Carbon capture and storage, green-building technology, energy management and renewables such as sun, wave, tide and wind are all "low-carbon" or "green" technologies, which together represent the unified solution to the world's three most pressing problems: economic meltdown, energy security and environmental catastrophe.
With growing concerns about population size, economic meltdowns, energy shortages, water and food shortagesthis list goes onalarmists are having a field day.
The incongruous convergence of our fiscal meltdown, an energy crisis and the alarming velocity of climate change is challenging and scary.
Among the many concerns investors have are the dramatic slowdown in Chinese economic growth, a meltdown in energy and other commodity prices, the questionable state of European bank balance sheets, and the prospect of higher interest rates (and their many side effects) in the US after several years of ultra-loose monetary policy.
After the 2011 Fukushima nuclear meltdowns, clean energy projects became one of Son's passions, with SoftBank also investing in wind and solar energy projects in Mongolia and the Asia Super Grid, an extremely ambitious renewable transmission energy project spanning several Asian countries.
But now, caught in the fallout of California's energy meltdown, we, too, are facing potential shortages, skyrocketing prices and escalating debt.
The executives are the highest-level casualties of the meltdown in the energy marketing and trading sector since the management shake-up at Enron after it collapsed.
California -- both in its energy meltdown last year and its subsequent response, with things like energy-efficiency construction standards -- has further inspired those who think that more should be rendered unto the public sphere and less to the market.
And now come calamities ignored in a campaign that dithered about prescription drugs, tax cuts and schools: an energy meltdown in the nation's biggest state, and a possible economic downturn.
"From the beginning of the California energy meltdown, women were not afraid to point a finger at the seventh-largest corporation in the U.S. and say 'You can't do this,' " Mr. Bergman told me.
In 2001-2002, the agencies were in hot-water over failing to detect the eventual meltdown of fraudulent energy and telecom outfits Enron and Worldcom, both of which eventually went bankrupt.
