Here is a great post on what Edward thought of Powershift.

I'm Edward and I'm a senior undergraduate at SIUC along with Chris
("senioritis" is fast approaching so I don't know how active I will be
here) . I study a physical science which you could guess from my
screen name and I consider myself a pragmatist... and I disagreed with
some "talking points" that Powershift '09 promoted for Lobby Day
because of unrealistic expectations that people will change their
behaviors:

Reducing carbon emissions is a good idea but I also feel that it is an
unrealistic one as the InterAcademy Council for example in 2007
projected a global increase in carbon emission by 55% within 10 years
(a reduction of 40% of 1990 levels by 2020 thus seems highly
unlikely). Those projections placed in terms of the Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) findings essentially ensures that
irreversible climate change is a done deal and that worries me.  The
IPCC prediction could falter IF people demanded less electricity, but
the fact is people won't throw out their cell phones, ipods, gaming
systems, t.v.'s etc unless some fundamentally revolutionary thinking
takes place where people decide to live simpler lives on a global
scale.  On a related note the use of 100% renewable energy also sounds
like a good idea at first save for the statistics given by the US
Energy Information Administration (EIA), as of 2006 renewables only
made up 2.3% of the annual US energy budget.  While renewable energy
production rises yearly the energy people draw to power things like
ipods prevent them from making much of a dent in over all energy
usage, so going all renewable right now (or in 10 years for that
matter) would simply collapse the US energy grid.   The reason that
there exists so many carbon emitters is simply because people demand
lots of reliable cheap energy.... and as long as people behave that
way things won't change.  What Lobby Day really cemented for me is
that government will only get serious when people as a whole get
serious and not just a few thousand young people protesting/lobbying,
but rather by the hundreds of millions that use the power grid
everyday (to borrow from a recent movie and update it a bit: the
government can only be as good as we all allow it to be).

Realistically I don't believe people will change their behavior en
masse, it would be nice if I was wrong and they would though.  So I
tend to look for solutions in the science route... if there were
cleaner ways to produce LARGE amounts of power then I could imagine
that change would occur in global carbon emissions.  One thing that
shows potential promise in the near future is Nuclear Fusion, it would
provide a lot of energy without the radioactive artifacts of current
fission reactors the problem though is the technology is some 20-30
years away at best.

Thus from my point of view if there was one thing that I would propose
it would be to establish a new Manhattan style project (in scope, but
not in classification) for cheap clean energy production, say a
workable fusion reactor and a few related research projects that show
promise.  Industry could do this in theory at present but they won't
consider it until the costs of using fossil fuels bankrupts them... so
pushing here government here I feel is probably the best option for
realistic change in global carbon emission without a radical change in
how people use energy presently.

That's my two cents anyway... if anyone has any better ideas or
comments I welcome seeing other posts.