"Clean" Coal: Nearly half the electricity in this country is produced in coal-burning plants, and they aren't scheduled to stop anytime soon: The U.S. has nearly 500 million tons of known coal reserves. Leaving aside the destructive effects coal mining can have on the landscape, and the profession's danger to coal miners, its inexpensiveness makes coal difficult to replace.

Nothing about coal, in truth, is clean, but when futurists (and political candidates) discuss "clean coal," they are talking about constructing fired electricity plants that capture and store the carbon dioxide that is a byproduct of coal-fired plants. This would greatly improve air quality in the vicinity of a coal-burning plant; the only problem is what to do with the captured carbon dioxide.

The FutureGen Alliance, a consortium of coal companies, has worked in concert with the Department of Energy to build a $1.3 billion clean coal plant (and underground carbon dioxide storage facility) in Eastern Illinois. As happened with the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste disposal site in Nevada, opposition has arisen -- and the administration has put off a decision until next year.

Conservation: Jimmy Carter was ridiculed for responding to the 1973 oil embargo by wearing sweaters in winter and requiring the White House air conditioning to be turned down in the summer. He should not have been criticized. Conservation is not a technological challenge as much as an ethical one. Many methods of conserving energy are known -- some have been known for decades -- and are now practiced in the United States.

Better building designs, planting trees in urban areas, requiring better light bulbs, planting greeneries on rooftops, and offering "zip" cars and bike-sharing programs -- all these steps are promising and important. The biggest step government can take, however, is requiring automakers to produce more fuel-efficient vehicles.

This approach was tried in 1975, when President Gerald R. Ford signed into law a measure requiring automakers to double the fuel efficiencies of their fleets by 1985 -- to 27.5 miles per gallon. The law had loopholes you could drive a diesel truck through, but it worked nonetheless. And then Washington followed up on its success by . . . doing nothing for a generation.

On Dec. 19, 2007, George W. Bush finally signed an updated version into law. This one required automakers to increase the average fuel economy of their cars to 35 mpg by 2020.

"Today we make a major step toward reducing our dependence on foreign oil, confronting global climate change, expanding the production of renewable fuels, and giving future generations a nation that is stronger and more secure," the president said.

"This is a choice between yesterday and tomorrow," House Speaker Nancy Pelosi added. "It's groundbreaking."

Actually, it was nothing of the sort. It was a tepid little baby step, taking place years after Europe and Japan (and California) has passed more stringent standards. We can do much better, and with hybrids already here and fully electric cars just around the corner, we are poised to do just that. And maybe, someday, cars that run on hydrogen.