S+B: Is taking the emotion and political or activist posturing out of the equation realistic?
MacKay: The first few times that I gave talks about energy, I encountered very emotional reactions. I’d say something like, “We’ve got to commute shorter distances, people have to live closer to where they work,” and people would respond, “How dare you suggest that I should live somewhere else.”
So I changed my attitude to “Look, you figure it out.” That became the title of my book for awhile, You Figure It Out. Now I say, here are the numbers. If you reduce speed limits, then you would save this much energy; here’s a map showing that if you covered this much land with wind farms, this is how much energy you get; here’s another map with lots of nuclear power stations on it, this is how many you’d need to get free of fossil fuels — you’d need a 10-fold increase over today’s number of nuclear power stations; and if you don’t like that, here’s the exchange rate, 2,000 wind turbines for one nuclear power station. Take your pick — do what you want to do — as long as it adds up.
I’m trying to be the numbers guy. I’m not telling people what to do. I’m not recommending anything; I just offer you the facts. I’m not pro or anti any particular form of energy. I’m pro-arithmetic. I’m hoping that once people actually see the numbers, what we need to do will become self-evident. 
Russ Mitchell is a veteran business journalist. His articles have appeared in Business Week, Fortune, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and Wired, among other publications.
