If Americans are serious about leaving a living planet for future generations, why do we need to wait for Obama? We have two major planet-killing activities: transportation and interior climate control. Both are readily dealt with by committed individuals.

If you are using a multi-ton steel wheelchair for your primary means of transportation, you are the problem, not Bush. Going to a plug-in hybrid will not improve the situation much, since half of our grid is fueled by coal, the worst global-warming fuel known. Also, be aware that your fossil-fool powered wheelchair is terrorizing others and keeping them from braving our roadways by bike or foot.

I will never understand why people without circulatory problems heat their houses beyond 50F or cool them at all. Have you people never heard of insulation, clerestory windows (that open) or attic fans? A small energy investment in a remodel can save hundreds of kilowatt hours per month. (Installing sound-walls can make a huge difference, and it doesn't even require a building permit.)

Come on folks, the very existence of life on Earth may be on the line. This is no time to wait on others to make the burdens fair.

Maybe the North should just surrender and let the Confederate States have their own country. These racist bubbas have been holding us back for centuries, time to cut them loose. We could even go a step further: if your state voted for McCain, all Obama supporters must leave. Also, if your state went for Obama then the McCain supporters have to pack up and go.

In the absence of these freeloader states the remaining United Blue States could easily afford universal single-payer health care and rapid changeover from fossil fuels to renewables. Given a choice of living with the Southern wingnuts or paying higher taxes, I think most people would choose the taxes.

Do you really want a President who will deal with energy issues? Face it, Americans will need to reduce their consumption by 80-90% (in less than two decades)in order to prevent the very worst aspects of climate change. Are you ready for that? No more long drives. In fact, no more drives at all for the non-handicapped. Oh, and about that thermostat: 50 F in winter will have to be just fine for non-diabetics (no problem in Berkeley, but a little difficult in Kansas). And, it can't be done by market mechanisms since the wealthiest 15% of Americans are immune to energy prices but consume more than 40% of all energy.

It will be quotas or failure. So far, we have chosen failure. Maybe some more droughts, fires, tropical diseases in Europe and methane plumes in the Arctic will sway a few more people to stop the drive to extinction, but I doubt it.

I seem to have caused some confusion by using the word consumption when I should have used climate-change inducing emissions. My poor word choice led you to believe that I was referring to the economics of the situation. I grant that we can indeed significantly reduce our use of imported oil over the next several decades, and that a great deal of money can be made in that process. Unfortunately, that money will most definitely not buy us another livable planet.

We currently get half of our electricity from the combustion of coal, the single worst fuel source from a GHG emissions standpoint and also the easiest fuel to expand the use of, from a purely economic standpoint. If we transfer any significant amount of transportation energy demand to the current grid over the next twenty years, we will necessarily see a great expansion of coal usage. James Hansen recently said that we could probably survive the consequences of burning all of the oil we can pump, but if we don't stop burning coal soon we are all toast. Bottom line: we not only cannot add more load onto the grid, we must either reduce our demand for electrical energy by 50% or come up with staggering amounts of carbon-neutral sources tout de suite.

How about the other options on the table? I would be very surprised if anyone could bring a significant amount of nuclear power online in the next twenty years (when was the last one built?) and where is the community that will allow it to be built nearby? Both Portland, OR and Sacramento, CA shut theirs down by popular demand. Also, we still have those nasty storage issues. Small-scale photovoltaic panels could partially off-set the reduction of coal, but at current residential usages in excess of 30 kWhr/residenceday, and annualized averages of 4-5 hours of useful sunlight/day, we are looking at 4 Kw of panels on each rooftop just to rid ourselves of coal combustion. In my dreams we could accomplish one-tenth of that in twenty years. Heat-concentrating solar shows some promise as a substitute for coal, but is not yet ready for prime-time. Wind can clearly pick up part of the slack, but quality sites are not as plentiful as you imply.

Remember, time is of the essence. We cannot simply wait around for the next techno-fix. We have less than two decades to reduce our GHG emissions by 80-90%. This old chemist just does not see a way that personal cars can be made carbon neutral in that time frame. It just seems ridiculous to use steel wheelchairs for intracity transportation, especially in a culture as obese and diabetic as America.

By the way, I am also an a**hole. It is nice to know that there are still some of us around who will acknowledge it.

Can this be revisited on 1/20/09? There will be a few new Senators, including Jeff Merkley, who might want to weigh in on this.

Assuming he doesn't take over the EPA, how about RFK Jr. for his dad's seat in the Senate? He expressed an interest in this seat if Hillary had managed to get elected. It would seem like a great springboard for 2016.