John Funk

The high energy prices that have put this year into the record books have also fostered the rebirth of a concept most Americans aren’t comfortable with — conservation.

In a world worried about global warming and escalating coal, oil and gas prices, the nuclear industry has seized an opportunity for rebirth.

Nuclear advocates are working to reshape the atom’s image from that of an environmental nightmare and utility bankrupter to an affordable and Earth-friendly energy source – and a hedge against future energy shortages.

Whether the inducements will convince any utility that building a new reactor is financially prudent is uncertain.

Energy experts like to call coal a bridge fuel leading to a future society based on hydrogen and other renewable energy sources.

…at a national energy conference Thursday on the campus of Case Western Reserve University, Ohio Gov. Bob Taft and other attendees acknowledged the world has little time left to counter the consequences of widespread fossil fuel use before dramatic and expensive action is inescapable.

The granddaddy of fossil fuels that has fouled the air, poisoned the waters — and created the industrial revolution — will also be the fuel of the digital age. Coal, called an antique fuel by some environmentalists, still produces more than half the electricity in the nation.

The dramatic increase in global demand for oil, and the resulting price spiral in the last couple of months, may be early warnings of a fundamental change in the economies of industrialized nations.