Even The Economist Is Now Stumping for a Clean Energy Revolution

The Future of Energy: It's Closer than You Think.

That's this week's Economist cover story. And here's the final few sentences (page 17.)

The best thing that rich-world governments can do is to encourage the alternatives by taxing carbon (even knowing that places like China and India will not) and removing subsidies that favour fossil fuels.

Competition should do the rest—for the fledgling firms of the alternative-energy industry are in competition with each other as much as they are with the incumbent fossil-fuel companies. Let a hundred flowers bloom. When they have, China, too, may find some it likes the look of.

Therein lies the best hope for the energy business, and the planet.

The Economist, that bastion of free-market wisdom, has gone green. Eureka! Will the Wall Street Journal be next?

Don't hold your breath, even though the reason behind the Economist's support for a clean energy revolution is purely monetary.

.....the proponents of the new alternatives are serious. Though many are interested in environmental benefits, their main motive is money. They are investing their cash in ideas that they think will make them large amounts more....

Wind power is taking on natural gas, which has risen in price in sympathy with oil. Wind is closing in on the price of coal, as well. Solar energy is a few years behind, but the most modern systems already promise wind-like prices. Indeed, both industries are so successful that manufacturers cannot keep up, and supply bottlenecks are forcing prices higher than they otherwise would be.

It would help if coal—the cheapest fuel for making electricity—were taxed to pay for the climate-changing effects of the carbon dioxide produced when it burns, but even without such a tax, some ambitious entrepreneurs are already talking of alternatives that are cheaper than coal.

The Economist predicts that "a fundamental change is coming sooner than you might think."

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