One of the mixed blessings of the human condition is our ability to doubt. Without Doubt, orthodoxies would simply be handed down from one generation to another, and we would be stuck with whatever mental tool kit we were given by our parents. Beliefs tend to be conservative: Someone once catches something nasty from eating mussels and three thousand years later they stay un-Kosher. And that sort of thing.

Our ability to doubt is a dangerous and powerful force for change. It can question anything. It undresses Emperors and it barbecues Holy Cows. Mixed with curiosity, it underpins the scientific disposition.

 It is also, ironically, able to leave us stranded at a crossroads, paralysed with indecision.

 Our ability to doubt is most powerful when we are in the belly of a highly organised system; in a train on a track, it is perfectly suitable to ask "is this the right way? Is this the best way?"

But when the scope of what is possible opens up into a plain before us, "are we going the right way?" is almost meaningless. Because there are nearly infinite choices, and no Rails, no roads, no gods or kings, just the vastness of the Possible.

Among the doubtful, there are those whose Doubt is really Fear, and they respond to this situation with a kind of Possibility Agoraphobia. In company, they will form a pile with their heads in the middle, like a mob of sleeping turkeys, and recite comforting platitudes at one another to block out the awful silence of the open plain. They don't reason too vigorously, because for them the instinct to flock is stronger than the instinct to navigate. I have never been able to stand that way of thinking; let me be clear: In the Environmental movement, this is a Fucking Bad Habit.

Its time to look at the vast space of the possible and just pick some things that are worth doing. And then sodding get on with them already.

This necessitates the realism of accepting that every course of action in the real world will have some negative consequences. Doubt and fear are not going to help lead to good decisions if someone has a inability to risk, and an inability to assess and accept the reality of the Downside. Every course of action has one.

For example: Wind Turbines.

Wind turbines will kill some birds. Fewer than cars, fewer than cats, fewer than plate glass windows, fewer than power lines, but some birds are gonna die.

And its OK.

Because if we let Climate Change turn their habitat into a dust bowl, they are ALL fucked. They can learn to avoid flying into turbines and most will, but they cannot learn to avoid habitat loss.  We are gonna need a lot of wind to make decarbonising the economy work. So fucking deal with it, hippies, or stop pretending that you are environmentalists.

Ditto Solar. I read some Ass who seriously suggested that the solid waste from solar was a "dirty little secret" but when you run the numbers, the waste was about the size of a Wall Mart parking lot to the depth of 10 feet. That's it. Big fucking deal. The Fly Ash mountains of radioactive crap heaping up from Coal are vastly more of an issue, as well as being far larger in volume. As in, by orders of magnitude. Some cardboard boxes are not going to make me think the Status Quo is the best we can do. For Fucks Sake.

And electric transport: Jesus the crap I have heard surrounding this. Yeah, they use Lithium. There's a lot of it. And when the battery is dead...we recycle it. Its an element, not a compound like the Hydrocarbons in Oil that we burn and that float non-renewably into the Atmosphere. Its a battery. All the stuff stays inside. For Fuck's wee pious sake.

If we link these three technologies together and run the numbers, something amazing happens: we have a different kind of economy with  chance of actually working. 4 kWh of electricity can propel a Tesla nearly as far as an SUV can go on a Gallon of gasoline. And here is the kicker: the refining of Oil into Gasoline requires nearly 4kWh/Gallon.

Displacing the Gasoline not only allows you to do something better with the Oil (like international air travel, yeeeehaaaa!) but the downside for the energy budget is minimal.

1KW of solar panels is now about 5-600 bucks on the word market. This will propel a car some 15 miles on a summer day. The numbers work.

I suspect sometimes that the relative straightforwardness of a solution is what upsets those that have a longstanding emotional commitment to Doom. A future in which Mad Max just plugs his road warrior-mobile into a charge point and drinks a few coffees as his batteries top off is not as compelling somehow as him battling leather-clad fetish enthusiasts for the petroleum lifeblood of the Post Apocalypse.

Selling Sane Max to the masses is not going particularly well, either.

For some reason, you tell people, guys, we have made some cool things that allow us to drive around and run air conditioning and have electronic gadgets AND we can have clean air too....whaddaya say? And you hear crickets.

Don't get me wrong, there is an immense amount of work to do. To give everyone enough power to have lights and computing and a bit of air con means we need about 20 billion solar panels installed and probably 10 million wind turbines. That there is a shitload of work.

But frankly, work doesn't scare me. We CAN do this. Big Business has pulled its head out of its backside and has joined the party, and they are doing some pretty cool things. There are a bazillion startups trying to be the grease in the gears of the new energy economy, including mine.

We got this. This is something that humanity is going to be proud of in 50 years.

So lets put Mad Max to rest already. He's a pain in the arse.