But even when the alternative is to burn fossil fuels, the wind game likely wouldn't exist without tax breaks.

FORBES: Wind Broker

They propose a way of making electricity companies which burn fossil fuels pay a minimum price for the pollution they create.

BBC: Who pays for UK coalition's 'green economy'?

If governments ever decide to get serious about climate change, they will take actions which make it less profitable to extract and burn fossil fuels.

FORBES: Investing in the Unspeakable

On the environmental side, when you burn these fossil fuels, you're really seeing carbon dioxide into the air.

NPR: Biofuels and Food Prices

But what we really need is big, new ideas: new ways to distribute and store energy for electric power, new ways to conserve and distribute clean water for farming and gulping, and new ways get ourselves and our cargo around, so that we don't change the Earth's climates too much as we burn our fossil fuels.

CNN: 'The Science Guy' says: 'Save the Earth'

To turn the ratio around: If you want to displace a unit of petroleum energy, you have to burn four-fifths of a unit in fossil fuels.

FORBES: Companies, People, Ideas