Why We're Here:
The Need for an Alternative Energy Future
Alternative Energy, Energy Independence and Global Warming Reduction
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PlanetWatch.org works to increase public awareness of clean alternative energy solutions that will reduce reliance on an unpredictable and hostile world. That's as urgent as mitigating global warming. Failure to achieve independence will damage our lives sooner than failure to slow climate change. Success in the former will do as much to achieve the latter as any program that focuses on the latter alone.
The most powerful energy source of all
our Sun offers the tantalizing solution to mankind's energy needs.
Costs remain stubbornly high, but demand is soaring, even causing a worldwide
shortage of processed silicon. The potential is vast, as this article makes clear.
In Jeremiahthe whirlwind"goeth forth
with a fury" and will "fall with pain upon the head of the wicked". But
that
was then. Now, wind stands to bring great benefit to mankind. Tapping this
clean and limitless gift of nature has become the fastest growing alternative
to fossil fuels. One has to ask, what were we thinking all these years of neglect?
The prospect of alternative energy development leading to energy independence makes for a comforting view of the future. But we tend to ignore the perils of our dependence right here, right now. Part I of a series looks at our hazardous reliance on a troublesome world.
The countries that sell us their oil and what they make with the manufacturing jobs we've exported have long sent our money back to Washington
as loans to prop up our government.
Now, with interest rates low, and our economy weakened by the mortgage crisis, they are buying huge dollops of American companies.
Over the last few months, we've seen an
explosion in public interest and business investment in substitutes for
fossil fuels. This authoritative article, by an editorial board member of the
New York Times (and a founder of PlanetWatch.org),
offers a survey of what is happening and what holds promise.
Photo:
rapeseed in bloom
Midwest farmers are chasing corn-based ethanol,
it has limitations as a fuel, its production releases greenhouse gasses
and it has potentially negative implications for American agriculture and global
food production.
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WHAT'S INSIDE ? For recent articles and an index to other pages, click here. |
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Trying to Keep it Simple:HOW TO RESDISTRIBUTE ENERGY WEALTHAt PlanetWatch, we try to help members understand climate change and energy efficiency and security issues and to simplify the multitude of remedial measures proposed, often very passionately, by various interest groups. Not only do most commentators have an "axe to grind", but also, in an effort to add credibility, they often pack their proposals with technical terms and reams of statistics. This can be confusing and often drives audiences to "tune out". |
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First, a few overarching beliefs to which we subscribe: |
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Oil at $144 a barrel hurt Americans who had bought the wrong sort of vehicle and were paying $100 to fill the tank, but it had the virtue of jump-starting a flurry of innovation as ventures sought to produce fuel from everything from algae to wood chips to bacteria. The media came up with a diet of what editors call “gee whiz” stories almost daily about yet another start-up aiming to produce a 100 mile per gallon car or capture the desert sun to power yet another 100,000 homes.
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swooned? Stock prices of green technology companies have plunged even further than other market
segments; funding for energy start-ups has all but evaporated. Their prospects are now reeling from the financial meltdown, the credit squeeze and the drop to $2.11 a gallon gasoline that hurts the economics of alternative fuels. Natural gas, too, has settled at a price that makes wind uneconomical for generating electricity, and makes solar “unfathomably expensive” as one financial firm executive put it. |
| The agreement on need for action reflected a broadening public consensus about the depth of our problems, while the disagreement on the means was more closely connected to the traditional philosophy of government in each of the parties. The joined issues of climate and energy pose a real test of how government will progress in the next four years.
President-Elect Obama will need to make peace within his own party and will likely need some Republican support to make up for losses on the Democratic extreme. For Article and Comparative Tables, click here to continue. |
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No joke. You'd fill a tank with compressed air, then send the car on its way, like letting go of a balloon.
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When oil hit $144/bbl, suddenly it was the hot topic. We sorted out the confusion the |
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conflicting arguments, the twisted facts, the political demagoguery to see whether or not offshore drilling makes sense.
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That figures from the auto industry, electric utilities, government and even the ubiquitous Tom Friedman met at a June conference says that hybrid-electrics are going to happen.
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There are the usual negatives, but if we want to reduce emissions and energy dependence, nuclear needs to be back on the table. |
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Both Presidential candidates want to adopt a cap-and-trade system tp force down CO2 |