We've gone from thinking the fuels that powered our growth were inexpensive, inexhaustible and benign to understanding they are exhaustible, expensive and toxic. Once you frame the problem that way, people will look at solutions differently.

Once people get a taste for whatever you want to call it - economic independence, a better lifestyle, and a better life for their children - they grab on to that and don't want to give it up.

Rock stars get room keys, I get business cards. Wherever I go I meet innovators of wind power equipment, solar energy operators.

So what am I? I guess I would call myself a sober optimist...If you are not sober about the scale of the challenge, then you are not paying attention. But if you are not an optimist, you have no chance of generating the kind of mass movement needed to achieve the needed scale.

We've given Iraq six months and I don't think things are really working out, so we should probably bring our troops home.

Even if America tomorrow - and it won't happen overnight - but if we did reduce our demand for gas and natural gas and crude oil by a significant degree, that does have an exponential effect on producers in the Middle East, everything else being equal. But if China's demand is growing and India's demand is growing, they are not going back.

It is hard to partner with someone when you become so radioactive no one wants to stand next to you.