frflyer

Oil Prices, Electric Cars and the Wisdom of Carlos Ghosn

Perhaps you've seen this story about a solar grand plan for the U.S.
www.sciam.com/article....

It's encouraging, but I think we can do even better. It speaks of investing $400 billion over 20 years or so to develop concentrating solar, both PV and thermal, in our southwest, and building a new DC distribution network.
Given the amount of money now subsidizing oil and other fossil fuels, a dramatic change in these policies could finance such projects even faster than projected in the article.
If I'm not mistaken, we are now subsidizing the fossil fuel industries at about $80 billion a year. That's $400 billion in five years. Or at $50 billion a year, you're looking at 8 years. We could scale up these solar and grid projects faster than the 40 years described in the article referred to above. It really is about our mindset as much as anything else. We can do anything if we change our thinking. After 40 years or so of us environmentalists warning that the earth is in critical condition, which is now confirmed by the majority of the world's scientists, many Americans still percieve environmentalists as misguided wierdos. Even without global warming, the statement is true that earth is in critical condition.
The fact that the Republicans were able to strip the alt energy tax credits from the recent energy bill, and the proposals to take $21 billion in tax credits from the highly profitable oil industry, to be applied to alternative energy, speaks volumes about how far we have to go in changing our thinking. Vote for the earth this year. It's the environment stupid! What could possibly be as important?
The difference in importance approaches infinity. I say this because, compared with whether the earth will be able to support life in the coming centuries is infinitely more important than any other issue. Will we continue to be distracted into believing that other issues are even worth mentioning in comparison? The thinking currently goes something like this. "Sure we can save the environment, as long as it doesn't cost too much." That is considered sane reasonable thinking among many of us. And those self interests who promote such thinking will continue to try and frighten the populace into rejecting any progressive ideas for fear of their pocketbook. I believe that alternative energy offers one of the best oppurtunities for envigorating our enonomy. It's about the future, and the future isn't oil.

The situation in China and India means that we in the developed world have to do that much more to offset this increased demand for oil. The new mantra of the anti environmentalists is that China is now the culprit in global warming; so why should the U.S. change it's ways? This of course is pretzel logic and dishonest. It is the west that has been filling the atmosphere with greenhouse gases for 150 years and that is largely reponsible for the current CO2 levels.
And we have 1 quarter of China's population in the U.S., which means we are four times as dirty per capita.
And being the leading country in the world, according to our own assesment, shouldn't we be the ones setting an example? We can cut back on our oil use in many ways, one of which is by switching to bioplastics, ala Metabolix and others. We use 10% of our oil to make plastics. And these plastics are a huge pollution problem. This is a better use of biomass than ethanol. And we can switch from tree based paper making to hemp based paper, which is more sustainable and could save us from destroying the great boreal forests of Canada, as well as our own forests. I know, that's not directly related to oil use but is also of great importance to the oxygon/CO2 balance. And trees are vital to the earth's health in many more ways.