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Friends of the Earth's climate and energy program director Damon Moglen said the President's climate plan is "not enough" and needs to be more ambitious.
http://www.foe.org/news/archives/2013-06-statement-on-president-obamas-climate-plan

Well isn't doing something like this, which causes so much angst from the energy sector and Republicans, at least a step in the right direction? Using a US football analogy, we can't always make a touchdown with every effort isn't a heroic 9-yard run a good start? Being any more ambitious with the President's plan would risk all-out resistance from every billion-dollar lobby and politician.

And oil isn't. We don't fight wars over it right? It doesn't have any environmental issues right? We don't have a supply constrained system right?

Ethanol is easy to bash on paper...harder to do in reality. WE USE LOTS OF IT TODAY. This isn't some future thing. It's use will not go down with lack of subsidies it will just be more expensive...but less money paid in taxes or taxes going to something else. This is just cost shifting.

http://www.foe.org/usda-approves-use-genetically-engineered-corn-ethanol
Corn based ethanol is improving. We can grow it here. We know how to put it on trains. We know how to make it. We have the system to transfer it around. Newer cars are tested with it.

Sugar cane is also starting to come online in the states. It really only grows in certain southern states...corn is grown in more places with more expertise.

I'm going to guess that everyone that hates on it will love wind and solar. What do turbines and panels make themselves? We use lots of fossil fuels to make both.

The point is we are in transition. Until we have a robust non oil eco system we will be using oil to make the new energy sources. Hopefully some day Iowa will require their farmers to use ethanol in the tractors that being used to harvest the material.

At the end of the day it is just solar energy anyways. The corn doesn't grow itself. Sun for the chemical reactions in the plant, sun for the wind that drives the water cycle....maybe a little gravitational energy thrown in there.

Electric cars are going to be expensive and take a long time to materialize and have the range we need. In the meantime and probably even after we need a liquid fuel that works in existing designs. Yeah maybe a gas like hydrogen will be used, but that is probably way way off.

I'll address your last point first. and if you don't like being made to look like a raving fool, don't read the next paragraph.

just for you, I did google shareholder activism. The first link is a nice guide about it. I quote:
"Cannot address the validity of company's product or line of business"
http://www.foe.org/international/shareholder/poten tial.html
so it would seem my buying 100 shares in aapl doesn't allow me to bring up their lacking support of certain formats.

so before you go acting like you know what you are talking about, maybe you should read your own references?? just a suggestion. I have been looking at the calpers website, and I'm not sure what an opt in retirement fund has to do with public companies like apple.

further, I must admit, I made an error when I said apple won't license AAC. That was a mis step by me(apple doesn't have that option), but the outcome is the same. as you said, they won't license Fairplay, which essentially locks out every other mp3 players from the itunes music store. Now there may be ways around that and you can argue till your blue in the face about that, but its still a locked format only the Ipod can use. In the end, apple is still locking down there offering to make it only fully usable with other apple hardware(which, as a good friend of miine explained, is all about preserving the uniqueness of the apple experience).

btw, MS offers up to date version of office to apple both to make some money and also because of that who anti trust issue they had to deal with. as I'm no MS defender, I will tell you that the reason they do a lot of things is to avoid losing again and possibly being broken up. This way no one can say they are denying a different platform their software.

personally, I don't mind the x86 processor. It seems to work pretty damn well. but of course, if you really hate it, you do have several other options.

oh, and you do realize that what apple has done recently with open source does not mean they would have embraced open source immediately had they dominated the market. Its all a what if situation. What they are doing now is always going to be a direct response to the fact that they didn't win(and a load of other things that have happened in 15 years).

I personally believe the best way to look at what apple would have done is to see how they are handling their powerful position with the Ipod(in a lot of ways, equivalent to the windows monopoly). they are not going to license the competition's DRM(WMA, right?) or offer the copetition the lisense to their DRM, basically locking out all late comers to this game. Sure, apple supports those formats that are standards, but those formats will never be used for legal commerical music(not without some DRM).

Wind power just doesn't cut it: reason being for one that it can't provide power all the time, and can't provide power when the wind is too slow or too hard.

True, but wind power is just one form of alternative energy. When you consider a multi-source system the the fact that one part is not producing at one time has less effect.

The greatest strain on the systems happens during peek demands say the advert break in Friends when everyone puts the kettle on. Neither wind power or nuclear can provide the "instant on" needed to meet peek demand. I'm aware of two different means of meeting this, coal/gas/oil fired stations which can be switched on quickly and an interesting hydro scheme I've seen in Wales (UK). The station has two large lakes, one at the top of a hill and one at the bottom. During times of low demand excess power in the system is used to pump water up the hill. At peek demand water flows down again powering generators.

And to boot, it's way more expensive than any other from of energy except solar.

Costs are going down as research improves. Theres been precious little money put into research of alternative energy sources, in UK its only about a tenth of research money in atomics. Yes they are a bit more 3.7 p/KWh as opposed to 2.5p/KWh but in the same ball park. (from Uranium Information Centre Ltd). Capital costs are less, decomisioning costs are less. According to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), the risk of default on these loans [for new nuclear stations] is "very high--well above 50 percent." CBO also states that a new nuclear plant would be "uneconomic to operate because of its high construction costs relative to other electricity generation sources." The Congressional Research Service estimates the loan guarantees will cost between $14 and $16 billion. (from Friends of the Earth).

Solar. Has its place, basically two form; water heating; and ecletricity generating. Small scale water heeting can be very cheep, one old radiator, painted black, a few pipes and a pump. Can pre-heat your water reducing energy needed. Solar cells are an expensive solution and not very eco friendly considerning all the harmful effects of chip manfacture.

