Renewable Energy Arrives

Renewable Energy Arrives is our name & theme in this blog.

Our first post: Weds, 1-23-2008

Here's why we think it IS arriving & why a good deal of focused effort will also be needed to make it happen soon enough.

Here's the bad news.:

The world's economy today is almost exclusively based on burning carbon based fuels.

This involves cutting down trees which both adds CO2 to the air & removes these trees as free CO2 removal agents.

And, it involves burning coal, natural gas, & petroleum in various forms.

Unfortunately, this is no longer safe or sustainable. It most certainly is not in the United States. And, it is definitely not safe anywhere in the world.

Unless we switch quite soon to renewable fuels, we face a global economic collapse that will make the depression of the 1930's seem like a fun time in the park by comparison. This is on course to happen. The only question is how soon. Better technology & effort may make this more like 60 years from now than 30. But the risk is quite real regardless of the timeline.

Unfortunately, there are several worse problems from this dependence -- some of which are already here or beginning to arrive in force.

As the world population grows & the economies of the world's nations grow -- & as long as we depend on these energy sources, the costs will continue to rise with the increased demand. This will act as a brake on economic growth & also on the current level of our economies.

This is already happening.

Also, it already is making the world unstable & dangerous politically by intensifying the competition between nations for this kind of energy reserves & empowering unstable governments who happen to have reserves.

This is already severely threatening the security & safety of the United States, its economy, & its people.

Then there is the really dangerous problem that is even more of a grave concern.

We may have already put more CO2 into our world's air than is safe. And, in most places, the amount of CO2 we are adding each year is rising rapidly.

This is definitely changing our weather in economically damaging ways. That is still in the early stages but is already threatening our economy.

Even worse, though I've not seen a timeline on it, the time will come when people who have evolved as we have will not be able to breathe the outside air. That would solve the population problem. But the survivors would only care about that if there are any.

The good news is:

that by using large solar thermal & solar photovoltaic energy generation in large & appropriate places and dispersed solar photovoltaic on roofs all over the world, we have the ability to completely replace our dependence on burning carbon as a driver of our economy.

& that this is becoming massively more doable as technologies already online & in development are used.

& that this is, albeit MUCH too slowly, already beginning to happen.

Adding wind power & vastly improved battery technology & other safe, renewable sources will make this more doable & reliable.

The other thing is that we desperately need to make our use of energy much more efficient.

This will make it sooner that we can do everything with renewable energy. And, it will help us buy time to get enough solar generation in place.

This too is beginning to happen; & new technologies are coming online. So far, it's been too little too late.

Our blog & upcoming website are dedicated to acting as an extra catalyst to accelerate these positive trends.

Both of us live in the Silicon Valley of California. And, many of the companies that are already providing the technologies & tools to make this happen are here.

So we see hopeful signs. But we need badly to pick up the pace & accelerate these changes.