Sounding very much like the 1970s relic and huckster, est founder Werner Erhard, Barack Obama has this to say about energy, "We cannot be afraid of the future. And we must not be prisoners of the past." It's Year Zero in Obama's America--Oh, who coined that term? Why, it was the most evil man of the 1970s, Pol Pot.
The Atlantic is in a '70s mood too, and it looked back at one of its 1970s features about alternative energy--back then it was the hot science, the sexy place for the geniuses of the day. After all, NASA was so '60s....
The Atlantic cover story went on to examine emerging technologies, like solar energy, that lay at the heart of phyicist Amory Lovins's vision. While refraining from outright prediction, the author’s hopes were clear. In 1977, the country appeared poised on the brink of a new age, with recent events having organized themselves in such a way as to make a clean-energy future seem tantalizingly close at hand. A charismatic Democrat had come from nowhere to win the White House. Reacting to an oil shock and determined to rid the country of Middle East entanglements, he was touting the merits of renewable energy and, for the first time, putting real money into it— $368 million.
But things peaked soon afterward, when Jimmy Carter installed solar panels on the roof of the White House. "A generation from now," Carter declared, "this solar heater can either be a curiosity, a museum piece, an example of a road not taken—or it can be a small part of one of the greatest and most exciting adventures ever undertaken by the American people; harnessing the power of the sun to enrich our lives as we move away from our crippling dependence on foreign oil."
Now we have our answer: museum piece. In one of the great acts of humiliating political symbolism, Ronald Reagan tore down the solar panels, which spent many years in purgatory before eventually finding their way to the Jimmy Carter Library and Museum in Atlanta, where they sit on display in silent reproach to all who drive Hummers and own high-wattage plasma television sets.
It's a long article--well worth reading, and The Atlantic comes out largely in favor of wind energy, but ignores the biggest problem with it. As I write this post, a window is open, sometimes the wind whooshes past me, sometimes it doesn't. Wind is never consistent. Keep in mind its windier at night, when most people are sleeping, and energy is difficult to store, and late afternoon is when the most energy is needed. Peaker plants help alleviate that problem, but they are working with consistent energy sources such as coal and uranium.
No one owns wind, but wind turbine are expensive to build and maintain. Unless tax breaks allow wind, like the con known as ethanol, to survive economically, wind will at best be a supplement to our energy needs.
But emember: When some pay less in taxes, you pay more.
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