Earth Day yesterday highlighted a lot of environmental issues such as global warming and pollution. But if you think things are bad now consider this: by 2050 the world is going to need 30 terrawatts, 30 trillion watts, just to keep pace with our current energy use. We’re using 12 or 13 terrawatts now worldwide. So we’re going to have to come up with 17 more and find some way to do it that doesn’t make the environment worse. How?

Biomass is a popular option, but let’s say we plant crops everywhere they’ll grow, which is only about 5% of the planet (remember 70% is ocean). If we did plant everywhere, and then we burned it all to get the maximum energy possible (without doing anything at all to keep it clean), we’d get maybe 7 terrawatts. We’re still ten short, and there’s smoke everywhere.

How about wind? If you extracted every bit of energy available worldwide in the wind 30 feet above the ground you get 2 terrawatts. More if you can figure out how to tap the fast moving jetstream at 30,000 feet, but we’ll use the 2 terrawatt number until we figure out how to build really tall windmills. Still eight short.

Water? Almost not worth the effort. Dam ever river in the world, and you’d get a lot of backed up silt, a lot less fish, and a mere .7 terrawatts of energy. Call it one terrawatt in round numbers, and now we’re seven short.

Okay, how ’bout nuclear? It’s great for energy efficiency–a nuclear powerplant can generate a gigawatt–and there’s no CO₂ emissions as a by-product. But if we want 7 terrawatts of energy by 2050 from nuclear power, that means we’ll need to build 7,000 powerplants in 45 years. That’s one every 2.3 days!

Okay then, coal? Good news, bad news; it’s cheap and it’s dirty. There’s lots of it too, but so far we haven’t figured out how to convert it to energy without polluting ourselves to death, even to extinction. Not that that has stopped the Chinese. Their coal consumption has doubled since 1990. They’re building the equivalent of two mid-size power plants a week, adding the capacity of the entire UK power grid each year. And they recently passed the US in CO₂ emissions. We’ll skip coal.

So what have we got if we do all this? No more food for us or for cattle because we’ve burned everything that’ll grow, we’ve stopped up every dammed river, and we’ve covered the countryside with nuclear cathedrals to consumption. All just to keep pace with existing energy needs.

But if everyone on the globe wanted to live like an American in 2050 we have to assume that their energy needs (and ours) go up with GDP, so we really need 102 terrawatts, not 30.

See the problem?

Now consider this:

• In spite of America’s growing demand for energy, no new petroleum refineries have been built and no new nuclear power plants have been ordered in the past 30 years. (France now derives 78% of its electric power from nuclear sources; Lithuania, 72%; Belgium, 54%; Armenia, 42%; Japan, 30%; and the United States, 19%.)

• There are now 12 energy companies in the world whose reserves exceed those of the largest US energy firm, ExxonMobil.

• During the past 30 years, 40% of new petroleum production came from industrialized nations. It is estimated that during the next 40 years, 90% will come from developing nations.

We’re promoting the idea of working from home–telecommuting–for work/life balance reasons, among others. But there are also some compelling environmental reasons too. Remember, as we discussed yesterday, if everyone that could work from home did, we could cut petroleum demands by 80%. That’s a start.

So while the work from home idea may seem radical, it looks to us as if it’s inevitable, and some other very extreme changes are going to occur in the next few years that we all need to think about today. The future ain’t what it used to be.

UPDATE: Nice to know I’m not the only one that thinks our nation could use a little adult leadership.

Research Shows Working From Home Could Reduce Greenhouse Gases by 100 Million Tons and Cut Persian Gulf Oil Dependence by 75%

With Earth Day only a few days away (April 22), we decided to quantify how much telecommuting could save, and how much more it could do to save the planet. What we figured out is astounding — if the people who could work from home actually did, we could tell the Middle East to pound sand and take a big bite out of global warming as well.

Our conclusions are based on an analysis of data from EPA, DOT, Bureau of Transportation Statistics, Consumer Electronics Association, Matthews and Williams, The Reason Foundation, the Energy Administration, and Census Bureau data. All pretty credible sources, wouldn’t you agree?

Currently, only four percent of the U.S. workforce works from home, but research shows that about 40% have jobs that could be performed at home. Our analysis shows that if they did, these 50 million new teleworkers could annually save 587 million barrels of oil (roughly equivalent to 74% of our annual Gulf Oil imports), reduce greenhouse gases by 101 million metric tons of CO₂, and save almost $52 billion at the pump. Each worker individually would save 26 work-days and over $1,000 — time and money now wasted commuting. That’s the equivalent of an extra 5 weeks vacation a year!

These findings are the result of our ongoing effort to quantify the costs and benefits of telecommuting for workers, employers, communities, and the nation. To find our how much gas your city, county or region could pass by encouraging people to work from home, or how much your existing telecommuters already save, check out our work-at-home research page. Incidentally, we’ll customize the data—free of charge—for reporters, government agencies, companies, and other organizations who want to know the potential impact more work-from-home could have on their carbon footprint. Requests can be submitted via email to info (at) undress4success (dot) com.

