"short-life crappy dim energy efficient lightbulbs"

Yes! Man do those things suck. I did plant some trees though. ;)

I do think though that the right answer has to be a mix of policy and personal decisions.

"If every U.S. household switched just five most frequently used lighting fixtures from incandescent bulbs to CFLs, $6.5 billion could be saved collectively every year by Americans and greenhouse gases equivalent to the emissions from more than 8 million cars could be reduced."

But they gotta make those things cheaper and better. Mine keep exploding.

Desi,

Rec'ed for so many reasons:

a) A recognition of what I (and others) have said all along: we will have to lower our lifestyle ultimately. There is no way to "replace" the internal combustion engine. It's one of the most marvelous inventions of all time. How marvelous? After 100 years, no one has been able to figure out something better.

b) A recognition that the progressives don't have all the issues laid out -- especially in this domain.

I, too, was tickled when I read Obama's comments in Newsweek. This is a clear sign that he understands the primary issue. As you point out, the question is what will he do about it? Especially since he will need to state something along the lines of Carter's "Moral Equivalent of Law" speech as I blogged months ago.

Only thing I would add to your post is a mention of peak oil and how it also affects this issue. But I just did.

The personal conservation debate gets mired once it touches "morality." The Cheney brigade wants to distort changes in energy use into "Hairshirts." A charge which gets some traction because there are Greens who are Hairshirts. But Cheney's next move is to extend the "self-righteous" charge to those who aren't in the Hairshirt brigade (Gore) & call them "hypocrites." It's a purely political move, because Cheney-world's own hypocrisy is stunning - talking about Energy Independence, aiding Middle Eastern terrorist, economic efficiency, etc. - while doing nothing to change our oil use.

To escape the hairshirt dead end (and the uptightness of "eco-efficiency") Michael Braungart (working with William McDonough) proposes more fundamental redesign, along lines he's called Sustainable Extravagance. While I think our solutions are perhaps more about societal systems than product design, his image is quite nice I think:

"Consider the cherry tree. It makes thousands of blossoms just so that another tree might germinate, take root, and grow. Who would notice piles of cherry blossoms littering the ground in the spring and think, 'How inefficient & wasteful'? The tree's abundance is useful & safe. After falling to the ground, the blossoms return to the soil & become nutrients for the surrounding environment. Every last particle contributes in some way to the health of a thriving ecosystem. 'Waste equals food' - the first principle of the Next Industrial Revolution.

This "cherry trees in Spring" direction chimes in with that perhaps forgotten aspect of EF Schumacher's work - Not just Small, but Beautiful. In short, a levelled-down, ugly English Puritanism.... no. Beauty and efficiency combined, of the sort we saw in many earlier societies... yes.

Weimaraners are cool.

Very needy, but sweet.