The Ecology of Man

Quite a few months ago, I walked into the boss's office and told him that we needed to get together with all of our sister utilities and offer a prize, a huge prize for the development of an energy storage device that has high energy density, rapid charging, and long life. If our civilization is going to say goodbye to carbon, it's absolutely necessary that an ultra cap storage device or a mass produced lithium battery be developed.

It's not only essential to decarbonizing the transportation sector, we must have large scale capacitance in the stationary electric sector if we are going to have most of our electricity coming from the energy that surrounds us.

Well, yesterday, on the day that former CIA director and plug in hybrid supporter James Woolsey joined the McCain campaign, an amazing thing happened.

Here's the story from the Herald Tribune:

McCain looks for energy breakthrough
By Brian Knowlton
Published: June 23, 2008

WASHINGTON: Senator John McCain on Monday proposed the creation of a $300 million prize for anyone who developed breakthrough car-battery technology and he recommended greater tax incentives for buyers of nonpolluting autos, saying that only a combination of increased oil production, conservation measures and ingenuity could ease the fuel crisis and slow global warming.

The call from the presumptive Republican presidential nominee stood in contrast with his proposal last week to increase U.S. energy supplies through more traditional action - by making it easier for states to allow oil drilling off their coasts.

Speaking a day after Senator Barack Obama, his likely Democratic rival, called for a crackdown on the oil speculators blamed by some for contributing to record high prices, McCain appeared eager to portray himself as taking visionary, independent-minded steps - departures in some cases from Bush administration approaches - to encourage the sort of national commitment and ingenuity that, he noted, had landed a man on the moon.

But an Obama energy adviser, Jason Grumet, said that McCain's "heroic rhetoric" could not cover up for what he described as years of environmental inaction by the senator. (more)

McCain's proposal for a $300 million prize "for the development of a battery package that has the size, capacity, cost and power to leapfrog the commercially available plug-in hybrids or electric cars " is not only a good idea, it's absolutely essential. And the Obama campaign should show that this really is a different kind of campaign, and they should support it.

A prize of this size will bring out the ingenuity we must awaken if we are to truly revolutionize the world we must change.

There are several companies who are on the brink of this discovery now. One is in Texas. MIT thinks they may have the answer. Researchers at Brown University have a thin film battery.

McCains not going to be right that often.

When he is.

Obama should be too.

Then we'll all win the E Prize,

The Ecology of Man

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