Employing the right set of renewable-energy technologies can help cities create the power they need to maximize production and delivery the kind energy that -- in the long run -- will help us to create greater prosperity for all.

But how do we select the right zero-emission power sources? There are a wide variety of renewable resources, like solar and wind, but some say the solution set could be more robust if we included nuclear energy. Others are strongly opposed, as nuclear power carries with it serious environmental, political and safety concerns. Yet, many deep-pocketed game changers are starting to show huge amounts of support for nuclear energy, touting it as the solution to global climate change. For this reason, we thought it might be a good idea to explore the prose and cons of this energy answer.

The following is a list of resources and stories that we've found helpful in understanding and exploring the issue:

Lovelock: 'Only nuclear power can now halt global warming'
A small collection of James Lovelock's thoughts on nuclear power from Worldchanging ally Jon Lebkowsky.

by Warren Karlenzig

This is the weekly blog post from Bruce Nilles, director of the Sierra Club Beyond Coal Campaign.
Every day it seems as if we see another energy company trying to convince us of new ways to keep us tied to oil and coal. Yet these fuels always turn out to be dirtier and more expensive, especially when their environmental costs are considered.
Liquid coal is one of these same old fossil fuels the industry touts as the next best thing for American energy, but the latest culprit in this pattern of dirty fuels purported to be the U.S. energy savior is “oil sands,” a thick, black dirt derived from the soil under the great forests of Canada.
Use of these polluting oil sands is particularly ironic right now, as we approach what may be a near snowless Winter Olympics in Vancouver. Many have found it strange to read the reports of snow being shipped into Vancouver from hundreds of miles away; sadly, due to the effects of global warming, future Winter Olympic Games may never be the same.
Yes, the East Coast was just blasted with record snowfall in the past week, but long-term trends show less snowpack at higher altitudes, and what is there is melting earlier – making it not only a harder time for the winter sports industry, but also having catastrophic consequences for the western wildfire seasons as droughts increase.

No American leader has done more to advance a clean energy future than President Obama. Nor has any American president done more to invoke a mandate for stricter workplace safety and environmental regulations.
And yet, ever since President Obama first visited my native southern Illinois coalfields in 1997 on a golf outing with a fellow state legislator, he has seemingly failed to grasp the staggering human and environmental toll of coal mining and coal burning on our coalfield communities–and ultimately, the nation.

Regardless of how cap’ n’ trade and carbon cap’ n’ storage schemes pan out in the far-flung future for coal-fired plants, there is one indisputable truth about “clean coal”: It will ramp up deadly strip mining and underground coal mining production by an estimated 25-30 percent.
Clean coal, therefore, are not just words. It’s a death sentence for coalfield communities.
And every time our President glibly spins “clean coal,” he does not simply offend black lung-afflicted and injured coal miners and their families in the American coalfields; he disregards the mounting death toll from “real coal.”
Makes you wonder: Does President Obama’s glibness, for whatever reasons of practicality or politics, turn American citizens into acceptable collateral damage in a confounding defense of our nation’s dirty energy policy?

(Editor's note: Below is an essay by new TheOilDrum contributor Debbie Cook. Debbie was formerly Mayor and Councilmember of Huntington Beach, CA from 2000-2008 and a US Congressional Candidate, 46th District in 2008. She is also President of the Board at the Post Carbon Institute. Long active in resource depletion related outreach with TOD, ASPO and PCI, she is also locally involved with energy/water and permaculture issues in southern CA.)

Jeffrey Sachs, economic advisor to the UN, in his recently published article, Fixing the Broken Government Policy Process , articulates four manifestations of the breakdown in Washington:

1. Inability to focus beyond the next election
2. Decisions are made through negotiations with those who will be funding the next election (i.e. industry lobbyists)
3. Technical expertise is ignored or bypassed
4. The public is largely excluded from the process

Sachs asks, “How can business and government work together without policies falling prey to special interests?”

He suggests that government initiate a more “open, transparent and systematic public-private policy process in each major area of sustainable development”—high-level roundtable proceedings that are open to the public, web-based, and include representatives from private business, nongovernmental organizations, government officials, scientists, and engineers.

Even Boulder Finds It Isn't Easy Going Green

"What we've found is that for the vast majority of people, it's exceedingly difficult to get them to do much of anything," says Kevin Doran, a senior research fellow at the University of Colorado at Boulder.

President Barack Obama has set ambitious goals for cutting greenhouse-gas emissions, in part by improving energy efficiency. Last year's stimulus bill set aside billions to weatherize buildings. The president has also called for a "cash for caulkers" rebate for Americans who weatherize their homes.

But Boulder has found that financial incentives and an intense publicity campaign aren't enough to spur most homeowners to action, even in a city so environmentally conscious that the college football stadium won't sell potato chips because the packaging isn't recyclable.

Recently, we published Alex Steffen's take on Bill Gates' TED presentation. Steffen calls it the most important climate speech of the year, so far. But Worldchanging ally Joe Romm thinks otherwise. For another side of the coin, check out his substantive (if confrontational) critique of the Gates' plan.

Bill Gates is wrong about “energy miracles”
To preserve a livable climate, we need technology deployment. That's what drives innovation, as Gates himself used to argue.

So I listened to Bill Gates’ TED Speech a few hours after he gave it in Long Beach, CA. Let’s just call that an IT miracle.

It wasn’t 80% crap like his recent piece on energy.

When We Talk Zero, We Sound Crazy. When Bill Gates Does It, Bankers Pick Up the Phone.

On Friday, the world's most successful businessperson and most powerful philanthropist did something outstandingly bold, that went almost unremarked: Bill Gates announced that his top priority is getting the world to zero climate emissions.

Now, I'm not a member of the Cult of Bill myself (I'm typing this on a MacBook), but you don't have to believe that Gates has superhuman powers of prediction to know that his predictions have enormous power. People who will never listen to Al Gore, much to less someone like me, hang on Gates' every utterance.

And Friday, Gates predicted extraordinary climate action: zero. Not small steps, not incremental progress, not doing less bad: zero. In fact, he stood in front of a slide with nothing but the planet Earth and the number zero. That moment was the most important thing that has happened at TED.

What, exactly, did he say, and why is it so important?

Just as there are ranges of vast consciousness both superconscient and subconscient to what we experience in our mental framework, there are also ranges of material substance that are based in the density of matter, but reach into highly flexible and subtle ranges of substance that are more capable of responding to new powers and manifestations required of the ever-increasing conscious-force as it evolves.

Therefore the limitations of the material framework are temporary and eventually are to be overcome as the manifestation proceeds. This implies that pain, suffering, limitation, disease, death, and the reactions that we have to them, including our desire to escape or deny the reality of matter, will eventually be overcome as well.

Eventually we see that the manifestation provides for an “integral transformation of the being and nature.”

We do not abandon the material world to achieve spiritual salvation. Rather, we bring the spiritual energies into manifestation and adapt, change, subtilise and transfigure the substance of our material bodies, our life energy and our mentality in the light and puissance of this new manifestation.

reference: Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Chapter 26, The Ascending Series of Substance