Friday, March 18, 2011

Let's find better ways to get energy

We've had a couple of really earth-shattering environmental disasters less than a year apart -- the oil "spill" in the Gulf of Mexico and now this radiation crisis from Japan. It's as if God Himself were shaking us by the shoulders and saying, look -- stop raping the Earth for her oil and uranium. It's not sustainable and you're poisoning the planet by creating energy this way!

In the scope of human history, it wasn't really that long ago when all the world's shipping was done using the power of the wind. Windmills and waterwheels have been around for centuries. This is localized energy generation. This is called, working *with* the Earth instead of against her. What we have now is a highly centralized system, where we have a bunch of monopolies controlling all the power, creating nasty by-products like carbon monoxide and nuclear waste in the process. Common sense tells me it shouldn't have to be this way. Human beings are smart enough to create and use localized power generators. Why can't all the world's scientists get together and work on this problem? The major stumbling block, it would seem, is "who would fund it?" After all, no one company owns the rights to the wind, the sun, and the waves.

But you know, we better find a way to fund it, because we're in the middle of one hell of a wake-up call right now.

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