Last week the WSJ told us that greenhouse gas emissions were headed ever higher compared to pre-industrial era levels.

This week, an op-ed shows the towering challenge confronting those who had tacked their banner alongside those calling for 80 percent reductions by 2050.

Given, our population will rise. Thus, to get down 80 percent, per capita emissions would have to reach 2.5 tons by 2040, down from 20 tons per capital in 2006. Steven Hayward, of the conservative American Enterprise Institute, opined in Monday's WSJ, that to achieve their alloted reductions, residential consumers total emissions would be about equivalent to that emitted by today's average hot water heater.

Now Hayward makes that point to show the sheer impossibility of today's ambitions. One can look at the matter from a different angle. Rather, it underscores the need for game-changing technologies. We are talking about paradigm shifts equivalent to moving from horses to autos, trains to planes, typewriters to computers. telegraph to telephone to Internet. It will happen. You can take that to the bank.

Energy mid-century for those of us still around will make today's technologies look - primitive.

Also worth reading is today's lead story in the Marketplace section of the WSJ: Utilities, Plug-IN cars - Near Collision? The most important fact in the piece is buried toward the end. Today's power plants could meet the electricity needs of 73 percent of the light vehicles in the US if they were plug-in hybrids. That assumes they would be plugged in while the moon shines and demand is low. And here is a perfect example of paradigm shift. TODAY's COAL FIRED electric plants running full out to power an auto fleet would lead to a cut in GHG emissions because even the old coal clunkers are more efficient than oil guzzling cars when it comes to emissions.

Greenhouse gas crisis skeptics might want to think about this - the potential of converting to a mode of living that makes more efficient use of today's power plants. And environmentalists may want to consider that their kneejerk aversion to coal may be off-base if coal burning can power an electric hybrid fleet that helps wean us from imported oil in an environmentally friendly way. To find the truth we may have to wander from the camp of the extreme environmentalists AND the camp of the head-in-the-sand deniers of human induced climate change. The truth is elusive and everyone may just have a precious piece of it. Exciting times indeed.