Slip slidin' Away

The race isn't being won and one fears it's almost beyond winning.

"Don't Give up Because I believe There's a Place Where we Belong." Peter Gabriel

On the optimistic side Justin Wu, lead wind analyst at Bloomberg New Energy Finance gives voice to the industry consensus that wind and solar are poised to break out in grid utility electric generation within the next five years.

"The press is reacting to the recent drops in solar equipment as thought they are the result of temporary oversupply or of a trade war. This masks what is really going on: a long-term, consistent drop in clean energy technology costs, resulting from decades of hard work by tens of thousands of researchers, engineers, technicians, and people in operations and procurement. And it is not going to stop: In the next few years the mainstream world is going to wake up to wind cheaper than gas, and rooftop solar power cheaper than daytime electricity. And in the same sort of deep long-term price drops for power storage, demand management, LED lighting and son on -- and we are clearly talking about a whole new game.

"You know the Near Your Destination the More Your Slip Slidin' Away." Paul Simon

Now, the more sobering news for Texans from Dr. Bob Rose, a meteorologist with the LCRA.

"This is the worst drought on record, worse than the drought of the '50s. From Oct. 1, 2010 to Sept. 31, 2011, the state of Texas only received 11.8 inches of rain, Rose said. That beats the previous low-rainfall record of 13.9 inches. Central Texas only got 8.4 inches of rain in the last 7 months; 42.74 is the normal amount." And data and modeling suggests more of the same for the near term. "Next summer could resemble the summer of 2011."

And very disheartening news this month on global emissions.

Why not be more sanguine? 80 percent of the world's carbon output is generated from existing infrastructure. In the absence of coordinated global leadership to design a low-carbon world, the fossil fuel era marketplace continues to prefer carbon-intensive infrastructure, the buildup of which continues to accelerate. This "lock-in effect" of new investment in carbon intensive buildings and infrastructure is the "single factor most likely to produce climate change" worries the IEA's Fatih Birol. Birol estimates we have maybe five years to reverse this before the opportunity to avoid the wost outcomes have passed us by. "I'm very worried," says Birol. "The door is closing."