Originally Posted by wahoonc
If we were to mandate and enforce reasonable speed limits, and tax people for driving over a certain number of miles a year, tax the crap out of vehicles that get less than a target mileage, etc, etc we would conserve enough fuel to keep us going while we work out the issues. I have seen somewhere that if all incandescent bulbs were replaced with compact fluorescents we would cut our total electric power consumption by over 1/3. Imagine not having to build new power plants...No one says it will be easy or painless, but doing nothing is going to generate the worst results.
Aaron
I'm with you on this one. Conservation already has worked in that the growth in demand for energy is far less than what was predicted in the 1960s. However, we're now slipping back and demand is starting to grow at a faster pace. We need to get back to the spirit of the late 1970s--especially turn back thermostats and buy lighter cars (or of course NO cars!). Combining old-fashioned conservation with better technology -- more effective insulation, lightweight building materials, etc -- we very well could see negative growth in consumption without too much sacrifice. And that's taking into account projected increases in population.