I was definitely most impressed with Darnell - I don't know if he or Bartlett himself (who has a medical background) is the main force behind the work; perhaps they work closely together on it. The Apollo-13 analogy is one Bartlett himself used at his recent Maryland conference, and I expect the viewgraphs are the same or similar... Also they referred to some recent numbers from John Howe (author of "Last Chance for Sustainability" or something like that?), who spoke at Bartlett's conference.

I think the 5%/year plan is from Howe in fact. It's a good idea, but I can't imagine how you would implement it unless through some sort of rationing scheme (which of course was one of the signs of the apocalypse from Ruppert...)

Darnell's discussion of policy choices was interesting. He put up a couple of X-Y plots, one with "time/cost" on one axis and "savings" on the other - and solutions ranging from voluntary (lower left) to monetary incentives, retrofits, and new technologies at the upper right. Another of these had "short term private interest" (positive or negative) and "long term public interest" (positive or negative) as the two axes; the top half (what's in short term private interest) is what the free market gives you; the right side (long term public interest) should be what good government can do. And it's those things in the lower right corner that are impossible to do without good government... one of the best brief arguments I've seen for government action.

One example here was LED's or compact fluorescents for lighting. These cost much more than incandescent bulbs up front, but last longer and use tremendously less electric energy over time, so it's to everybody's benefit to subsidize that up-front cost somehow.

Darnell also showed a conceptual plot of working toward a solution he called "reverse engineering a vision of a sustainable future" - we figure out what the sustainable world we want is going to need, and work backward from there. That basically eliminates bio-fuels (Pimentel's point), but there are many other technology options; Darnell seemed to be almost pleading for help in picking the right ones.

Overall I thought very very encouraging, that somebody with at least some voice in our highest levels of government has a good sense of what needs to be done. Whether this can actually sustain itself to a solution, well, maybe we can help make that happen...