I'd hesitate to recommend this so-called "Extra IPA" to anyone nowadays, since our local distributors find it almost impossible to obtain.

But, if you can get some, you'll find out why I love it so much. I've tasted dozens of hop-heavy microbrews over the past few years… and Torpedo Ale is definitely the best.

Maybe, if Mr. Obama would serve it at the White House picnic table fest, it would convince the brewery in Chico to start producing more of their golden nectar. So then, I'd be able to buy some here in Pennsylvania!

Kevin Harrington

Bausman, PA

Kharrin@earthlink.com

Blueberry Ale?). My key points are:

1. The Electric Grid – A smart grid with enhanced demand-side management

tools, broader distributed generation, and large-scale integration of the

cleanest and most widely-available domestic renewables are all great goals.

BUT, we need to offload all of these coal plants now. Push for better

integration of large-scale hydro power, even that imported from Canada. The

rest is going to take time, but hydro can be the Trojan Horse. And, if

utilities and others want to invest in new nuclear capacity, make it happen.

2. Green Spending – Spend less on incentives for customers, and subsidies for

emerging technologies You want

to make "clean energy the profitable kind of energy," use policy to change

the standards that consumers and industry must meet. With that will

necessarily come technological change, which is the "egg" to a real renewable

energy economy's "chicken." For example, if fuel efficiency and emissions

standards rise appreciably, companies that want to sell cars will make them

cleaner, eventually the market will make less use of oil, consumers will

have little need for it, and you have used policy to foment organic change. If the investment can be diverted from feed-in tariffs and pie-in-the-sky clean coal pilots to research and development in closing the cost gap for wind and solar through commerical storage, it gets pumped into the economy in a more productive short-term use with greater potential ROI over the long run.

3. Copenhagen – Don't be fooled by the "none of it means anything without

China and India buying-in" rhetoric. To arrive in Copenhagen with the

expectation that the emerging economies are going to agree to anything that

remotely resembles comprehensive climate change reform is folly. Negotiating

from a realistic – instead of from a hopeful – position, we should be able

to leave with something that is evidence of US leadership and commitment to

the issue, and that has more teeth than Kyoto.