Can Al Gore Get Us to Solartopia?
Al Gore has leapt to center stage with well-founded concerns about global warming. He has been gratefully successful in publicizing the fact that there is a virtual library of irrefutable evidence that carbon dioxide levels are rapidly rising in our atmosphere, that this is being caused by human beings, and that the potential impacts are catastrophic.
What’s not being said is that the solution to the problem—the necessary transition to Solartopia, a world based on renewable energy—is also the key to the future of our economic well-being, and would be whether global warming was a problem or not.
In short: even without the dire disaster of climate change, a transitioning to green power is the only hope our global economy has for future prosperity.
Indeed, moving to an industrial system that runs on wind, solar, bio-fuels and other renewable sources, along with increased efficiency, including a revival of mass transit, can and will do for the global economy in the next 25 years what the computer/internet revolution has done for the last.
What’s also clear is that there is absolutely no room in this future for fossil fuels or nuclear power. But King CONG (coal, oil, nukes and gas) is not going to give up without an epic fight.
First up is the insane idea of bulding new nuclear plants. A debate now rages about a possible “renaissance” for atomic energy. It’s a non-starter. Nuclear power is nothing more than a half-century of proven failure.
It is 50 years since the first commercial reactor opened at Shippingport, Pennsylvania. But no solution has been found for the long-term management of spent nuclear fuel.
Nor is the private insurance industry willing assume liability for a possible catastrophic accident.
We have had a taste of such disasters at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl. We agree with the insurers that risk of another one, by terror or error, is too great to sustain.
The scant experience with these new reactors has already been bad, with cost overruns and other problems plaguing the few projects that have been tried.
The economics for new nukes are catastrophic. Bush Administration partisans may be willing to pour billions of taxpayer dollers into them. But we see no rush from Wall Street to embrace more nukes, especially when Bush is threatening war with Iran to prevent them from doing the same.
Which leaves us with this obvious challenge: if we reject fossil fuels and nuclear power, how will we heat and light an increasingly crowded planet, whose people are rightly intent on material prosperity?
The answer is in green power: renewable energy and increased efficiency.
For decades it has been argued that a planet run entirely on natural energy—a “Solartopia”—is an unrealistic dream, that might, at best, come in fifty or a hundred years.
But our planetary eco-systems can not wait that long.
And the economic engines now driving the conversion to green power—the big investment dollars pouring into wind, solar, bio-fuels, etc—will not allow such a delay.
In fact, there is a “great green avalanche” of investment dollars now flooding the renewable markets. The global wind business is booming with 25-35% annual growth. Far more new wind capacity is being installed than nuclear. Major technological advances in commercial-scale turbines mean there is no cheaper form of new electric generation. New gearless machines promise even better performance.
Though siting issues often arise (as they certainly will with new nuclear plants), properly installed wind machines do virtually no environmental damage. Though there are exceptions, the bird-kill issue is mostly anti-wind hype. Wind turbines are in fact proven to the point that financial powerhouses such as Goldman Sachs, Edison Capital, John Deare, and many more are lining up to invest in these projects. Wind power’s principle problem today is a shortage of turbines.
Solar power is also plummeting in cost and soaring in demand. Solar water heating has long been economically competitive throughout the northern hemisphere. Photovoltaics (PV), which convert sunlight to electricity, are being incorporated into roofing shingles and window glass.
Solar power towers and parabolic trough collectors have proven themselves to be cost effective.
Passive solar architecture can be as simple as facing a building’s biggest windows to the south, with resultant heat gain worth big money for decades to come.
Ethanol from corn and diesel from soy have become major cash crops. But in the long run, bio-fuel stocks that need annual planting will give way to perennials with high cellulose and vegetable oil content. These “incredible inedibles” will include switchgrass, miscanthus, hemp, canola and more.
Meanwhile, simple devices to harness the tides, the currents, and the thermal differentials between solar-heated water at the surface of the oceans and the colder waters deeper down, are already proving do-able. Geothermal power, built on the heat beneath the Earth’s crust, has been with us for centuries.
All these sources are great job-creators. But can they add up to a totally green-powered planet?
That depends on our most crucial energy wild-card—increased efficiency. Despite all we’ve been through since the Arab Oil Embargo of 1973, this nation—and much of the rest of the world—still wastes at least half the energy it burns.
