On Saturday, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman published an op-ed on traffic and energy efficiency called “Take the Subway.”  Friedman discusses the traffic jams which have clogged the streets of Moscow and China, and he predicts worse to come, as the world population is projected to grow by another 2 billion people by 2050.  Friedman asserts that climate change is not the only reason to seek energy efficiency improvements: we must “learn how to get more mobility, lighting, heating and cooling from less energy and with less waste,” and we cannot let the “climate wars” delay these critical efforts.  Hal is quoted describing the poor efficiency of incandescent bulbs and U.S. coal power plants, examples of the tremendous opportunities for energy-saving improvements available today, with existing technology.  Take a look at the article:

Take the Subway by Thomas Friedman

Traffic in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Photo by Joisey Showa Fotos. Used under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 license (http://goo.gl/Si6Zl).