Good Questions

To cap off months of reporting in their Energy Challenge series, the New York Times is hosting an online Reader Forum on Energy and the Environment. Staff science reporters, including Felicity Barringer and Andrew Revkin, as well politicians and academics. At the time of this writing, the latest post is from NYU physicist Marty Hoffert. He writes:

The late Nobel laureate Rick Smalley observed that even though our civilization has many problems, energy is central to all of them. Questions that begin “what is?” are often the wrong ones; the better question begins “what could possibly be?” Spurred by World War II, the United States rapidly accelerated technological change-from biplanes to jets, from laboratory U-235 fission to Hiroshima, from microwaves to radar-all in less than a decade. The coming battle for a sustainable energy infrastructure will require every bit as much a team effort by government, researchers and industry. We know where we must go eventually, when fossil fuels finally dry up. Why not head there now?