Finally someone in academia that gets it! Combustion is the problem. Check out this interview with Mark Jacobson in Grist.

Combining fuel with oxygen. Many times the fuel/combustion-free energy we need is everywhere free. The devices to convert that energy to the heat/cold and electricty we need are altready cheaper than the devices we use for combustion energy. Those solar panels, wind machines, and so forth drop in price with mass production.

The more fuel we use the higher the price, scarcity and faux-scarcity monopoly gaming drives the inflation at the base of our economy that destroys any chance for financial security most of us might hope for.

The mining, drilling, refining, transportation, and combustion devices dwarf the cost of solar panels, wind machines, electric rail, plugin vehicles, smart grid, conservation, and all the other devices needed to convert to renewables.

If we started out now at zero energy infrastructure, distributed renewable energy would beat combustion energy hands down. But we are not starting from zero, we are starting with an industrial civilization that is destroying the biosphere. The powerful financial and political interests invested in combustion based energy have artificially skewed the financial system to favor combustion.

The powerful exponential market forces that would favor renewables is hindered by these interests and the system of subsidies and monopolistic controls they have put in place. Propaganda helps keep the political end of the monopoly game going.

These same exponential forces, the so-called "invisible hand", always touted by the conservatives that fight for the status quo combustion based energy system, would also revive our manufacturing base and provide jobs payed for with long term dividends gleaned from an inflation-free energy economy.

The new energy economy boom would make the internet technology boom of the 90s look like a science fair project. And as Jacobson says, it would last at least over the next couple of decades, instead of fizzling out at the first sign of a monopoly lobbyist friendly regime, like the internet boom fizzled on the advent of the bushwacking.

Mr. President, there are better leaders on energy policy available, Mark Jacobson proves that. And has been proving it since 2001? Think back to arguing the case that wind was cheaper than coal in 2001. I remember making that argument, it was met with almost universal skepticism. Jacobsen has the foresight and courage we need in our leadership.

It was the kind of leasdership that won WW II with massive war production, massive conversion of the economy to the pressing emergency at hand. The response to that emergency finally ended the great depression. With the nation-breaking debt and job losses we are now experiencing, isn't this emergency just as serious, even without the frightening prospect of exponential GHG climate change?

Mr Obama, draft Jacobson and 100 more like him to lead this effort, it's how FDR responded to nation and globe shaking emergency not so long ago, a tiny blink in time compared to the history of humanity and our human-friendly biosphere. It would work this time around too.

Sometimes government planning, "interference", and regulation actually is beneficial to civilization, this is one of those times.