Wind and solar are the world's fastest growing energy sources, their costs rapidly curving down toward competitiveness with fossil fuels. Fuel cells which provide clean electricity for buildings and new generation vehicles are nearing the market. With the right mix of public and private initiatives, clean energy could ramp-up rapidly. Shell Oil planners see renewables potentially cost-competitive with fossil fuels by 2020 and producing more than half the planet's energy by 2050. I just hope it happens in time to avoid melting the polar ice cap, or some other disastrous thing.
Time is of the essence.
Presidential science advisor John Holdren notes a power plant built in 2010 is on the drawing boards now and will still be in operation in 2050. We are running out of time for a smooth transition to a sustainable energy future. That record has spurred the heads of the top climate monitoring organizations in the United States and Britain to break with any past scientific reticence regarding the connection of global warming with human activities. While climate scientists have been moving toward that conclusion for some time, a similar finding by the World Economic Forum came as a shock. Hundreds of the world's very top business and political leaders meeting at the group's annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland in January selected climate change as the world's most challenging problem.