subject: It Is High Time To Make Use Of Renewable Solar Energy [print this page] The very life of every living thing on Earth is dependent on the Sun. Without the Sun, we would not have animal or plant life, which provides us with food and companionship. Without the Sun, we would have died out in former days, without the Sun these days, we may last a while, but it would not be much of a life.
The Sun gives us much more too. What we now call 'alternative, sustainable energy' was the only form of energy available to the world for thousands of years. In reality, nuclear and even oil generated energy should be called alternative, but we have forgotten a lot. Especially in the West.
It is not essential to go back to the habits of our farming forebears and get up and go to bed with the Sun, although it is still the way of life of the majority of the world's population. No, we have technology and we should use it. At the moment, we use advanced technology to find more lakes of oil and dig ever deeper in more and more unreachable places to remove it from the Earth. Or worse still, we go to war to steal or guarantee supplies resulting in the death of thousands of young soldiers and the misery of millions of ordinary, blameless citizens.
We have to use our incredible advances in technology to create electricity out of thin air. Literally. We already have the technology to create solar panels and wind turbines in order to create millions of kilowatts of electricity from the Sun and the wind. There is other technology that can make use of the motion of the oceans and the natural high temperature of the Earth itself, although some of these are only accessible in some areas. For instance, wave power can only be taken advantage of, if you live on the shoreline.
However, solar and wind power can be used in any region of the world with varying degrees of success. A combination of the two varieties of power generators is probably best for most regions. These technologies have been developed more or less chaotically. What if we had spent our war chests of billions of dollars on advancing these technologies, instead of using them to level cities and kill people?
However, the technology is there to produce enough electricity to run a household. It is clear that we cannot wait for our governments to do much more for us. Their viewpoint is different, they do not want to harm big business. And the big electrical providers would be damaged if a significant number of people generated their own electricity and came off the grid.
The rich representatives in government are stuck between a rock and a very hard place. They recognize that oil is running out; they know that much more electricity will have to be generated from the wind and the Sun, but they do not want to damage the share value of big industry.
Imagine, what a hard time the energy producers would have explaining why the cost of electricity had to go up because he Sun or the wind had increased its charges. Whereas it is easy to defend when they say that OPEC has increased the price of oil. But, we are in OPEC, aren't we?
