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the future. Solar can be a large part of this future wind power, biomass, and tidal can also be a part of this future. Ethanol, hydrogen, and clean coal should be considered only as stop gap measures until we can move our transportation and energy generation off of oil and coal respectively. Looking out fifty years we may have succeeded at making nuclear fusion a reality. Until then we need to make sure that we can handle our energy needs without lowering our standard of living or disrupting the economy.

Please do not argue that we have to lower our standard of living. This is not only a false argument but a self defeating one. This argument is one that will drive people away from the important goal of moving away from fossil fuels. As others have said we have more energy falling to the earth daily then humans use in a whole year. To get ordinary people behind sustainable solutions they need reasons beyond saving the world. Most of these people have been hearing the "we've got to change to save the world" argument for their whole lives. They need real reasons that will impact them and that are not as abstract. These people are used to hearing scientists and the media make fantastic claims about environmental changes that are just a step away from causing catastrophe. Climate change may be an important reality for green activists but it's not to most people. If all the predictions that most people have heard about throughout the years had come to pass the human race would already be extinct because of catastrophic loss of topsoil, the next ice age, famine due to over population, or nuclear winter. To many man made catastrophes have been predicted and heralded in the media for to long.

We need to get away from oil because long term it is not viable as even the oil companies put peek oil within the next 40 years at our current rate of usage growth. Before we get to that point oil will have risen to a price that will slow economies world wide. In fact the price of oil may become the single most important limiting factor on global economic growth in the next 50 years. Our first goal is to divorce ourselves from this risk. By using other resources to generate energy and provide transportation. By using other energy sources we will not be funding groups and governments that are unfriendly to the west. We can safely handle issues in the middle east without worrying about having our economy held hostage. Remaining oil reserves can be used for plastic and fertilizer

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