Light Emitting Diodes (LED), superconducting, mag-lev, and a wide range of other high-performance technologies will redefine how we use—and abuse—energy. The projections for unsustainable rises in global energy consumption in the next decades are posited on energy inefficiencies that economic factors will force us to transcend.
In fact, we see a society that has no choice but to go totally green. The primary reason is that our survival on this planet depends on it.
Green energy and efficiency make perfect economic sense. They are our future, both economically and ecologically.
But none of that matters if we are still stymied by the hugely rich and powerful fossil/fuel industry. We won’t get to Solartopia until King CONG (coal, oil, nukes and gas) is shoved out of the way.
And that’s the hugest “if” of all. Those awaiting Al Gore to take on these industries may have a long wait. Even if he were an ideal leader, it will take nothing less than a gargantuan grassroots campaign to change our energy system to what it must be if we are to survive. For many of us, that will be the real work of the coming era.
A century ago, a great leader named Eugene V. Debs warned that he could not lead the American people into a worker’s paradise, because if one leader could take them there, another could take them out.
In the long run, Al Gore is right, global warming is a dire threat. There are major investors now willing to invest big money in solar power. And it is certain that one leader after another will emerge to lead us toward a world based on green energy and efficiency.
But King CONG will not give up on its gargantuan investments without an epic struggle. We will not get to a green-powered world without dismantling the enormous infrastructure that is the fossil/nuke cartel, with all its power and money.
No single politician will ever do that. In the long run, the only route to Solartopia is through the grassroots.
Harvey Wasserman’s SOLARTOPIA! OUR GREEN-POWERED EARTH, A.D. 2030 is now available at http://www.solartopia.org/
Why must we continually define the “best” solution to world problems as equivalent to the ones that make the most “economic sense”? And usually “economic sense” is narrowly defined to mean “where there is demand and the possiblility of someone making profit”. It’s so obvious that this has led us down the wrong path, especially ecologically. Why can’t we, with the tremendous amount of financial resources at our command as a nation (tax dollars,) just decide to invest in green energy development, because it’s good for us and for the planet? Of course we as individuals can make choices to switch on our own over to green energy. But wouldn’t the impact be so much more powerful if we made this decision as a nation and put our policy and tax dollars behind it?
thanks, Harvey. Something slightly silly. My daughter and I listen to a German childrens musical, ‘Knight Rusty’, where in one episode the bad weather is repaired by stopping the industrial pollution. Next the king orders the unemployed miners to do something else instead (lace tablecloth), and he and his fellow kings order a huge amount of tablecloth to get the ball rolling.
This should not be a fairy tale: if governments created huge demand by allocating money (which never seems to run out for the purposes of invading other countries) or ordering PV for public buildings the solar boom economy would be on its way, and unstoppable.
The solar boom is on its way and it is unstoppable. It’s just too small right now to be noticed by most. Have YOU switched?
I live in a town with two solar-powered breweries, a manure-to-methane powered dairy, a solar-powered sewage plant, several other municipal buildings and even the county jail is solar powered. It’s really a drop in the bucket.
In the same town I recently saw a Hummer towing a Jeep (the jeep was fitted out for rock climbing). Every morning you can see mom’s driving their kids to school in massive diesel trucks. The parking lot’s at Costco and Walmart are crowded every saturday with people buying junk to cram into their already stuffed garages.
Solar and wind power will not save us from the consequences of overconsumption. Even the sainted Al Gore has faced criticism for the electrical consumption of his very large house (local ordinances prevented the installation of solar panels until April 2007).
Americans have to reduce their consumption on all levels if the atmosphere is going to stabilize. That means diverting economic means to keeping us comfortable with lower energy use rather than larger SUV’s or overseas wars of choice.
GAIA has kindly agreed to remove cities on the gulf coast and eastern seaboard by means of hurricanes until we get the message. Of course the consequences of Climate Change will continue to worsen for 100 years after we change our behavior. Just to drive the message home.
Solar accounts for less than 1% of our energy. Unless the growth rate gets into the triple or quadruple digits, it isn’t going to save anyone from anything in the next decade or two. Conservation, on the other hand, can reduce our dependence on nonrenewable energy quite rapidly. Why all the buzz about solar, biofuels, and hydrogen when we can invest our money into proven conservation technologies for use in buildings and factories today?
