Information technologies are electrically fueled. And, sad to say, I think it s lost on Vice President Gore and Secretary Daley. One may be tempted to dispute the numbers or estimates I ve provided. I would urge you first to absorb the information contained in both reports I ve referenced. In the meantime, use a commonsense approach.
Electricity is the lifeblood of the information economy.
In the next ten years, trillions of dollars more will result from the emergence of the Internet as a driving force in the world s economy. Without the abundant electricity supplied by the nearly 500 coal-fired power plants in the United States, the Internet, the wealth it has created, and the wealth it will create would not be possible. Those 500 power plants burn close to a billion tons of coal each year to provide 57.3 percent of the electricity in the United States. The motive for carbon dioxide emissions reduction is anchored in an assumption or prediction that apocalyptic global warming will occur sometime in the future. The bases of this assumption are the innerworkings of complex, flawed, and flux-adjusted computer models seeking to simulate the atmosphere s physical and chemical processes in interaction with oceans and the rest of the biosphere.