Lester Brown, president of the Earth Policy Institute, notes that the dramatic shift in public opinion away from coal-fired power plants signaled "the beginning of the end of the coal industry."

Coal-to-liquid technology and carbon sequestration are mere feints, he asserted, and much too carbon-intensive to offer genuine solutions to global warming, climate change and the host of other problems caused by burning coal.

The proper strategy for supplying our energy needs - while mitigating our global warming impact - would be to invest in energy efficiency solutions and alternative sources such as wind and solar energy.

As Brown lays out in his excellent book, Plan B 3.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization, many of the solutions, due in great part to the latest innovations in solar cell and wind technology, already exist.

The potential applications of these two technologies alone in China and other developing countries are enormous, he notes.

The economic appeal of clean energy is already clear in another important area, Brown says – private as opposed to public or governmental funding.

As recently noted,several large institutional investors pledged to invest another $10 billion in emissions-reducing technologies over just the next two years.