99% renewable by 2020. That's a more realistic goal, given the state of the ecology and even that might be too little too late. Those devoted to greed (oil, nuclear, coal, etc.) will try to convince us that it's not economically or socially realistic, that it's not 'convenient', but they don't have a very good record, do they.

When ever the corporate media refers to "the experts at BP" several question arise...
a. who are they?...there can''t be any more than two!
b. Should someone call off their holiday and bring them in...both of them?
c. does BP experts know they are going to hell or will they just be surprised when they arrive?

It makes me smile when I hear people talking about where they'd like to go... rather than complaining about being stuck. I think that as a collective consciousness, we-the-people have a lot more power than we sometimes give ourselves credit for.

Here's a post I've offered before:

I think that the most satisfying outcome (of the oil spill) will be to put these folks out of business by making their products irrelevant and obsolete. For over a hundred years now, energy inventions have existed which can replace the carbon-based-fuel economy as well as nuclear. They also surpass the abilities of solar & wind..... and they have all been successfully suppressed.

At this point in time we need a paradigm shift.. and perhaps the oil spill is just the thing to get people's attention... it's important now to educate people about our choices. Just think about the possibilities if energy was inexpensive and abundant in every country, if it could be used in the third world to cook food and desalinate water, and if we didn't need to fight over limited oil resources.

It’s just a matter of education & communication. I’m beginning to think that the invention we’ve all been waiting for…. drum-roll…. is the internet & social media. This tool allows me to learn about the hundred-year-old game-changing inventions and communicate with others faster than the debunkers and suppressors can keep up.

The young people are soooo very good at this via their social media. Wouldn’t it be neat to get a few of them really turned on and passionate about these new ideas!!

Here are a few links to get you started.. listen to the short videos at the Orion Project (cloak & dagger stuff)... the U-tube ones are of working models. Internet scuttlebutt suggests that the Australian guys might have been paid-off to stop working.. their website has been quiet for a couple of years.

http://www.theorionproject.org/en/index.html
http://changingpower.net/articles/free-energy-documentary-producer-pitches-tv-series/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QgQXYBRYwbg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yh_-DUKQ4Uw&feature=related

As long as oil companies own the government this country will never be as great as it can be.

And now for an up-to-date Arctic weather report:

The Arctic Ocean ice is now melting quite a distance ahead of 2007's record meltoff. Reference:

http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/N_stddev_timeseries.png

There's still maybe a 50% chance of a first ever ice-free North Pole by September.

If you want to know exactly why hundreds of vital products aren't getting rolled out fast, and exactly what the government must do, or what you will be led to do because you are called to do it, look carefully at the product development process in the U.S. and elsewhere.

When the military needs a new stealth technology or else their soldiers are going to die, they don't sit back and say, "the free market economy will do it". While the military may act stupid, they're not quite that stupid. Instead, they formed an agency, DARPA, devoted to getting them what they need. Military inventors don't mothball their new technologies for decades (well, a few of them do, stupid military). Nor do they risk their life savings on an invention. Instead, DARPA jumps in. DARPA says what they need, foots the bill for the labs, for the salaries, for the testing, for the product development and for scaling up production. Things get done.

When America and the world needs a better solar hot water panel or tracker, 1000 entrepreneurs drive down the price by 5% or 10% every year. That sector works because 1000 average basement tinkerers can enter the market and maybe see a profit.

When the call goes out for a transit system that works 10 times safer, costs a quarter as much per passenter and works at motor vehicle speeds or better, zero inventors come out with anything, ever, not in your lifetime, not in your children's lifetime. Little has been invented since the locomotive cowcatcher and freight cars that lock onto each other when they meet. The entry fee is about $100 million, and the monopoly transit systems don't ever believe in new technology.

As a rule, every known centralized system will get no new invention and no safety improvements except for window dressing. This rule includes massive power transmission and storage. This rule includes coal mining, oil drilling and all aspects of nuclear power. This rule includes mass sequestration of carbon. It's not that the low hanging fruit ideas aren't out here waiting by the hundreds, there is just no economic pathway to bring the ideas to fruition.

Greenpeace and everyone else needs to address this catastrophic failure. Otherwise, Greenpeace's dream of a cooler world might as well go to Hades on earth as far as better transit is concerned. It's not getting done!

The jokers in the deck are GM and BP. The government will never in a hundred years get off the dime if these companies' profits are threatened by this "alternative energy" stuff.

Solution one is to go in a corner and carp about what a bunch of losers we all are. Solution two is to copy DARPA for real, and not just hand over all the appropriations money to BP and GM and laugh at everybody else. Solution three is to set up a private energy DARPA. Solution four is to de-elect as many government crooks as possible until the remaining crooks agree to a real compromise, not some phoney-baloney meaningless hand-waving.

Certain elements of this should be old news and probably are to most readers here:

- effective green tech exists and has
- it is economically viable and has been
- it tends away from mononopoly and hegemony
- governments and corporations either flatly oppose it, or favor a hamstrung form, under their control.

We all need a response to global warming, resource depletion, and the spread of toxic and radioactive substances far more quickly than the institutional structures of government and corporations are apt to change.

That does not mean that we can do without pressuring these institutions, but it does mean that at least a good part of that pressure has to involve moving outside of these institutions to resolve our economic and community needs.

I would love to see a solar powered energy (R)evolution in this country. Solar is the long term solution. Albert Einstein received his Nobel Prize in 1921 for his experiments on photovoltaic and solar power. Akhenaten worshiped the rays of the sun 3,000 years ago and made them the god of all Egypt - photosynthesis. (Read about him.)

The Deepwater Horizon rig cost $650,000,000. It was built by Korean labor. How many solar panels could have been built in this country with that money alone? How many Americans could have been employed? What is the total dollar value of petrochemical assets in the Gulf of Mexico right now? How many solar panels could have been built in this country by Americans with that capital. One thing we have plenty of in this country is desert and we need the jobs. Who chose to invest in oil and not solar? Who is making those choices today?

Have we been sold as slaves in perpetuity to our capitalist system? Do the real capitalists, the two tenths of one percentile of the population, hold title to us and our heirs? Are we are no longer a free people with free choice? Have we become chattel? Have we any possibility of buying our freedom back? Have we become slaves to big oil, big pharma, the MIC, big argra, big banks, big politicians, etc? Are we no more than hamsters on a wheel told to run faster and faster and run longer and longer as our pellet ration, wages/standard of living, keeps being cut? How long till our children or grandchildren start committing suicide like at Foxconn? What future are we passing on to them?

It is time for the "Agrarian Justice" that Thomas Paine called for. (http://www.thomaspaine.org/Archives/agjst.html)

How about we make a deal with BP. We let them completely off the hook for all clean up costs to the Gulf which our government would cover 100%. In return they agree to give up oil drilling and exploration completely worldwide forever and agree to turn their considerable resources soley to renewable energy production and distribution (wind, solar, tidal, ocean current, etc.) If not then we bankrupt them with clean up costs and regulation.

Don't know if such an agreement is possible or enforceable, but it could be a win-win and a way to jump start the industry.