Posted by Arlen Comfort, a resident of the Menlo Park: Suburban Park/Lorelei Manor/Flood Park Triangle neighborhood, on Feb 24, 2009 at 11:21 am

Editor,

This is a comment about your article: "New 'greenprint' could map way for next boom"

Quote: “The aim of a new "Greenprint Project" is to develop a new, 21st-century energy system that would displace the oil-dependent economy and create a second Industrial Revolution, they said, referring to the massive social and economic shift of the mid-1800s.” End quote

So, the Greenpoint project wants to create a second industrial revolution.

I hope the Greenprint Project takes into account the problems created by the fist industrial revolution.

1) Pollution of air and water.

2) Soil erosion, soil exhaustion, and soil salinization.

3) Desertification

4) Deforestation

5) Groundwater depletion all over the world with fresh water shortages.

6) Over-fishing the and the death of the oceans.

7) Animals and plants going extinct by the hundreds per day.

8) Global warming including melting ice caps and rising sea levels. . . . Good, you’re working on this one.

9) Nuclear error-and-terror . . . radiation.

10) General resource depletion.

11) Food production for 6.5+billion people without the benefit of fertilizers or pesticides made from fossil fuels.

12) Pollution and destruction of major ecosystems that clean our air and our water and support other wildlife.

13) Human population overshoot.

I hope the Greenprint Project takes into account that we are adding about 60 million or the population of two Californias to the world every year.

If you accept that overpopulation is a problem, then the list of problems goes well beyond getting clean energy to replace fossil fuels.

In any case, to get the Greenprint Project to be successful, all of the first industrial revolution problems have to be fixed.

Maybe the real problem is not dirty energy or a shortage of energy but a “longage” of people.

Good luck guys and gals at Greenprint Project.

Arlen Comfort

48 Lorelei Ln

Menlo Park, CA 94025

Phone - (650)323-7188

Email - acomfort@rocketmail.com