Wasting Our Watts

We don’t need new drilling or new power plants. We need to get efficient
(From TIME, Jan 12, 2009)
This may sound too good to be true, but U.S. has a renewable energy resource that is perfectly clean, remarkably cheap, surprisingly abundant and immediately available. It has astounding potential to reduce the carbon emissions that threaten our planet, the dependence on foreign oil that threatens our security and the energy costs that threaten our wallets. Unlike coal and petroleum, it doesn’t pollute; unlike solar and wind, it doesn’t depend on weather; unlike ethanol, it doesn’t accelerate deforestation and inflate food price; unlike nuclear plants, it doesn’t raise uncomfortable questions about meltdowns or terrorist attacks or radioactive-waste storage, and it doesn’t take a decade to build. It isn’t what-if like hydrogen, clean coal and tidal power; it’s already proven to be workable, scalable and cost-effective. And we don’t need to import it.
This miracle juice goes by the distinctly boring name of energy efficiency, and it’s often ignored in the hubbub over alternative fuels, the nuclear renaissance, T. Boone Pickens and the green-tech economy.

Vocabulary:
Hubbub: n. 吵鬧聲、騷動
Ethanol: 酒精