CHEAP ENERGY

As suggested here from time to time, if we can just get through the next decade or two, things could be sweet.  Imagine, for example, a cheap film on skyscraper windows that generated enough electricity to power the whole building.  As described here, an early version is already being sold.  (I had to click the link two or three times to get it to display – but it did.)

By Barney Gimbel

January 27, 2009: 1:20 PM ET

(Fortune Magazine) -- Inside a converted textile mill in Lowell, Mass., Rick Hess unfurls a roll of brown plastic film attached to a small electric meter. "Three volts," he says, smiling. "And that's just from the light in this room. Imagine what this reads when we're outside."

Hess, who runs solar upstart Konarka, is showing off Power Plastic, a new lightweight, flexible, and cheap material that converts indoor and outdoor light into electricity. Think of it as a solar panel that rolls up like camera film. "Soon you may not even need batteries," Hess says, holding a prototype of a portable device that will recharge your cellphone in an hour. "We can put this stuff anywhere." . . .

F So take heart.  With a modicum of good sense (not a given, but surely a possibility), we’ll get through all this, and our kids will live better than we have.  Especially if the quality of life is not measured primarily in terms of the size of your house and your car.

LOSING AUSTRALIA?

Bt the challenges are certainly daunting.  For example, we may need a lot of that film (or some other breakthrough) to power desalinization plants to rescue a parched Australia.  It appears she is in trouble.

ATTEND OR HOST A RECOVERY PLAN HOUSE PARTY THIS WEEKEND?

We’re all in this together.  So if you want to be part of the discussion, click here.  But first, for a quick overview of “the plan,” click here.

SARAH PALIN AND RUSH LIMBAUGH

Intensely popular in certain some quarters, they are the de facto leaders of the Republican Party.  According to this in Salon, “A Rasmussen poll out today found that fully 55 percent of Republicans polled think their party should be "more like" Palin.”