will to develop clean energy ...
.
We are making progress developing clean energy, I agree - nothing like what we ought be seeing now 40 years on from when I studied solar energy and such, but "progress" ... for which in Oregon we are now having to replace, at $5000 a unit, solar "batteries" used in remote locations to power monitoring devices or to light signs at night, etc. ... because the same folks who steal our guard rails and light poles, and copper from *live* substations, for recycling to buy crack need more crack I guess - never enough ...
... but we are making better progress exporting that technology to Africa, where a village clinic can make a choice whether to run a computer or to keep the refrigerator in which their medicines are stored plugged in while they think REAL hard about how they will ever be able to afford enough "alternate energy" technology to power any sort of *industry* that will provide jobs that will grow their economies so they do not need so many clinics.
Which reminds me (the sort of mechanism by which the U.S. economy would be damaged) that as long as two decades ago, Chrysler or Ford or GM could have retooled any ONE of their money-losing assembly plants to produce *windmills* (which are not much more than a car without wheels) and kept their pension plans afloat and their employees working and America's air cleaner and maybe even increased their *profits* - except it would have eaten into oil profits (and there is that creepy shadow of the World Bank again).
If only we still had the will to do the right thing.
.
We are making progress developing clean energy, I agree - nothing like what we ought be seeing now 40 years on from when I studied solar energy and such, but "progress" ... for which in Oregon we are now having to replace, at $5000 a unit, solar "batteries" used in remote locations to power monitoring devices or to light signs at night, etc. ... because the same folks who steal our guard rails and light poles, and copper from *live* substations, for recycling to buy crack need more crack I guess - never enough ...
... but we are making better progress exporting that technology to Africa, where a village clinic can make a choice whether to run a computer or to keep the refrigerator in which their medicines are stored plugged in while they think REAL hard about how they will ever be able to afford enough "alternate energy" technology to power any sort of *industry* that will provide jobs that will grow their economies so they do not need so many clinics.
Which reminds me (the sort of mechanism by which the U.S. economy would be damaged) that as long as two decades ago, Chrysler or Ford or GM could have retooled any ONE of their money-losing assembly plants to produce *windmills* (which are not much more than a car without wheels) and kept their pension plans afloat and their employees working and America's air cleaner and maybe even increased their *profits* - except it would have eaten into oil profits (and there is that creepy shadow of the World Bank again).
If only we still had the will to do the right thing.
.
Labels: Africa, bank, clean, energy, solar, windmills, world
posted by JamesB at 11:11 PM
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