Check out the world’s largest solar array planned for the Sahara Desert. About 20 German companies are looking into scattering panels throughout the region, eventually creating enough energy to power Europe.
Granted the $555 billion price tag is a bit daunting, but we spent more than that on the TARP bailout. GO EASY, I’m not saying we shouldn’t have done TARP, I’m merely making the point that if we really want it, we could change things in the USA pretty quickly.
But why is it that it seems that this type of big thinking only comes from Europe? And when we try to give tax breaks and other incentives for companies to make bold moves, the left complains that we’re favoring Big Business or the right claims Obama is a socialist?
In the words of
Hyman Roth in Godfather II, we need a “true partnership” between business and government (of course he was talking about pre-Castro Cuba partnering with the Mafia). Other countries are wooing clean energy business, innovation, manufacturing…the whole 9. And we can’t even get a
wind farm built off the shore of Cape Cod.
Wake up people. The sun is shining, but getting closer to setting.
By next year, hybrids could go the way of the 8-track tape: a relic of fast-moving technology. 2010 could see the first wave of “air cars”, or more specifically, “compressed air cars.” They could take you over 800 miles on a single fill-up, at speeds of up to 96 mph. They should refuel in less than 3 minutes, and at speeds over 35 mph emit about half the CO2 of a Toyota Prius.
Instead of me telling you about it, read
Gas 2.0. These look promising.
The blogger is back…for now. Still traditionally powered, but I’ll get to wind power in a moment.
Quick update: Working with my interactive agency,
Overdrive Interactive, it seems that as we change over this blog to my agency’s site (among other things in a project for my agency
Cercone Brown & Co.), I don’t have to stop writing. They can import all this content into the next version of Eco-Optimism automatically. And because they are moving this week to a new 10,000 ft. space, let’s just say I need to wait to get my move complete!
So without getting too much into that, thought I’d point out an encouraging sign for wind power in Massachusetts: The Boston Globe (still open for business!) today
reports that the National Guard is hoping/planning to construct 17 wind turbines on their Cape Cod base. The result would be 34 megawatts of power…just about enough to make the base self-powered.
But here’s the thing…to me it just underscores the need to move ahead on the
Cape Wind project that would build 130 turbines in Nantucket Sound. That’s nearly enough to power all of the Cape and the Islands, making this pristine part of coastal Massachusetts independent of existing power sources. And if this happens, could it be too long before we see more offshore wind farms? Seems a logical move these days.
We’ll keep an eye on it as the project moves forward.
