When Politics Is Not Enough

Tomorrow the President will sign an energy bill that will increase the nation's fuel efficiency by 40%. That's significant, but it's also correct to sniff that such a move would bring US cars "into the 1980s." The special interests, the oil and gas companies, have worked their magic for so long that even a major step forward like this looks woefully insufficient.

Plus, the massive subsidy to corn-based ethanol inside the bill could have a devastating impact on our oceans.

The nation's corn crop is fertilized with millions of pounds of nitrogen-based fertilizer. And when that nitrogen runs off fields in Corn Belt states, it makes its way to the Mississippi River and eventually pours into the Gulf, where it contributes to a growing "dead zone" — a 7,900-square-mile patch so depleted of oxygen that fish, crabs and shrimp suffocate.

The dead zone was discovered in 1985 and has grown fairly steadily since then, forcing fishermen to venture farther and farther out to sea to find their catch. For decades, fertilizer has been considered the prime cause of the lifeless spot.

With demand for corn booming, some researchers fear the dead zone will expand rapidly, with devastating consequences.

"We might be coming close to a tipping point," said Matt Rota, director of the water resources program for the New Orleans-based Gulf Restoration Network, an environmental group. "The ecosystem might change or collapse as opposed to being just impacted."

The energy necessary to grow and process corn, too, blunts its effectiveness as an alternative source of fuel.

Ultimately, the peculiarities of the modern political scene, with its diametric opposition on so many issues and its belief in the art of the compromise, means that we may never fully deal with the problem of our impact on the environment. Real change is probably far more likely to come from the technological arena. Indeed, 21 billion of the 36 billion gallons of alternative fuel mandated by the energy bill must come from cellulosic ethanol like switchgrass and wood chips. And eventually, Moore's Law will kick in on other renewable sources as well.

Nanosolar, a heavily financed Silicon Valley start-up whose backers include Google’s co-founders, plans to announce Tuesday that it has begun selling its innovative solar panels, which are made using a technique that is being held out as the future of solar power manufacturing.

The company, which has raised $150 million and built a 200,000-square-foot factory here, is developing a new manufacturing process that “prints” photovoltaic material on aluminum backing, a process the company says will reduce the manufacturing cost of the basic photovoltaic module by more than 80 percent.

Nanosolar, which recently hired a top manufacturing executive from I.B.M., said that it had orders for its first 18 months of manufacturing capacity. The photovoltaic panels will be made in Silicon Valley and in a second plant in Germany.

We've had the technology to harness the sun since the 1970s. If it can be made so affordable that the market would be fools to pass it up, then you have a tipping point. That doesn't mean we shouldn't push for a renewable energy standard next year, or removing subsidies for oil extraction. It means you fight on as many fronts as possible to reach a solution.