I ride my bike to work. It seems so pure. We're constantly urged
to "go green" -- use less energy, shrink our carbon footprint,
save the Earth. How? We should drive less, use ethanol, recycle
plastic and buy things with the government's Energy Star label.
But what if much of going green is just bunk? Al Gore's group,
Repower America, claims we can replace all our dirty energy with
clean, carbon-free renewables. Gore says we can do it within 10
years. "It's simply not possible," says Robert Bryce, author of
"Power Hungry: The Myths of 'Green' Energy." "Nine out of 10
units of power that we consume are produced by hydrocarbons --
coal, oil and natural gas. Any transition away from those
sources is going to be a decades-long, maybe even a century-long
process. ... The world consumes 200 million barrels of oil
equivalent in hydrocarbons per day. We would have to find the
energy equivalent of 23 Saudi Arabias." Bryce used to be a left-
liberal, but then: "I educated myself about math and physics.
I'm a liberal who