Um. The free market killed nuclear. Consider how long environmentalists have been battling mountaintop removal coal, and how comparatively ineffective they've been. Nuclear doesn't power the world because it's more expensive than fossil fuels when you don't count the costs of CO2 and other pollutants, and because the established coal/oil/gas industries have been very effective in protecting their market.

The real problem with DAB isn't price or features. It's battery life. My FM/LW radio lasts over a month of regular use. A similarly sized portable DAB unit manages about 6-8 hours. Why would I 'upgrade'?

This is such a bunch of FUD. Several UK studies show that very substantial carbon savings can arise from wind power even at 30% of total electricity provision.

The point about backup is that we have it already for existing plants; adding quite a bit of wind will have minimal impacts on this requirement, both in carbon and cost terms. Having substantial amounts of wind just means more intelligent load balancing from the grid operator, more flexible generation from existing fossil fuel/nuclear plant, and more demand management of consumption.

Again in the UK context, the Centre for Alternative Technology's recent Zero Carbon Britain report shows how the UK could fully decarbonise without gas by 2030 (though it would take quite radical action).

Yeah - 2035? Emissions from aircraft are the fastest rising source of emissions in UK, and I'd be surprised if that wasn't the case in the rest of the EU and the US as well. If we can design this now - assuming we don't need to invent anything new to build it - why not build it by 2020 (allowing for a generous 10 year design, testing and roll-out?)

Maybe because Boeing/Airbus have just spent huge amounts of money on their current generation of plane and want to recoup R&D costs over the next 25 years the way they have with the ridiculously old airframes (eg. 747 - designed in the 60s) that we are now flying. These are precisely the sort of technological changes that we need to be building if we're going to be able to keep flying and keep the climate somewhat liveable.

Um. ELF doesn't have offices - which is sort of the point.

To wit, proposing that the western economies/cultures most able to continue their existing work in making more efficient use of energy "fix" the problem by crippling the very economic engines that produce the largesse that funds that sort of R&D... while leaving 50% of the world's energy consumers to merrily (and with vastly, vastly more polluting inefficiencies) keep growing and burning as if they were still some small village... that's the perfect scenario in which to apply a princple of caution.

If you put it this way, it does sound bad; but consider your presuppositions.

I see no reason to conclude that reducing CO2 emissions will necessarily lead to the "crippling" of western economies. If anything, the current capitalist system requires that people (marketing people, mostly) continue to invent reasons why we need to get rid of old technology and buy new stuff- this enforced obsolescence, after all, is what keeps the economy, as it is currently structured, going. So why would new regulations that spur both technological innovation (in renewable energy) and enforced obsolescence (new environmental standards forcing old inefficient plants to shut) be bad?

As for your claim that we in the West should "buy some Brazilian village a new bus", this is precisely what the carbon trading scheme in Kyoto is designed to do. Countries like Germany, where even fossil fuel powered plants are pretty efficient, can essentially buy their way to increased pollution by offsetting pollution in, say, China through building a more efficient power plant there.

The point about the fact that India, China, etc are excluded from Kyoto in any meaningful way is well taken. Of course developing nations need to rein in their emissions (assuming that our goal is to reduce CO2 emissions), but the only way that can happen is if the West lets them use new technology rather than forcing them to develop along the same dirty, polluting course the West took. And there's the rub, because that involves the West licensing new technology at prices that are affordable for a low GDP country.