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TechnoratiWe are all now desperate runners in the epic race between doom and boom. It's a global- warmed dead heat between apocalyptic ecological collapse, versus a Solartopian green-powered prosperity.
Defeat is defined by a death spiral that decimates our planet. Victory means the wealth, jobs and organic well-being that can come with renewables, efficiency and a post-pollution prosperity.
A middle ground is likely along the way, but would almost certainly happen by dividing humankind even further between rich and poor. That polarization is ultimately unsustainable, and will demand correction, one way or the other.
The "tipping point" where climate chaos becomes self-accelerating and irreversible may be as close as ten years away. Some believe we're already over the edge.
The global economy runs parallel. Any system addicted to huge inputs of irreplaceable, monopolized resources whose prices are soaring must soon collapse.
The cure is clear---a technological, economic and social revolution built around the transition to green power.
Despite the nay-sayers, such a Solartopian transformation is physically and financially do-able. But can we do it by 2030?
The answer: Ecologically, and economically, we have no choice.
A new report from the United Nations points to huge increases in renewable investing in the past 18 months---in excess of $100 billion. It predicts almost a quarter of the world's electricity could be green by 2030.
But Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., has pointed out that the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colorado, has published on the internet (and then withdrawn) findings that say ALL electricity consumed in the United States---the world's largest consumer---could be produced by renewable means by the year 2020.
Like Russia, China and India, the US has enough harvestable wind to do the total job. NREL says there is enough wind capacity in North Dakota, Kansas and Texas alone to electrify the entire US, using currently available technology. There's enough wind resource in the states between the Mississippi and the Rockies---what we might now call Windiana---to do the US three times over.
There are transmission constraints and occasional permitting issues. But there's no reason to build any generator west of the Mississippi that's not fueled by the wind or solar energy. There is also plenty of wind east of the Mississippi, especially in the Great Lakes and Atlantic.
Worldwide wind power is proven, profitable and booming at rates in excess of 25% per year. Solar, bio-fuels, wave, ocean thermal, geothermal, tidal, current and other forms of renewables are all close behind.
Anyone doubting the explosion in Solartopian energy might check out the financial pages and investment reports popping up throughout the global media. The trade association web sites (awea.org, ases.org, nrel.gov, etc.) over-brim with numbers that scream of a classic techno-economic takeoff.
The situation parallels the rise of the personal computer and dot.com industries. Imagine yourself describing 25 years ago---in 1982---what was about to happen in the information age.
Technologically, the Solartopian revolution is much further along. But it has one problem the information revolution did not---an institutional enemy.
There is a barrier separating a future defined by climate chaos and economic collapse from a boom to Solartopia. It is the coal, oil, nukes and gas industries---King CONG.
Few stood to lose from the spread of the PC and internet. But green power threatens the fossil/nuke multinationals with ultimate (and well-deserved) oblivion.
A likely scenario: for the next five to ten years, led by wind, renewables will grow at 25-35% per year. Despite King CONG, investment capital is fast becoming a green tsunami. Production facilities for wind turbines, photovoltaic roofing shingles, wave-generating "sea-worms" and the like, are booming.
As capacity expands, production costs and prices drop. Demand will accelerate even further. Solartopian industry will accumulate serious wealth and employee mass. The host communities will add their social and political commitment.
Today's green lobby has tremendous popular support. But too many solar companies are owned by major corporations with fossil/nuke investments. Above all, they fear the decentralized nature of green power.
But sooner or later, the public demand for an independent green industry will combine with accelerating wealth to create aggressive institutional power. When finally it attacks its competition---coal, oil, nukes and gas---in open political warfare, King CONG will head toward the compost heap.
The green power industry is certain to expand rapidly for the next decade. Economically and politically mature by 2015, its technological breakthroughs will multiply on themselves. Self-sustaining profitability and growth should match the PC/internet saturation of the global economy within another quarter century---by 2030---maybe earlier.
