An interesting read from The Economist…

“ENVIRONMENTALISTS are fiddling while Rome burns,” says Vinod Khosla, founder of Khosla Ventures, a Silicon Valley venture-capital firm. “They get in the way with silly stuff like asking people to walk more, drive less. That is an increment of 1-2% change. We need 1,000% change if billions of people in China and India are to enjoy a Western, energy-rich lifestyle.” Forget today’s green technologies like electric cars, wind turbines, solar cells and smart grids, in other words. None meets what Mr Khosla calls the “Chindia price”—the price at which people in China and India will buy them without a subsidy. “Everything’s a toy until it reaches that point,” he says.

I’m sure not everyone will agree with me, but in my opinion, this argument is a big part of why the end-game of so many of our local efforts shouldn’t be “saving the environment” (aka “saving human civilization”).  Instead it should be something more along the lines of “build strong communities” and all of the potential environmental affects of density, walking more, etc, can then just be viewed as gravy.