Is it just me, or does anybody else see that two of this world’s most pressing problems can and must be solved with one rather simple solution? The oil producing countries of the world are the focus of dangerously too much wealth, power and attention, while global warming is soon likely to make the Earth nearly (or totally) uninhabitable. And what will it take to turn these problems around, hopefully while mankind can still survive? Solar and wind power are clearly the answer. It’s not nearly as complicated as rocket science, but it is more important.
If the human race is to survive much longer, we must see the answer shinin’ in the sun and hear it blowin’ in the wind. The roof of every house in the world must someday soon have a solar panel on the south side and a wind generator on the north side, both feeding electricity into a battery in the attic. Beside that battery there may need to sit a small emergency gas powered generator which will automatically operate two or three times a year.
Such a system will not only provide the energy needed for each home, it will also fuel the family’s electric cars. When you get home from work remember to plug in the car. If your charge runs low on a long trip, just pull into a “gas” station and exchange your battery for one that’s fully charged. Of course when you’re on a trip your motel will charge up your car while you sleep.
What about big office or apartment buildings without roof space for enough solar panels? There will be large wind generators on the roof, while on the south side of those buildings, awnings will stretch over each window -- awnings which double as solar panels. Big factories will have roofs over their huge parking lots, pleasantly sheltering the employees’ cars, while the solar panels on top gather energy.
Telephone poles and power lines will be a thing of the past. No more trees falling in storms and knocking out the power or starting fires. No more trees will be cut down to make telephone poles. Thousands of acres of land now used for high power electric lines will be freed up for other usage.
Up north, where the sun doesn’t shine so directly and winter nights are too long, the wind generators will need to be larger and geothermal energy will be necessary. Even then the emergency gas powered generators might get a bit more use.
It’s my understanding that we have had the ability to do all of this for some time. One thing that’s been holding us back from using electric cars is the idea that they need to compete performance-wise with gasoline cars. Right now perhaps they can’t do zero to sixty in five seconds, but they will improve if there’s competition. And who really needs to go that fast? Can we all slow down to fifty miles an hour to save the planet? I hope so.
Somehow the government must facilitate these changes, because private enterprise will never do it quickly enough to save the planet from destruction. Call it national defense, because oil dependence on middle eastern countries is dangerous to us and to our economy.
The most ridicules move being made recently is toward ethanol, which is very nearly as environmentally damaging as petroleum. Also it’s absolutely obscene to commit our agricultural resources to making ethanol while global warming problems begin to cause such problems feeding the world. And I’ve also heard that farmers use oil based fertilizer to grow the crops to make ethanol. How crazy is that?
The direction we must take is clear. Hydrogen power may be the answer for airplanes, trains and trucks, but the sun and the wind must be made our main energy sources as soon as possible, while petroleum should be used mainly to manufacture plastics.