[img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img] You can't read. The article is about how the government should fund technological innovation. You just skipped over those paragraphs.

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Lovins argues that by radically transforming the materials used in cars, trucks, airplanes, office buildings and factories -- substituting carbon-fiber composites and other lightweight products -- the United States could cut its oil use by 29 percent in 2025 and an additional 23 percent soon thereafter.

These ultra-light vehicles would be nearly twice as efficient as today's hybrid-electric cars, with better performance and safety, Lovins argues. Fuel savings would pay for the extra cost of the vehicles in about three years. Meanwhile, Lovins proposes using biotechnology and other new techniques to replace hydrocarbons with biofuels -- cutting 25 percent more from U.S. oil consumption.

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To foster the new technologies, he proposes government measures that have worked well in the past: Pentagon procurement policies that drive innovation; federal loan guarantees to encourage retooling by automakers and others, and similar loan guarantees for the purchasers of new fleets of airplanes and trucks; and a $1 billion government prize (the "Platinum Carrot") to reward the most important innovations.

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Sounds like government-funded research, coupled with programs to ease the cost for early adopters.

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These calls for a new apollo program for energy would not be nearly so bad if all they called for was a research project to develop a specific, measurable engineering goal. That would be the kind of thing that a government program *can* achieve, although I say govt is usually not the best agent for this, least it *can* achieve some success.


[/ QUOTE ] Yeah, we would've won World War II a lot faster if we'd just kept the government out of it and let the private sector develop nuclear weapons.

Let's see... there was some other innovation that was started by the government... it had something to do with computers communicating with each other... I think it used to be called Arpanet? Anyway, I'm glad the government's not flushing our taxpayer dollars down that toilet anymore.