The answers, my friend, are blowing in the wind
This came across my Twitter stream yesterday, attributed to various sources. Huffington Post even ran it:
Sustainable, renewable energy doesn't have the potential to wreak untold environmental damage the way fossil fuels do. The Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico reminds us that, once again, no system is perfect. Accidents do happen, and when they happen with oil the costs are tremendous.
It's just as bad, if not worse, with coal. Between the "safety last" mentality of certain West Virginia coal mining companies who shall remain nameless and the ecological horror that is mountain-top removal mining, coal energy comes at a cost measured not only in accidents but in certainties.
Of all the problems facing the world today, this inability to get off our collective butts to switch to safe, clean, green energy technologies is perhaps the most baffling. It's not like fighting AIDS or cancer, where scientists don't have a solution to offer yet. We know how to produce energy through solar, wind, and bio-generation. The technology is there.
The plan is even there.
So why can't we do it? No, why won't we do it?
Why aren't we doing it? Fight all you want about what's the most pressing issue facing us, whether it's health care or financial system reforms or ending the filibuster or fixing campaign finance or fighting terrorism or drugs or immigration or whatever you want to fight about.
At the end of the day, none of that matters one iota compared to energy. In the rock-bottom, brass tacks, line in the sand, pick-your-metaphor analysis, civilization lives or dies by how much energy it has access to. It's all about energy. And right now, the energy we're using is killing us. If we don't fix energy, none of the other problems matter. Not even global warming.
We have to fix energy. We have the technology. We have the plan.
What's stopping us?
"BREAKING: Large Air Spill at Offshore Wind Farm. No Environmental Damage Reported. Some Claim To Enjoy Breeze."All kidding aside, there's a core of truth there.
Sustainable, renewable energy doesn't have the potential to wreak untold environmental damage the way fossil fuels do. The Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico reminds us that, once again, no system is perfect. Accidents do happen, and when they happen with oil the costs are tremendous.
It's just as bad, if not worse, with coal. Between the "safety last" mentality of certain West Virginia coal mining companies who shall remain nameless and the ecological horror that is mountain-top removal mining, coal energy comes at a cost measured not only in accidents but in certainties.
Of all the problems facing the world today, this inability to get off our collective butts to switch to safe, clean, green energy technologies is perhaps the most baffling. It's not like fighting AIDS or cancer, where scientists don't have a solution to offer yet. We know how to produce energy through solar, wind, and bio-generation. The technology is there.
The plan is even there.
So why can't we do it? No, why won't we do it?
Why aren't we doing it? Fight all you want about what's the most pressing issue facing us, whether it's health care or financial system reforms or ending the filibuster or fixing campaign finance or fighting terrorism or drugs or immigration or whatever you want to fight about.
At the end of the day, none of that matters one iota compared to energy. In the rock-bottom, brass tacks, line in the sand, pick-your-metaphor analysis, civilization lives or dies by how much energy it has access to. It's all about energy. And right now, the energy we're using is killing us. If we don't fix energy, none of the other problems matter. Not even global warming.
We have to fix energy. We have the technology. We have the plan.
What's stopping us?
# Posted by Jason Black : 1:51 PM
Comments:
There may be technically feasible methods of harnessing sustainable energy sources to produce usable net power. But it isn't certain at all that we can come anywhere near the scale required to sustain the lifestyle we enjoy today. We can live sustainably but probably not at anywhere near todays level of consumption. That is probably why nobody that really understands the problem is promoting it heavily.
Until the price of alternatives to fossil and coal energy sources are competitive, change will be slow. With more investments in r&d, it could happen.
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