While liberals fret about CO2 and demand all sorts of corrupt bargaining chips known as 'cap and trade' or taxes which far surpass the damage carbon does to the environment as just a new way to raise revenue, real companies in the free market have been making real strides every day to deliver a sustainable world.
There are a lot of exciting things on the horizon, and this time I don't mean in 'ten years.' We are looking at products currently in production who are already delivering value for dollar.
Take this futuristic factory that constructs solar panels without any human help from start to finish. It's also refreshing to see so many white faces who are behind this project. They are clearly at the forefront of good, useful science that is improving our world -- and NOT relying on cheap labor sweat shops built on human misery. This is also proof that humans should not be working because robots can do almost all jobs autonomously anyway. These sorts of factories could be built, but then people would have nothing to do. Since people are already alive they represent a 'sunk cost,' therefore we find ways to employ them even though machines could already do most of the work if we wanted. We need a paradigm shift where people are not forced to work in jobs that could be automated because it is beneath their human dignity to just live as an inferior biological machine. Marx wrote about the dehumanization of labor nearly 200 years ago, it's about time we left inhuman work to inhuman machines who don't mind the mindless drudgery. Now that it's possible, there's no reason to continue torturing our labor force. Either find real jobs that still require humans for humans to do, or shunt aside a portion of the profits the machine labor is making to pay for the displaced worker's minimum standard of living. Mass manufacturing humans through third world baby factories to undercut machine labor may be economically feasible, but it is cruel and anti-progress to do so. Instead of looking at just the cost in money, factoring in the cost in pain people suffer when they work at factories like this would return a different balance.
This is just one of many solar improvements that seem to barrage us with new announcements every day. The exciting thing is this invention is actually in production and in the marketplace. That makes it worth ten times as much as news items that are just theoretical benchmarks. Solar power is now selling at 10 cents a kilowatt/hour, which is about twice as expensive as oil. Considering fossil fuel prices have tripled in price over the last decade, the convergence point of fossil fuels vs. solar power will be within this new decade. Solar power advancements will continue, while fossil fuel prices will probably double or triple again. Whereas fossil fuels are finite (and even more finite when you consider the billions needed to develop a new oil pipeline, oil well, power plant, etc -- and usually in dangerous and primitive areas no less.), the Sun's power is basically infinite. Therefore solar power will lower in price every year as technology advances for the rest of time, basically.
Since solar power installations last 20-40 years, installing a solar plant now will cost less, overall, then staying with fossil fuels over the course of the next 20 to 40 years. We have already crossed the pricing threshold because the average price of oil will be much higher over the next 40 years than it is today. It is an optical illusion that solar power hasn't already won.
The difficulty of building new transmission lines and funding the upfront costs of building all the new plants (who will only generate returns over a long time period) are ideal objects of government funding. Just like how the Hoover dam has returned to the USA massive profits vs. the funding it took to build it, it's time to build the 'hoover solar plants and transmission lines' that will generate massive profits down the road for the USA. With our vast deserts, skilled workers, law and order, and steady sunshine, America is ideally situated to rely on solar power. High capital projects with slow rates of return are looked down upon by corporations who need high profits every year to please their stockholders. This is a situation designed for benign government intervention.
America still has vast reserves of coal, oil, and natural gas. We could continue to dig them all up and sell them abroad as a new export industry, with solar fueling our energy needs domestically. In this way it doesn't become an 'either/or' question, we could go full throttle ahead with both industries. If, alternatively, global warming really is about to destroy the world, we could cease using fossil fuels and thus save the world with our reliance on cheap, sustainable solar. Whether global warming is true or false is now irrelevant, because the decision to use solar is the same in all scenarios. We don't have to wait for some new university to come out with some new increase in efficiency. The future is now.
http://greeninc.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/02/24/first-solar-claims-1-a-watt-industry-milestone/
Here is another solar power system currently in production, predicting the solar power crossover point to be as soon as 2012. This is incredibly good news. And by that I don't mean 'it isn't credible.' I mean that it is credible, it's just hard to believe anything so monumental could happen right before my eyes as the invention of clean, cheap, nigh infinite power. The people advertising this stuff aren't the national enquirer or what have you. It's the new york times:
http://greeninc.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/02/24/first-solar-claims-1-a-watt-industry-milestone/
These are real companies really in business really making money as we speak. The only reason they haven't conquered the world yet is they lack the funding to build enough manufacturing capacity to make enough solar panels to meet demand. We can either hurry this along by providing government loans or we can sit on our hands and wait another ten years as they scrounge around for bank loans. Either way, solar power will come, the price is so efficient that the adoption of the technology can no longer be stopped.
Worries about how we will store energy so that solar power can fuel people's needs at night are an important next step -- but we have decades to make progress on that while we build solar to at least cover our daytime energy use, relying on coal or natural gas for the night. The point is solar power, when it is available, is worthwhile, and we could build a heck of a lot of infrastructure before we reach the saturation point of daytime solar energy needs.
As though this weren't enough good news, take a look at our new car fleet. Again, I'm not worried about some nifty car at some auto show that they won't make for the next ten years, I'm talking about cars on the production line, fully armed and operational:
http://www.teslamotors.com/
First off this car is awesome. As advertised, it says it is twice as efficient mpg (in equivalent energy terms) as a Prius, the current banner car of efficiency. Furthermore, it has a 300 mile range which could get people virtually anywhere they would want to drive in a day.
If sports cars are too pricey, in 2012 they'll be releasing the Model S, at a mere $50,000 a piece.
Is that also too much? Then how about this car:
http://www.chevrolet.com/pages/open/default/future/volt.do
This car also has a 300 mile range, at a fuel efficiency of 85 mpg. This is twice as good as the current hybrids. It is already being built and will be on sale next year. The price? An estimated mere $32,500. This is doable even for middle class families, and the fuel savings will quickly recoup the additional costs -- Especially when you consider that as an electric vehicle it can benefit from all that new cheap solar power we will be building concurrently. ^_^.
What happens when America fields an electric car fleet and a solar power energy grid? It basically means we are done with the fossil fuel economy. Considering the rising costs of fossil fuels, the pollution it puts in the atmosphere, the coal miners who die extracting it, the wars we fight over it, the sudden price spikes that continuously harry it, the potential effects of global warming, and a host of other problems, there is no reason not to embrace a clean green future when it ALSO makes sense economically. The fleet of cars worldwide should switch to electric. Once the kinks are worked out and production scales up, I'm sure the price of such cars will continue to go down.
Ever since the internet came out, nothing big has really happened in science and technology. It feels like we are stuck in some sort of time warp, always hearing about progress, but never actually reaching it. This is all changing. Finally the fruits of decades of research are reaching the end of the pipeline, in finished, viable products. Energy is the most basic cost of human existence. Energy savings directly translate to a higher standard of living for everyone, in the real, physical, quantifiable economy. With infinite solar power fueling fully electric vehicles, we can give not just ourselves a high standard of living, but our children, our grandchildren, and our great-grandchildren just as much -- no resource depletion, no air pollution, no global warming, no worries.
No comments:
Post a Comment