Maybe it's important to look at the term "sustainability". If something costs less, in a world of limited resources, it is by definition more sustainable. Thus, arguably, keeping my classic Volvo P1800 on the road is a lot more sustainable than going out and buying a new Prius. There's some question about whether you can even recapture the extra price of a Prius over its useful life. And, then what? Another $20000+ dollar car cubed and scrapped in what? 20 years at most? "Sustainability" looks like another semantic trick to sell a luxury good based on "how much you can save" rather than the large amount you WILL spend.

While it is dumb-stupid to do a real time experiment on the only breathable atmosphere in the solar system, it's happening as we speak. And it will continue until the 3/5 of humanity presently in poverty achieves a rudimentary standard of health/safety/well-being. Even Bill Clinton concedes that "sustainability" based on continuing world poverty is a non-starter.

So, if we are in this for the lives of our grandchildren, fiddling away resources on at best marginally feasible fads is going to look even stupider. Presumably if this was money in hand, it could be put into bonds and be a much larger sum in even half a century. If we tap out our credit cards now on solar, etc., the shoe is on the other foot and a fairly modest amount borrowed now will multiply into a much larger obligation in that amount of time. So, then where are we going to come up with the money to build dykes around our low-lying lands?.

All this, of course, assumes that we aren't just being hustled by Chicken Little and associates... ( http://vimeo.com/11124841 ) The "science" behind "climate change" is, almost by definition, pretty speculative at this point. In another era* we might have had a nice witch burning party. Might still happen ('climate change deniers to the stake!'). The realistic options outlined by the unspeakable-in-polite-cirles Bjorn Lomborg** are, well, just not mentioned in polite circles.

* http://www.amazon.com/Extraordinary-Popular-Delusions-Madness-Crowds/dp/051788433X
** http://www.lomborg.com/publications/cool_it/

Charles B. Warren, MRICS,
ASA-urban real property
Pleasant Hill
925.609.7241
www.charlesbwarren.com