Thanks for a very clear explaination of climate change and the need to switch to renewable energy sources.
For most people, this issue is as relevant as music from the 1600’s, since they don’t have a glue about how it all fits together. This article puts it into context.
Buy solar panels now for your home and business. You can get them paid for in a decade or less and have 40 more years of free electricty from then on out. Once we get this one figured out a revolution will be well on it’s way.
Humanity’s best inventions mimic nature.
Solar and fuel cells in combination mimic photosynthesis more or less. This would change the economic ditribution of wealth from the energy sector as much as it would change the amount of environmental stress caused by the petroleum industry. That my dear friends is the real reason we are kept in the dark.
Solar and fuel cells would liberate us all from dependence on huge gloabal energy corporations. Local companies could produce everything we need. Get it?
gmkaake, in the USA, the public does not control public policy (choosing subsidies, etc). The public is conditioned to be passive, to allow a power hierarchy to dominate it. Suppress the power hierarchy, give responsibility to the public, and we’ll be a lot closer to utopia. Until the public seizes control of public policy, institutions, and markets, we face heavy corruption, oppression, perversion, destruction. We can simply boycott power concentrations, generally, and become truly free. I hope we’re all working toward that.
Rune, great point that no single energy source can be the panacea. We need multiple approaches. Solar/wind do not work everywhere. An impoverished nation sitting on oil should benefit responsibly from that. The challenge is to discover what makes sense in each circumstance, and to assert the authority of people over capital, to implement the policy that’s best for “people and planet”.
andrew.herman, smaller, local enterprises are highly beneficial for general reasons. I think you’re onto something, but solar/fuel cells can’t be made locally, because of “intellectual property”. It’s a lever of control, concentration, domination. To stop the abuse, put all the information in the public domain after “limited times” (see the Copyright Clause).
Seems that moving total costs of energy to the consumer price solves a lot of problems. It can wipe out both the consumption and production waste, give more opportunity to small local enterprises (because they’re more accountable, efficient and innovative), and generally reward people’s honest efforts to benefit society. The secondary benefits include more self-determination, more satisfying occupations for more people, etc. General strikes/boycotts are sometimes necessary to prevent the corruption of policies that benefit the public.
For a strong critique of the deep romanticism of believing in a solar future, an examination of the inability of (non-nuke) alternatives to solve our energy problem completely, and the hysteria over nuclear energy risks (versus other energy sources) see THE REVENGE OF GAIA by James Lovelock.
If China wanted to phase out coal and go nuke, what are the planetary benefits? Would you oppose? Would you skip a free 1 month vacation trip to France (the world’s #1 tourist destination) because they rely on nuclear energy to a large degree? Or would you take that “risk”?
What would the planetary benefits be of a US at 50% nuclear, rather than 20?
pangolin reveals an extremely important angle: solartopia will not include automobiles.
Notice how “alternative” energy sources can be made to meet certain needs, but not others. Yes, we may at some point heat/cool our homes and run low-power consumption appliances from these sources, but we will never run an individualized car-based transportation system on them. We will probably also be unable to run large energy-intensive manufacturing this way. There will be no solar steel mills.
This means a radically altered transportation regime is required for solartopia. Whether a system could ever be devised that would allow transport of people and materials at the level we have become accustomed to is a question for those with much more engineering experience than I, but it seems unlikely. And without mass transport, all the rest of the solartopia dream becomes even more difficult than at present.
So we must immediately divert our remaining fossil fuel resources to building green infrastructure. We have maybe 10-15 years. As Harvey points out, King CONG will certainly hold out that long. It doesn’t look good.
And don’t even think about nuclear pwer plants…even if we were idiotic enough to build them en masse, there’s not enough uranium on the planet to replace current energy use, let alone future demand. Even if there were, getting it out of the ground and refining it will soon be an energy sink rather than a source.
There is no way that our present, greatly reduced, natural photosynthesis can cope with the vast amount of CO2 being spewed into our atmosphere. We must augment the natural photosynthesis with ARTIFICIAL photosynthesis. Look it up on Google or Yahoo for the several thousand entries on this subject. There is significant research being undertaken in universities all over the world. We need an Apollo-type project to develop and implement this. Look it up, study the references, then contact me at wafelt@verizon.net.