Picking Your Wallet

Engaging some folks in a conversation about reducing American energy consumption, reducing carbon production or increasing energy efficiency provokes a knee-jerk response about China's energy consumption.  Somehow China's energy consumption is an excuse for the U.S. to ignore the issue.

We all know the irrational arguments equating lightbulbs with servitude while your wallet is being picked.

Interesting article by Amory Lovins about the rest of the world progression while the U.S. follows Dirty Energy and genuflects to misinformation and propaganda.

Taken from RMI's newsletter: SPARK

Spark: Asia's Accelerating Energy Revolution

Amory B. Lovins

Cofounder, Chairman and Chief Scientist

March 26, 2013

In late 2012, RMI’s cofounder, chairman, and chief scientist Amory Lovins spent seven weeks in Japan, China, India, Indonesia, and Singapore observing Asia’s emerging green energy revolution. In February 2013, he returned to Japan and China. Japan, China, and India—all vulnerable to climate change—turned out to be in different stages of a “shared and massive shift” to a green energy future, one with remarkable similarities to RMI’s Reinventing Fire vision for the United States.



China Scales
China is the world’s #1 energy user and carbon emitter, accounting for 55 percent of world energy-consumption growth during 2000–2011. Yet China now also leads the world in five renewable technologies (wind, photovoltaics, small hydro, solar water heaters, and biogas) and aims to lead in all. Its solar and wind power industries have grown explosively: windpower doubled in each of five successive years. In 2012, China installed more than a third of the world’s new wind capacity and should beat 2015’s official 100 GW windpower target by more than a year.