The denial on this thread is so frustrating, because it is unnecessary. Coal kills about a million people a year - are Christians here happy with that? Coal will run out one day. Are Christians here just not caring about energy security? Oil forces Americans to send $600 billion a YEAR, or $6 TRILLION a decade, overseas. Are you all happy about that?
We can prevent coal deaths, increase national security, create local jobs and improve domestic economies by 3 emergency measures in energy policy. Oh, and solve Global Warming once and for all!
 IN AN EMERGENCY:
 If the situation gets really bad, some have  suggested our governments might be forced to take a Command Economy  approach to energy and climate matters. But what technologies exist in  the 3 areas of Electricity, Transport, and Climate Control that they  could turn to?
1. ELECTRICITY
 Believe it or not, nuclear power  is SAFE. Today’s nukes would EASILY have survived the cooling systems  failure at Fukushima. The reactor cores cool themselves if they start to  overheat. Banning nuclear power because of Fukushima is like banning  aviation because of the Hindenburg!
They are also cheaper, because instead of one-of-a-kind projects, nukes are going up on the assembly line!
 “By the 2030s, China will likely have built out hundreds of nuclear  reactors. They will also have factory mass produced one piece reactors  like their 200 MWe HTR-PM (High temperature pebble bed reactor). Those  reactors could be built in Chinese factories and shipped for  installation overseas. This would enable the China price for nuclear  power which is currently about $1.5 to 2 billion per GWe. This is 2-3  times cheaper than current prices in the US and Europe. Each nuclear  reactor module would likely be buildable in 2 years or so by that the  2030s.”
 
http://nextbigfuture.com/2013/12/all-electric-cars-would-mean-doubling.html#more
Even  today’s AP1000’s are being modularised and put on the production line  to slash costs. 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AP1000  Even America is  getting in on the act, with it being the first Gen3.5 reactor being  approved.
 
http://money.cnn.com/2012/02/09/news/economy/nuclear_reactors/
Tomorrow’s Integral Fast Reactors (like GE’s S-PRISM)
 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM_(reactor)
 will be mass produced, bringing the capital cost of nuclear *way* down  AND solving the nuclear waste problem permanently. Remember, as all good  permaculture people say, waste = food. This could not be more true than  with nuclear ‘waste’, which we should start calling ‘once through  fuel’. This new *resource* is not a problem to be stored for 100,000  years, which would be as mad as refining your best sweet crude into jet  fuel just to try and bury it forever!  Instead, in a few decades all our  ‘waste’ will into highly secured nuclear energy parks where today’s  waste alone will be converted into 500 years worth of energy for the  whole planet. After going through the breeding cycle dozens of times,  the final waste is stored in a concrete bunker for 300 years and then is  safe enough to let your children play with it. One golf ball of uranium  would power a whole human life, cradle to grave, including all  transport and agricultural fuel costs as well. One golf ball weighs 1kg.  With today’s technologies we can extract 1kg of uranium from seawater  for $300. That’s a lifetime of FUEL (not the capital costs behind all  this infrastructure) for just $300.
2. TRANSPORT
 (a) I fully  support new city plans that don’t require as much driving in the first  place, with walkability built into the town core and the primary  emphasis being on trains, trams, and trolley buses.
 See 
http://eclipsenow.wordpress.com/rezone/
(b)  But for those people and industries that *do* require cars, a command  economy could legislate for all electric vehicles for domestic driving,  and / or rechargeable boron or hydrogen for larger vehicles like  trucking, construction, mining, farming, etc. Boron can even be used for  car-hire clubs for various fuel dependent 4WD holidays or long road  trips where an EV just will not cut it. James Hansen’s “Science Council  for Global Initiatives” recommends boron in the FREE book, “Prescription  for the planet”. Download as PDF here. (It’s awesome!)
 
http://www.thesciencecouncil.com/prescription-for-the-planet.html
 Just as we have a mix of gas, petroleum, and diesel in today’s garages,  tomorrow could see a mix of electric vehicle quick-charge with boron  and hydrogen pumps as well.
3. CLIMATE CONTROL
 If the Sulphur  Shield does indeed prove to be too risky, then there’s always massive  biochar schemes, and growing our food in seawater greenhouses in the  desert which has already proved financially viable. This would soak up  some carbon emissions.
 
http://eclipsenow.wordpress.com/green-deserts/
 Then there’s the Olivine solution, which would cost $200 billion  annually to negate ALL our CO2 emissions, pretty much without  side-effects.
But, obviously, that money would be better spent on prevention, rather than this last-minute ‘cure’. As Engineer Poet says:
 “Investing €200 billion per year in nuclear powerplants would produce  100 GW of new plants per year, which would cut emissions by about 790  million tons/yr each year.  Ten years into a construction program at  this pace, the net CO2 emissions from coal combustion would be cut by  about 7.9 billion tons per year, roughly 1/3 of the total human  emissions of 26.4 GT/yr.”
 
http://eclipsenow.wordpress.com/olivine/
Maybe  we’ll leave weaning off fossil fuels so late that we have to use  Olivine AND a command economy deployment of all energy solutions? The  global economy has a $70 trillion budget. Allocating $800 billion to  fast deploy both nukes and olivine would use just over 1% of the world  economy. We could completely mop up this energy and climate crisis in a  few decades, while cleaning up our cities, creating trendy New Urban  areas to live in that focus on moving people, not cars. We could use  electric robot-cars to gradually wean some of the population off having  to *own* their individual family car because a robot-taxi cab would be  the cheap option either end of a fast train trip. We can do this. It's  time to get started!