While telework offers individuals who can work from home a better work/life balance, it also offers companies real increases in productivity, higher worker satisfaction, and reduced costs. For the community, telecommuting offers reduced highway congestion, lower greenhouse gas emissions, and less dependence on foreign oil.

Have you hugged a telecommuter today? If not, here are 28 reasons why you should. Play hooky and pass gas yourself.

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Bookmark Undress4Success.com for ongoing research about work-from-home jobs and home based business opportunities. The whole story will be available later this year in our new book Undress4Success: The Naked Truth About Working From Home (March 2009, John Wiley & Sons).

If you work from home, freelance or telecommute you’re a likely target for a variety of fraud attempts so listen up.

Since you are a company of one–Exec, Admin, HR, Marketing, IT, Central Supply, and even the grounds keeper you have to make decisions about computers, telecommunications, banking and all the other facets of running a business that big companies spread over dozen, hundreds, and even sometimes thousands of people. So you’re a good target for people who want to take your money.

In fact, the FTC received over 800,000 complaints during calendar year 2007. Consumers reported fraud losses of over $1.2 billion (at an median amount of roughly $350 per person).

Shop-at-Home/Catalog Sales was the leading complaint category, so if you buy online (and you do) be sure you know who you’re dealing with. Internet Service rip-offs were the second largest category followed by Foreign Money Offers (those idiots just don’t give up do they), bogus Prizes/Sweepstakes and Lotteries, Computer Equipment and Software, and Internet Auctions (can you spell eBay?). Health Care, Travel, Vacations and Timeshare, Advance-Fee Loans and Credit Protection/Repair, Investments, and Magazines and Buyers Clubs fill out the list.

Wire transfer problems continue to increase. It used to be you could assume a cashiers check was good, but not any more. So wire transfers becomes the option of choice. But 28% of the consumers reported wire transfer as the payment method involved when they were scammed.

But here’s the (almost) bottom line: Half the fraud complaints where electronic mail related. We’ve said it before but we’ll say it again: if it’s spam it’s a scam.

Let’s be careful out there!

What do telecommuters and bovines have in common? They both pass gas.

People who work from home use less gasoline, and that’s a good thing. Cow farts and burps, on the other hand, are no laughing matter. In fact, livestock ‘emissions’ contribute to global warming more than cars, planes and all other forms of transport put together!

Unlike humans and most other animals, bovine digestive systems produce large quantities of methane gas. Methane is believed to be twenty times worse for the environment than the carbon dioxide that comes of the back end of our cars.

New Zealand proposed last year to tax farmers in attempt to mitigate methane. But the farmers rallied and created a lobby, Farmers Against Ridiculous Taxes (F.A.R.T.) . The group made a big stink and successfully plugged the issue.

On our home soil, a couple of California entrepreneurs are determined to get to the bottom of the problem. They’ve invented a bovine methane recapture apparatus that, while it may make Nellie the laughing stock of the barnyard, it could put an end to our global warming woes–it’s sort of a cowalytic converter to stop tailpipe emissions

Honestly, we don’t make this crap up.

Your taxes were due yesterday, so now is a good time to think again about your home-based business bottom line.

A few years back we needed a new accountant for our air tour business. One we talked to, a former I.R.S. agent, said to us, “Some business owners want to sleep well, others want to eat well. Which are you?”

What he was telling us was that we were talking to the wrong guy if we wanted to cheat on our taxes. We knew that if we wanted to get a good night’s sleep on the eve of an I.R.S. audit, we’d come to the right place. In the ‘been there, done that’ sense we knew the I.R.S. philosophy was ‘guilty until you can prove yourself innocent,’ and a good accountant with insider knowledge was worth his weight in gold–maybe literally.

But here’s a problem an accountant can’t fix: It’s all too easy to succumb to the temptation of understating your income, particularly if you run a cash business. Likewise, it’s tempting to deduct that week-long trip to Hawaii, even though you only spent one day doing anything that looked like work. A good accountant will figure out what you’re doing in either case, and a really good one will advise against it.

But if I.R.S. audit worries aren’t enough to keep you up at night, if you’ve been cheating, consider that understating your home based business profit will handicap your ability to raise money for the company. Lenders and investors won’t be amused when you show them your tax reports and than add, with a wink, that they really don’t show all your income.  Dishonest business practices, no matter how good the real numbers may look, don’t make you a good investment.

In addition, while you may eat well in the short run, when it comes time to sell your business, you’ll find your plate far from full. That’s because businesses typically sell for a multiple of net income. So, if a home based businesses like yours sell for five times net, every understated dollar of profit will cost you five dollars when you sell.

Nighty night. Sleep tight. Don’t let the Fed bugs bite.