More on "it is the energy, stupid!"

A follow up to an earlier post from a few days ago.

In the Atlantic, Julio Friedmann writes about why it is hard to talk about energy, and notes:

Energy is the largest economic activity on earth (much larger than agriculture) and the industry with the highest capitalization (much higher than car manufacturing). Energy units are confusing (megawatts, kilowatt-hours, tons of carbon, CO2 equivalents, BTUs and Gigajoules), but the scale of the system makes these units even more remote (terawatt-hours, exajoules, gigatons, quadrillion BTUs). This makes it hard to bring the discussion home -- the discussion starts in a rarified, almost other-worldly place. (Click chart below for larger view.)



Let's talk gigatons -- one billion tons. Every year, human activity emits about 35 gigatons of CO2 (the most important greenhouse gas). Of that, 85% comes from fossil fuel burning. To a lot of people, that doesn't mean much -- who goes to the store and buys a gigaton of carrots? For a sense of perspective, a gigaton is about twice the mass of all people on earth, so 35 gigatons is about 70 times the weight of humanity. Every year, humans put that in the atmosphere, and 85% of that is power.

Now, that gives us a sense of scale, when we realize that we put in the atmosphere about 70 times the weight of the entire human population on the planet.  Wow!

So, what does the president propose?

Watch the full episode. See more PBS NewsHour.

I hope that we will, sooner than later, talk about energy as grown up and responsible adults.  As the world's leading energy consumer, it has to begin here in the US.  But, that ain't gonna happen with the tweedledums and tweedledees that we have in politics.