New energy: Reinventing Fire takes on the fossil fuel question

Amory Lovins, chief scientist at the Rocky Mountain Institute, discusses his latest project, dubbed "Reinventing Fire."

The concept is to divest the economy completely of fossil fuels by 2050 and using private enterprise to do it. The book of the same name was released this fall.

The Rocky Mountain Institute says "energy-related economic, security, and environmental threats are intensifying the national conversation about how to regain energy leadership and competitiveness, restore jobs and prosperity, and build a secure and climate-safe energy system."

Yet it says the country lacks a comprehensive vision of how a market economy can achieve such goals.

The institute says it has that vision and is now building a detailed road map, which it hopes will launch a movement.

Badges? We don't need them to pursue clean energy

Mexican character actor Alfonso Bedoya delivered what may be one of the most frequently misquoted lines of all time.

The movie in which he delivered it is "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre" and stars Humphrey Bogart and Walter Huston. Bedoya played an unnamed bandit, listed in the credits as Gold Hat.

But in my mind he stole the movie with the line, "Badges? We ain't got no badges. We don't need no badges. I don't have to show you any stinking badges."

To some degree, those of us toiling away to make clean energy a viable and stable industry share a lot of similarities with Fred Dobbs, Bogart's character in the 1948 film. Dobbs meets up with the grizzled prospector Howard, played by Huston, down in Tampico, Mexico about 1925.

Together they go off in search of gold.

Clean energy gold rush

Sounds familiar. The gold this time around is the free energy around us on a daily basis. There's enough gold in them thar hills, I mean solar energy emanating from the center of our system to provide more than enough energy the world could consume. We just have to find the means to harvest that energy without breaking the bank and do it cheaper than we can by either digging coal out of the ground or sucking and processing crude oil.