Gulf  of Mexico from the BP drilling.

How will expanded use of solar power, wave power, wind turbines, nuclear power lessen the chance for future disasters?  Please leave your comments here.

How on target were the green movement leaders over the last 4 decades?

“1. It’s the climate, stupid. The orators at the first Earth Day didn’t deliver speeches on global warming.  That was partly because there weren’t yet good climate models predicting warming in the 21st century and partly because the orators weren’t sure civilization would survive that long anyway.

They figured that the “overpopulated” world was about to be decimated by famine, the exhaustion of fossil fuels, global shortages of vital minerals, pollution, pesticides, cancer epidemics, nuclear-reactor meltdowns, and assorted technological disasters. Who had time to worry about a distant danger from a natural substance like carbon dioxide?

Well, the expected apocalypses never occurred.

2. You can never not do just one thing. Environmentalists of the 1970s liked to justify their resistance to new technologies by warning that you could never do just one thing. It was a nice mantra and also quite accurate. New technologies do indeed come with unexpected side effects.

But resisting new technology produces its own unpleasant surprises. The “No Nukes” movement effectively led to more reliance on electricity generated by coal plants spewing carbon. The opposition to “industrial agriculture” led to the lower-yield farms that require more acreage, leaving less woodland to protect wildlife and absorb carbon.

3. “Let them eat organic” is not a global option. For affluent humans in industrialized countries, organic food is pretty much a harmless luxury. Although there’s no convincing evidence that the food is any healthier or more nutritious than other food, if that label makes you feel healthier and more virtuous, then you can justify the extra cost.

But most people in the world are not affluent, and their food budgets are limited. If they’re convinced by green marketers that they need to choose higher-priced organic produce, they and their children are liable to end up eating fewer fruits and vegetables — and sometimes nothing at all, as occurred when Zambia rejected emergency food for starving citizens because the grain had been genetically engineered.

“Total reliance on organic farming would force African countries to devote twice as much land per crop as we do in the United States,” he writes. “An organic universe sounds delightful, but it could consign millions of people in Africa and throughout much of Asia to malnutrition and death.”

4. Frankenfood, like Frankenstein, is fiction. The imagined horrors of “frankenfoods” have kept genetically engineered foods out of Europe and poor countries whose farmers want to export food to Europe. Americans, meanwhile, have been fearlessly growing and eating them for more than a decade — and the scare stories seem more unreal than ever.

Last week, the National Academy of Sciences reported that genetically engineered foods had helped consumers, farmers and the environment by lowering costs, reducing the use of pesticide and herbicide, and encouraging tillage techniques that reduce soil erosion and water pollution.

5. “Green” energy hasn’t done much for greenery — or anything else. Since the first Earth Day, wind and solar energy have been fashionable by a variety of names: alternative, appropriate, renewable, sustainable. But today, despite decades of subsidies and mandates, it provides less than 1 percent of the electrical power in the world, and people still shun it once they discover how much it costs and how much land it requires.

6. “New Nukes” is the new “No Nukes.” In the 1980s, Gwyneth Cravens joined the greens who successfully prevented the Shoreham nuclear reactor from opening on Long Island. Then, after learning about global warming, she discovered that the reactor would have prevented the annual emission of three million tons of carbon dioxide. She wrote a book on the nuclear industry titled, “Power to Save the World.”

7. We are as gods and have to get good at it. “

Read the whole article in The New York Times.

The Obama administration has proposed a goal of 20% of power to be from wind.  Have you done the calculations?  That would require 186,000 towers 40 stories high.  The current 25,000 towers kill between 75,000 and 275,000 birds each year.

Will presents more damning statistics for solar power and biomass.

Please leave your comments here on your views for what power source(s) should be used to reduce dependence on foreign oil.

Be sure to read the full article in The New York Times before you comments.  Remember it’s not all black and white.  Sometimes it is shades of green.

Please leave your comments here.

Cleantech Forum San Francisco, on February 24-26th , 2010 at The Palace Hotel will help define the maturing cleantech market. The Forum is themed “Taking Cleantech to Scale” to focus on corporate integration of cleantech into growth strategies, new financing for innovation and infrastructure and global government engagement in cleantech.

Learn about new opportunities at The Forum in sessions that explore the global focus on the corporate integration of sustainability and efficiency practices. Join corporate industry leaders, cleantech innovators, global policy-makers and investors to:

• Build stronger cleantech relationships
• Learn about smarter innovation and more efficient infrastructures
• Define a global policy and stimulus framework for the 2010 cleantech industry
• Create new business models and markets to disrupt the industry status quo

Learn more and register today »