It is possible for the United States to accomplish a goal quickly.  But it often involves willingness to take risks, and to "squander" resources by developing several parallel paths to the goal in the hope that at least one works. The story of the Apollo moon landings is still rather well known, so I will say a little about another example further back in time.  During World War 2 the atomic bomb was developed in a very short time, mostly from early 1942 to mid 1945. It was a very expensive project for its time, about 2 billion dollars. One reason was that it was given absolutely top priority for good reason, the Nazis were working on it (although we later found we had thwarted it by military actions). It was well managed, cost overruns were not conspicuous, but large sums were indeed spent. A major reason was that several possible approaches were carried out in parallel. The Hiroshima bomb used U235, an isotope which is only about 0.7% compared to the U238 making up the rest of uranium as mined. This can only be separated by “exotic” means, not chemically. One means was “calutrons” magnetically separating the U235, using most of the electric power from the Tennessee Valley Authority. (Because of the wartime copper shortage the magnet coils were wound using silver borrowed from Fort Knox!) Another means was gaseous diffusion, basically filtering a gas containing uranium to select the lighter isotope. A similar scheme, gas centrifuges, is used by Iran. Both methods succeeded, leading to the Hiroshima bomb which was technically simple, not requiring previous testing. A third method was totally different. It involved generating an artificial element, plutonium, by means of a collection of nuclear reactors in Hanford, Washington cooled by much of the flow of the Columbia river. This element is the basis of the Nagasaki bomb and most of our current arsenal. It was the method used by North Korea recently. The construction of a bomb in this way is much more technically difficult so was tested at Alamogordo first. In fact N. Korea's test probably “fizzled”.

It seems to me after reading the UN reports and considering the consequences that we face a similar urgency! Why can't we do what we did in 1942-1945? The technical problems are simple compared to the atomic bomb, we surely could demonstrate several of the renewable energy methods described here at a large enough scale to bring the costs to near or below the cost of coal in a very few years. We do not have the time to wait for a slow development in the face of resistance due to (indirectly subsidized) low cost coal, with subsidies and tax breaks (if any) for renewable energy being unpredictably turned on and off.

The "20% by 2020" and "80% by 2050" goals of the Colorado Climate Action Plan (for example) are insufficient to avoid severe global warming effects according to the most recent observations of events such as the melting of arctic ice and the threats to Greenland, and more poweful recent computer predictions. These goals, while perhaps approaching the limit of what can be accomplished politically, will only mitigate the environmental effects.  We will still suffer serious consequences.  We should pray for a fluctuation toward coolness in the overall upward trend (see WHY) to give us more time to act. And with sufficient resolve we may be able to beat the projected time scales, we've suggested some ideas which could lead to breakthroughs.

In the next few weeks (following the recent election) I'll try to estimate very crudely the possible time scales for a number of energy sources, relying on estimates I've seen and speculation about future political developments. I'm no economist so others might come up with much better estimates. The political situation of course has been overturned so early 2009 may bring a lot of changes to time projections. I will try to "complete" this section, but it may be impossible!  At least it may become a running commentary.  I already have a number of references to articles containing time estimates available to list here, but of course they are contradictory and require some evaluation.