The take-off will bring a revolution in efficiency. Bloviating "experts" continually refer to an "inevitable" exponential growth in energy demand.
But soaring energy prices will force exponential breakthroughs on the demand side.
The biggest barrier to Solartopia may be reviving a mass transit system that was systematically murdered by General Motors, Standard Oil and the glass and rubber companies. Without good inter-city rail travel and advanced public transit within the cities, the US has no economic future. The hybrid car-especially the plug-in model---marks a step forward. But the automobile still kills in the range of 40,000 Americans per year, many on a freeway system that is overburdened and obsolete. The auto must be transcended.
The rhythm of this techno-financial revolution will push us toward Solartopia by 2030. But so will our eco-systems. Time is short to solve our climate crisis. We must stop emitting carbon dioxide and reverse the damage done. The eco-imperative extends to habitat destruction, air and water pollution, decimation of the forests, the spread of toxics, and much more.
Mother Earth is telling us we can't coast for another quarter-century. The clock to "Thermageddon," as Greenpeace founder Robert Hunter called it, ticks as fast as the one on economic collapse.
Extinction peers over our shoulder just as green power approaches critical mass.
So set the date for 2030, bid King CONG goodbye, and let's win this race to Solartopia.
Harvey Wasserman's SOLARTOPIA! OUR GREEN-POWERED EARTH, A.D. 2030, is at www.solartopia.org. He is senior advisor to Greenpeace USA and the Nuclear Information & Resource Service, and writes regularly for www.freepress.org, where this article first appeared.
© 2007 The Free Press
18 Comments so far
Show AllAn 850 megawatt (HUGE) coal fired power plant is under construction about 25 miles away from my home. A sustained grassroots and Sierra Club movement was unable to stop this bane on society. By using coal, the utility in question is vulnerable to any future carbon legislation, vulnerable to upswings in the price of coal and its transport, as the railroad industry has fast become merely the coal transport industry.
Wind energy is replacing coal as the cheapest form of energy, and that trend is likely to continue for obvious reasons. Of course these companies don't care about the environment, but it seems that wind energy is a better FINANCIAL decision for a utility at this point. Yet, they continue to build archaic coal plants.
It is apparent that utility companies have corrupt profit making schemes incorporated into every step of the power-from-coal process. The wind is free, and therefore offers no oppurtunity for plunder.
In a similar industry, most ethanol in the US is produced from corn, which is much less efficient than using sugar (used in Brazil) or switch grass. We currently have high tariffs in place to prevent our using sugar for ethanol. Switch grass grows like a weed, uses water efficiently, and does not cause soil depletion. Therefore, if used to make fuel, Monsanto would be cut out of the equation. So of course, switchgrass technology is lagging corn as a means of ethanol production. Ethanol, in general, gets very bad press, which is certainly a sign of the oil industry at work.
The fossil fuels industries are doing every thing they can to keep the status quo.
Individuals are almost powerless to stop this kind of corruption. We need a President with a strong commitment to the environment to enact the legislation needed to end our use of coal for electricity.
Ralph Nader demonstrated his lack of commitment and vision when he spoiled the race for AL Gore. This is not the time to act on principle or cast votes of symbolic protest. There is no time to waste.
Al Gore for President.
rtdury,
I am as interested in technical solutions just as much as anyone, but I still maintain, it is a moral issue at the root. There is no technical silver bullet.
Needless, wasteful consumption, "recreational shopping",
and by far the worst - large corporations creating markets for unnecessary products - these are only a few of the real problems - along with RYZOME's quote from Fuller who points out how building codes etc... prevent truely creative solutions to human habitat (homes and other dwellings)
Cogeneration? What are you referring to? Are you referring to cogeneration power plants, or some broader philosphical concept. Cogeneration is a technical term for generating electricity thru waste heat. Yet at the heart of it it is still a heat process, and usually is just recovering wasted fossil fuel generated heat.
