I wish I’d written this: a seven-point prescription for using energy more efficiently.

It’s written from the perspective of a Manhattan resident, but the advice makes just as much sense for Cascadia. The author is an economist, and it shows: all of his energy-saving prescriptions are about pricing. There’s no mention of R&D, or emerging technologies, or changing people’s mindsets about energy. Just ideas about how to change the way we pay for things. His core idea seems sound to me: ensure that each of us pays, directly, for the true cost what we use—for the roads we drive on, for the parking spaces where our cars sit for 23 hours a day, for the true costs of the electricity and gasoline we consume—and we’ll use those resources more efficiently.

Obviously, this isn’t a complete list of what we’ll need to do to create a more sustainable energy system. It’s just start. But it’s a darn good start, I’d say.