We are doing lots of research on alternative energy, alternative fuels, fuel consumption, etc. Just look at the whole movement for ethanol (which isn't particularly Earth-friendly when you consider the energy it actually requires to create it), electric-fuel hybrids, etc. However, by-and-large, our economy runs on cars and oil. You don't change society in a day, unless you tell them what to drive, how to do spent their money, what to do with their consumption. Further, we progress by using such technology to innovate and come up with better and better solutions. You don't make limits on progress that you cannot handle - I read something recently that implied none of the European countries are actually on-target for the restrictions of the Kyoto Treaty. I read also that 20% of methane added to the air is produced by cows. Do we tell farmers that they can only raise X number of cows? And consumers of steak that they can only have X limit of steaks? You say we need to move off coal, oil, etc now - but how do we do that? Do you tell people they can't use cars? That they can't run their heaters? One solution I believe is nuclear power. It is clean, efficient, and less waste than others. But environmentals are too fearful of nuclear reactions.. but nuclear power has one the safest track records. If we actually started building more nuclear reactors in the US, we can get off of coal and other power sources within a decade. We can protect our environment without going through some "doom and gloom" scenario that is unproven. We can let scientists and engineers come up solutions, not use environmentalism as a political platform to stop such progress. Global warming has just become a poster child for people to blame humanity for all the world's problems. The Earth has survived higher temperatures, even through a number of global cataclysm. We don't have the long range knowledge and research to say this isn't another cycle, whether this is truly human-created warming, and to what effects this may have. Some scientists even disagree with global warming - saying that increase in "greenhouse gases" will cause a global cooling. Science can be all hype and no validity (like eugenics .. we had scientists and politicians and the world believing in it). We need to take the long term approach and do the research, work on the innovations, and not get stuck in this mentality that all we have to do is enact government regulations to simply solve the problem.