Bangladesh

You listen to Lester Brown, and you have to wonder what the big fuss is all about at the upcoming climate talks in Copenhagen. I mean, the guy is saying we don't really have to fight over this, because the technologies available right now could cut greenhouse gas emissions by ... drumroll, please... 80 percent by 2020. Yes! (It really puts into perspective President Obama's pledge today to cut emissions 17 percent over the same time period, eh?)  

[caption id="attachment_6332" align="alignright" width="226" caption="Lester Brown "][/caption]

Now, we've written about Brown before, and we may be guilty of featuring him entirely too much, but the man is talking sense. Today he was doing that right here in Rain City on KUOW's Weekday with Steve Scher, revealing how this seemingly magical transformation can happen. A couple of quick examples from his latest tome*, the unassumingly named Plan B 4.0 --  Mobilizing to Save Civilization: 

• You want energy efficiency? We got energy efficiency. Replace the world's incandescent lightbulbs with compact fluorescents and you get a 75 percent reduction in energy use. Replace them with Light Emitting Diode, or LED, lights and combine that with smart technology that, for instance, turns lights out when a room is empty. Then the savings is 90 percent. (Los Angeles is replacing its 130,000 streetlights with LEDs at a savings of $11 million a year.