Is the minor convenience of allowing the present generation the luxury of doubling its energy consumption every 10 years worth the major hazard of exposing the next 20,000 generations to this lethal waste?

All I know about thermal pollution is that if we continue our present rate of growth in electrical energy consumption it will simply take, by the year 2000, all our freshwater streams to cool the generators and reactors.

Present annual world energy consumption is about equal to the annihilation energy of 4 tons of matter.

Energy consumption matters both to our environment and our economy.

I believe that the average guy in the street will give up a great deal, if he really understands the cost of not giving it up. In fact, we may find that, while we're drastically cutting our energy consumption, we're actually raising our standard of living.

When it comes to climate and energy, Gates is a radical consumerist. In his view, energy consumption is good - it just needs to be clean energy.