Smart-growth planners say we need to save energy by reducing our driving. James Howard Kunstler goes so far as to say, “No combination of alternative fuels will allow us to run American life the way we have been used to running it, or even a substantial fraction of it.”
Fortunately, some brighter people have different ideas. T. Boone Pickens has proposed the Pickens Plan, which calls for substituting wind and other renewables for all electrical generation, thus freeing up natural gas (which is the source of about 22 percent of our electricity) for transportation.
Andy Grove, former CEO of Intel, has a slightly different plan. He would replace many of the petroleum-fueled vehicles on the road today with electric cars and light trucks.
