One reason I maintain a guarded optimism about how the world is tackling climate change is that there is evidence of progress on the technological front. The Economist recently carried a nice survey of trends in the car industry, arguing that alternatives to the traditional internal combustion engine are no longer just fads:
In less than two years something remarkable has happened. Technologies once regarded by horsepower-obsessed marketing departments as politically correct public-relations fluff, never likely to see the light of day, are entering the mainstream just as fast as the car firms can get them there.
The story describes the eventual electrification of the car, and that theme ties in nicely with a post from the clean energy blog, Clean Break, which argues that, since land transport is likely to go electric, and since electrification is not really an option for air transport, why not focus research efforts on replacing jet fuel, rather than gasoline? Good question.
