We confront a future that likely will include a Great Depression in Europe by 2016! We need to see this possible future and plan for it. To that end we need to completely divorce ourselves and our economy from any dependence on foreign food or fossil fuel/oil.
Developing endlessly sustainable alternatives for far less than the current cost of coal-fired power, will prove to be of the greatest use in getting the largest polluters/emerging economies to follow suit or our practical pragmatic example.
Simply and mindlessly espousing the great green gospel of making energy dearer; is simply driving these economies and their vast populations of people living way below any so called poverty line; into the arms of the fossil fuel industry; and or, is entirely counter productive.
As is the usual green generated misinformation or mostly mindless patently political propaganda?
Their real if un-stated agenda, I believe, is to de-industrialize and de-populate the planet?
If nuclear energy can be produced for less than coal-fired power, with comparative safety, it needs to be included in the available carbon free alternatives!
After all, we already have enough nuclear weapons capacity to destroy this planet 40 times over! Therefore, objecting to nuclear energy on the grounds that the waste might be used to make a few more bombs, simply ignores current realities.
Moreover, pebble or thorium reactors overcome most objections; and indeed, fast breeder reactors reduce the half life of nuclear waste to just 300 years?
Surely we humans are smart enough, innovative enough to safely store this waste for 300 years.
Besides, nuclear waste is not presently threatening us with an almost inevitable mass extinction event by as soon as 2070; but, our current carbon load/production does!
In conclusion one notes that old growth trees store carbon whether vertical or horizontal; and, their very selective harvesting allows newer more vigorous growth to replace them; and as a first consequence, vastly improve the capacity of our native forests; to collect and store even more carbon.
Common sense seems to be a very rare commodity; but particularly among green acolytes. Rhrosty.

To add to the excellent contributions by Rhosty and others re biomass energy.

Yes, fuels from fermented grains are a no-no - very little if any net savings in GHG emissions.

But fuels from biological oils - algae and to a lesser extent oilseeds are a completely different story and will be a part of the solution.

Pyrloysis of woody biomass to syngas (hydrogen and carbon monoxide) and charcoal has the most potential of all. Syngas is feedstock for Fischer Tropsh diesel (cleanest of all diesels - low GHG and no sulpher). Cleaned syngas can also be burned directly in gas turbines or IC engines to generate electricity.

If 10% of Australia's dryland agricultural land were planted to coppicing oil mallees, at least 4% of our electricity needs could be met while reducing emissions by at least 4% (see my chapter 20, www.thebiocharrevolution.com). Alternaitively it could provide diesel for essential services such as agriculture and public transport.

On top of all this, most important is energy efficiency; we can easily do what we do now on half the energy. Start with the motor car - 1.5 tonnes to move 1.3 (average) occupants - that's the epitome of wasting oil and causing carbon pollution.

Oil mallee biomass has an energy output-input ratio of 40:1. It can be grown in in belts within conventional cropping paddocks with very few inputs - no additional fertilizer

A very interesting thread.

If coal and hydrocarbons aren't going to run out due being of continuous abiogenic origin (debatable but irrelevant) do we just keep burning them while the earth warms? I don't think so.

Could sustainable algal systems harvesting solar energy and scaled up unimaginably be the alternative? Perhaps sustainable biomass systems on a massive scale? What about massive PV arrays? All possibly and partially. But that's all fiddling while Rome burns.

We must go to what we know is proven and base-load viable, safe thorium fast-breeder reactors. I see someone bleating on another thread about nuclear waste storage in Australia. The alternative to storage is worse. Nuclear buys enough time, before thorium and other nuclear fuels run out, to get a full suite of alternatives up and running.

A team of scientists have used the Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI) on NASA's Aura satellite to confirm major reductions in the levels of a key air pollutant generated by coal power plants in the eastern United States. The pollutant, sulfur dioxide, contributes to the formation of acid rain and can cause serious health problems.

The scientists, led by an Environment Canada researcher, have shown that sulfur dioxide levels in the vicinity of major coal power plants have fallen by nearly half since 2005. The new findings, the first satellite observations of this type, confirm ground-based measurements of declining sulfur dioxide levels and demonstrate that scientists can potentially measure levels of harmful emissions throughout the world, even in places where ground monitoring is not extensive or does not exist. About two-thirds of sulfur dioxide pollution in American air comes from coal power plants. Geophysical Research Letters published details of the new research this month.

These maps show average sulfur dioxide levels measured by the Aura satellite for the periods 2005-2007 (top) and 2008-2010 (bottom) over a portion of the eastern United States. The black dots represent the locations of many of the nation's top sulfur dioxide emissions sources. Larger dots indicate greater emissions. (Credit: NASA's Earth Observatory)
› Larger image (2005-2007)
› Larger image (2008-2010)

The scientists attribute the decline in sulfur dioxide to the Clean Air Interstate Rule, a rule passed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in 2005 that called for deep cuts in sulfur dioxide emissions. In response to that rule, many power plants in the United States have installed desulfurization devices and taken other steps that limit the release of sulfur dioxide. The rule put a cap on emissions, but left it up to power companies to determine how to reduce emissions and allowed companies to trade pollution credits.

While scientists have used the Ozone Monitoring Instrument to observe sulfur dioxide levels within large plumes of volcanic ash and over heavily polluted parts of China in the past, this is the first time they have observed such subtle details over the United States, a region of the world that in comparison to fast-growing parts of Asia now has relatively modest sulfur dioxide emissions. Just a few decades ago, sulfur dioxide pollution was quite severe in the United States. Levels of the pollutant have dropped by about 75 percent since the 1980s due largely to the passage of the Clean Air Act.