Even when you get a panel of so-called experts, there tends to be disagreements. In fact, when asked about all the controversy among what to do about the energy crisis and sustainability and alt energy Adam Werbach blurted, “First thing that we need to do is to kill all the experts,” which got a laugh but also made a good point. Lovins showed some lovin’ for her case that innovation comes with healing. In her case, she argued that investing in sustainability rather than armies would work in places like Afghanistan where she’s off to teach, not how to shoot an M-16 but of course, sustainability. Like political pundits, the talk shifted to taxes (like a carbon tax) versus subsidies. We, like most of the crowd pondered the thought of adding a “carbon tax” to various products and services. But we all know how much this country loves its taxes. But then what about subsidies? It’s no shock that dirty energy like coal and oil look relatively cheap because of the subsidies. Green foodie Michael Pollen of Omnivore’s Dilemma fame, dedicated numerous book pages talking about corn and soy subsidies, and here the group and audience did the same. That subsidized corn ends up as high fructose corn syrup in so many cheap processed foods. We don’t see any spinach subsidies. Balance the energy scale. We think that it’s time for more Green energy subsidies (not just solar). People don’t want their dirty energy taxed so we need to make clean energy cheap.

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Today, at UC-San Francisco’s Conference Center, Sun Microsystems will be hosting OpenEco.org’s “Energy Camp,” a free one-day event that focuses on bringing together environmental leaders and software developers to discuss “coding for the environment.” Speakers will include L. Hunter Lovins, Adam Werbach, Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger. The event begins at 9 am PST.

Now, you may be thinking, “Wow, Jeff, that’s kind of lame to announce an event on the day it’s happening.” I agree… but, you don’t need to move your schedule around (if you’re in the Bay Area), or even catch a quick flight (if you’re not): you can participate from anywhere through a Ustream webcast at either sun.com or OpenEco.org/energycamp. There’s also a wiki that will be available at http://www.openeco.org/wiki/Energy_Camp_2008.

This looks like it will be a great time, and we will have a GO Media writer there covering it. Additionally, we’ve heard there may be some video clips available of some of the speakers; if so, we’ll share those with you at Ecoscraps. If you go, please let us know how it went (or, how it’s going, if you’d like to comment during the Camp).