As for jjohnjj comments regarding solar smelting - in the Paris world's fair of somewhere around 1890 a parabolic heater was used to melt steel, and the British in the late 1800's built a very larger solar concentrator-steam plant in Egypt. The technical solutions have been around for a long time.
tech2, the main approach to supplying energy efficiently to industrial processes is through electric cogeneration, which places considerable constraints on the freedom of capitalists to play their "Monopoly" board games. Cogeneration, and other such constraints on production and consumption are appropriate because over-consumption is too expensive now and against our better interests anyhow.
We looked into aluminum production in a previous thread here on CD. The more one looks into it, the more it seems that the shift toward renewable energy should be accompanied by a winding down of the capitalist's second "gilded age" here in the United States and a shift to industry that truly serves the public interest as practiced almost everywhere on the planet outside the US.
It's good to see Christians make the connection between industrial responsibility and Christian ethics. Let Christians and seculars unite to finally put people first, and capital last, in this nation.
Paul Hawken, in The Next Economy, described a civilzation in which every industrial product could be recycled, leaving nothing in excess but water and dirt.
What a concept.
Even our heavy industries can be weaned from fossil fuels. There's a large solar furnace in French Pyrenees that's been smelting metals at 3000 degrees since 1970. Not enough volume there you say?
In Paul Hawken's economy we won't need the volume. Consumer products will be designed to be repaired and upgraded rather than thrown away. Automakers in Europe and Japan have already produced prototypes of "green" vehicles make of recyclable or biodegradable components.
Stop artificially subsidizing King COAL and the marketplace will create this future.
Please realize we are in the middle of a great tectonic shift that is only gathering momentum.
The propaganda talks about "developing technologies for sometime in the future" but wind and solar farms are being built all over the world as quickly as people can build them. The technology is nothing short of amazing. We have things that only a very few years ago would have been seen as science fiction. Imagine a solar panel as large as a dinner plate that coupled with solar concentration will power a modern American style home.
America is a bit behind the curve but we're getting into the game.
Be positive, be a warrior for the planet, create the new paradigm in your own life.
You can tell how old the quote below is by the population figures, but it foretells the internet and the current paradigm shift into renewables.
"Technologically we now have four billion billionaires on board
Spaceship Earth who are entirely unaware of their good fortune.
Unbeknownst to them their legacy is being held in probate by
general ignorance, fear, selfishness, and a myriad of paralyzing
professional, licensing, zoning, building laws, and the like, as
bureaucratically maintained by the incumbent power structures.
Dismaying as all this paralysis may be, it will lead eventually to
such crisis that comprehensive dissemination of the foregoing
truths ultimately will be accomplished through (1) the world-
around-integrated electronic media broadcasting and (2) the
computerized switchover from the inherently-in-adequate-life-
support accounting assumption of yesterday to the adequate-
for-everyone-and-everything, time-energy accounting comprehen-
sively employed by the multibillion-galaxied, eternally regenerative
Universe itself."
R Buckminster Fuller
Okay, so we leave Industrial area's on oil until we get something better. At least we have enough of our own for that.
And why was Hemp found to be illegal? Was it because they couldn't tell one plant from another? You can't smoke Hemp and it is a great renewable resource.
As someone who actually works in the power generation business, I agree with the following points this article makes:
1) alternative energy has enormous potential as an energy source.
2) public transportation "reform" has great potential.
And in the end, the potential solutions are endless in Solartopia.
However,:
Have you ever been in a steel mill?
Have you ever been in any kind of factory, chemical processing plant, sawmill, pulp and paper mill????
Do you have any conception of the amount of power that is consumed by industrial processes?
Cities can be redesiged to "live" on alternative energy, but our industrial base cannot.
Our Industrial base feeds the unending appetite of many people for "THINGS". often useless things.
Therefore the real problem is the Wal-Mart mentality.
The real problem is most of the world's population needs to be entertained in some wasteful way.
In your Solartopia, you have to convince the general population that they really do not require all the useless mass produced goods they consume.
Its not just a matter of changing the entire world economy, its a matter of changing people's moral attitudes.
