From Energy@Berkeley: Solutions for Global Warming

18:05 Energy efficiency and conservation is and will remain the lowest hanging fruit for the next several decades, there’s no question about this.
…
Free markets fail when there is what’s called a commons problem. So what’s a commons problem ? It’s a common shared resource. The fish in the ocean is a common shared resource, and so when one country or one sector doesn’t have total control over this resource, they might think “well, I gotta fish what I can fish, because someone else might over fish and cheat me out of my fair share”, let me put it bluntly, that’s typically what happens , that also happens in air and water pollution issues, sharing of water resources across borders, and the climate change issue and greenhouse gasses is the ultimate commons problem.

The choice of Steven Chu provides strong clues as to the direction of Obama’s upcoming Green New Deal:

21:15 Buildings are 40% of the energy consumption in the United States … Many many progressive architects tell me you can save a factor of two in energy which would have a payback in five years or less.

From Select Committee Oceans Hearing:

“Americans told us they wanted:
safe seafood, healthy seafood, number one,
number two clean beaches,
number three, abundant wildlife,
number four stable fisheries -no more of this boom and bust and closures,
and fifth, vibrant coastal communities.
Now I think that’s a really nice summary and synthesis of the way Americans think about oceans. And I think that they truly understand that they appreciate them, they want these things. What they don’t understand is that all of those things depend on healthy, productive, and resilient ecosystems and that’s not what we’re seeing now, we’re seeing serious degradation and disruption and depletion, and climate change is going to exacerbate that very, very seriously.” ~ Jane Lubchenco

Jump ahead to 4:45 for Jane Lubchenco’s part.

From John Holdren’s 7/7 Harvard Talk: Global Warming: What do we know and should do.

“I actually thought the biggest shortcoming in Kyoto achetecture, besides focusing on absolute reductions from 1990 which has a lot of problems, was that if focused altogether too much on targets and not enough on mechanisms. …in a way, focusing on exactly where you need to be by exactly what time is not as important as figuring out what you’re going to do to bend the curve away from this business as usual growth that we’re now on.”

“This climate change challenge is certainly one of the most interdisciplinary problems that society has ever faced in the way it links and requires understandings from science, from engineering, from economics, from policy analysis, from politics, in order to understand both what is needed and how to get there.”

Hopes are high for an Obama-led climate strategy, but when it comes to true details there are still more questions than answers. Andrew C. Revkin has stationed himself at the intersection of science, technology, and policy for two decades, watching closely and writing like a madman…

via The TH Interview: Andy Revkin—Climate in the Obama Age : TreeHugger.