While storms and hurricanes are normal, Frankenstorms are not. Global climate change caused by human dumping of carbon dioxide into the air causes severe weather. We can only hope to slow down the processes whereby more and more extreme weather is produced by more and more carbon dioxide. In the meantime, we have to go green as quickly as posible. Here are some good news stories in that regard:
A new study in Europe finds that wind and solar are the least expensive ways to generate electricity, if you take into account the environmental damage caused by natural gas, coal and oil. By 2020 they’ll be the least expensive in absolute terms
Saudi Arabia wants to produce all its electricity from wind, solar and other renewables by 2030, and to keep its vast oil reserves for external export markets.
Last week in Oregon, wind turbines generated more electricity than did dams, for the first time in history.
Maryland’s largest solar power plant will produce 20 megawatts of electricity by the end of this year, bringing Maryland’s green-energy total to 100 megawatts. It had been almost nothing in 2006. Maryland has a plan to generate 20% of its energy from renewables by 2020, which is way too timid. If we are going to avoid the worst effects of climate change and the severe whether it causes, our goals have to be more ambitious.
A new wind energy farm in Nebraska is set to generate enough electricity to power 25,000 homes. The Midwest in the US is especially suited to wind power generation.
No fair! Saudi Arabia does not get to be Saudi Arabia and the Saudi Arabia of solar.
– joe, the Saudi Arabia of geopolitical whining
And we have a serious threat to win the Presidency in the form of a man who says cars can’t run on wind power.
Cut the military 20% and employ and train all related people
to carpet bomb this country with solar and wind and a totally new electrical grid.
No time to waste. The die off is underway and the most humane thing we can do to sloe it is to act with warp speed.
Ed Patton
Yakima WA
1509-2481838
The saudis’ are smarter than we give them credit for. This whole notion of energy independence is wrong-minded; we shoulld drain the Middle-East dry before we use a drop of American oil, when they are out of oil, our problems in that secton of the world are logarithmically diminished.
But can anything be done when people like the Koch brothers can dump heaven-knows-how many-dollars in to political campaigns and buy policies?