Now anyone can come up with a utopian concept with the main premise being "people will love one another and not hate or destroy." Jesus already did that.
Your solartopia is nothing more than a copy of the Christian religion., becuase its main premise is that people act out of love and moral responsibility and do not destroy or hate or do what is evil in the eyes of the Lord.
IT CAN:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtml?xml=/money/2007/02/19/ccview...
Starting with the above for electricity generation from our homes' and ELECTRIC CARS' solar surfaces!
All the more reason to stop this evil resource war we have with Iraq and the entire mid eaat region. Our generation[baby boomers] were going to be the ones that set things right. Our country has been hi-jacked by a bunch of not to bright viscious thugs. I want that pack of creeps and the ones that support them gone.
Alternative energies are a good idea but there is so much to be gained just by doing things more efficiently. I believe we could cut our current consumption in half just by doing things a little smarter. And without cutting our standard of living.
I think we shoud take 50% of our military budget and by solar panels to be placed on the roofs of every home in the US. This would provide electric for every home and then some. Then we install on all commercial buildings and we wouldn't need any fossil fuels or nuclear reactors. Electric cars and solar panels could do this without someone saying they dont want windmills in their backyard.
Why can't this be done???
I'd like to invest in a wind farm the same way individuals can invest in small global business owners through Kiva loans. See http://www.kiva.org/ Such a concept has the potential of beating the "passbook" savings rate and could do more good than sinking money into the overvalued consumerism driven stock market!
First decent and refreshing "dream" I've heard in a long time, maybe since MLK. Maybe Wasserman and Gore can run on the Green Party ticket? Imagine a nation lead by possibilities instead of fear!
We need Jesse Jackson's Globocop to stop Thermageddon.
this is the day of catchy names.
Bring on the Green!
There is hope, and in a very big way. Click onto this website and see what is now taking place in Australia and China.
http://money.cnn.com/2006/08/01/technology/towerofpower0802.biz2/
With only a single 20 square mile of desert land, enough of these towers could be placed and would supply enough energy for ten million homes. We have thousands of square miles of unused desert land in six western states. It will not supply all of the nations needs, but certainly could supply from 50 to 70%, with absolutely no carbon emissions. None! Solar tubes, (available next year)could be attached to the towers and enhance the generation of clean electrical power. It would be a great start.
"Small is Beautiful". That's the book written by the late Dr. Shumaker. We went through this in the sixties and after WWII. The only thing standing between home energy production, connecting to the grid and energy independence is of course, the mega-corporation that wants everything neatly centralized in King CONG.
Thanks for the link Vic!
And what about HEMP? Legalize and allow hemp into the market and petroleum would be replace immediately. In fact, hemp also replace coal and obviates the need for nuclear. Oh I forgot, like all other alternative renewables, this one threatens to wipe out wars for profiteering hence it was ILLEGALIZED 70 years ago. Come to think of it, the Orwellian world started in 1937 in America, not 1984 ! The same year FDR signed the ban on HEMP is the same year unions started getting chipped legislation after legislation. Until progressives unite and actually REFRAME the entire debate, the conservatives, radical ones anyway, will continue to win whether they are in the majority or minority. It is no coincidence that we fight wars for oil while at the same time defunding or even ILLEGALIZING alternative remedies that are both economically and ecologically friendly.
Nader4prez, EXACTLY. And this is why I plan on voting for Nader AGAIN. I voted twice for him and I'll give him my 3rd vote this decade. Hemp was PURPOSELY confused as being identical to marijuana by the pro-NAZIs back in the 20th century. The vested interests joined forces and forced this country into dependance on petroleum and now this country is paying dearly for it. Until people wake up and fight for government that will overturn the hemp ban and allow hemp into the market, fund and make affordable public transportation, make conservation rewarding and possibly mandatory, and put wind, solar, geothermal, hemp into full force and fight privatization attempts by BIG OIL, this country will continue to be sacked and will never know what hit them.