At the project I work on all our electricity needs come from wind and solar. A large battery bank provides backup storage for when its either not sunny, or not windy. Then again our electricity needs are small, laptops and a few lights.

Tidal. A very young technology. like reducing tides, or maybe removing so much energy from the ocean tides that certain ocean streams will stop/reverse/whatever. How much energy would tidal power consume? Very much less than the oceans produced, consider the energy from moving 1000km*1000km*1km of water back and forth twice a day! Yes there may be local effects but it won't make a dent in the global picture. There are some very exciting tidal solutions. New scientist reciently did a good review.

Small scale hydro. A few centries ago water mills ground most of the corn in the UK. Put some moden plants where the old mills were and thats a lot of energy.

Energy crops. A big push in the UK for growing energy crops at the moment. Basically carbon neutral. Short rotation willow coppice and certain grasses are used. Bio-gas, and bio-diesal can be produced. A lot of Brasils cars are run on suger cane.

Energy conservation. Most cost effective solution is actually to reduce energy demand. Loft insulation, low energy bulbs, more efficient fridges all help.

Pasive Solar. Theres a school in Liverpool (not noted for its sun) which is entirely heated by pasive solar. Smart building design with lots of south facing windows and thermal storage (say by storing water underground) can make a cost effective solution.

Combined Heat and Power. The idea here is that waste heat from electricity generation is used for heating. At Live

"The parts for a DNA synthesizer can now be purchased for approximately $10,000. By 2010 a single person will be able to sequence or synthesize 10^10 bases a day. Within a decade a single person could sequence or synthesize all the DNA describing all the people on the planet many times over in an eight-hour day or sequence his or her own DNA within seconds. Given the power and threat of biological technologies, the only way to ensure safety in the long run is to push research and development as fast as possible. Open and distributed networks of researchers would provide an intelligence gathering capability and a flexible and robust workforce for developing technology."

But, do oil wells really work as a perpeetum mobile? How much energy does it take to recreate the oil? The term "oil production" is IMHO bogus.
The only production of oil is done by small organisms in the sea, with geological speed. How many cars would this yearly production rate fuel?

In fact, the reserves we are emptying in a few decades now have taken millions of years to fill. We can't consume more than the produced amount. It is like a bank account. See also http://www.foe.org/ ...

Are there any fusion protest groups yet?

Against the National Ignition Facility

"Friends of the Earth" Europe say: "The commercial use of nuclear fusion is pure fantasy. Already 25 years ago the same people had predicted that in 50 years fusion would be a viable energy resource, but it seems like we are always 50 years away from fusion becoming economic. The European Council has to stop this waste of millions of taxpayers money."

Green groups say Fusion is a Scam

"Friends" of the Earth wants to "Terminate existing tokamak reactors, cancel construction of the similar spherical torus reactor, and adhere to a withdrawal from the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) program."

Sierra Club The dangers posed by the probable releases of tritium used by fusion plants, the problems with decommissioning these plants, and their high costs lead the Sierra Club to believe that the development of fusion reactors to generate electricity should not be pursued at this time.

More than 30 years ago, an author by the name of Helen Leavitt argued that expanding roads led to MORE traffic, not less. The argument was fairly simple...sure, you may get a little more breathing room for a while, but that doesn't address the real problem: too many people are driving on this road. Having more space leads to, well, more people driving on the road. (Leavitt, Superhighway-Superhoax. Must reading for the next generation of civil engineers...some of the fluffier tree-hugging ones have taken the cause to heart at this site).

If you stop to think about it, it makes a lot of sense.
Now i'm going to continue my line of thought, asuming you follow with the whole "more road = more road rage" theorem. (For those of you who still aren't convinced, either you're an old-school civil engineer in which case there's no hope for you, or you're not, in which case you'll be swayed by case studies like the city of Portland. In the 60-70s, Portland was having huge traffic problems. to solve the situation, they demolished a downtown freeway.) the question is: does the same logic apply to the internet?

Obviously, with a larger backbone you're going to see both a decrease in transfer time and an increase in usage. But is the decrease a temporary effect? I have a lot of friends who have seen their broadband service deteriorate to the point where they can get their kicks faster on a free isp. I'm sure you do too. Coincidence? Hardly...

The key difference between real traffic and internet traffic is that physical space is not at a premium. In the real world, land is the bottleneck factor. On the Web, the difference between 5 lanes and 50 lanes is also real, just not in the same way it is in your suburb. What does that mean? There is a greater allowance for 'lane width' patches on the Net...this still doesn't change the fact that to solve information transfer problems, we need to come up with better ways to shift packets, with better cars if you will, rather than expanding the avenues for that data infinitely (a solution doomed to failure because there will always be more data than road. How many of you thought your X-gigabyte hard drve was enough space, only to find it filled yet again).

What are these solutions? I don't know, i'm (almost) an electrical engineer not a magician...try sifting through Jane Jacobs or Peter Calthorpe or some other engineering conceptualists for answers...it's more likely that a new wave of net design theorists will need to stpep forward and shed some light on the rampant growth, kind of like hacking through jungle foliage with a machete so we can actually aget somewhere.

-j

Contact grassroots organisations such as your local Amnesty International chapter (http://www.amnesty.org/, Friends of the Earth (http://www.foe.org/, OneWorld.net (http://www.oneworld.net, or any of the myriad of other NGOs. Most of those organisations would welcome people that are capable of tech support, Internet service creation and maintenance, and other stuff. Some might even hire you. Just be sure to do what you promise (I know of experience that nothing pisses people off more than volunteers that dissolve when the work has actually to be done).