“Drill baby, drill” didn’t work out very well for those folks along the Gulf Coast, did it?
And even if it had, those folks who still believe in drilling fail to realize that even if those companies had found more oil in the Gulf or in Alaska than the Royal House of Saud ever dreamed about, it will never help the average American one bit. In fact, that oil – drilled from public, tax-payer owned lands – will be put up for sale on the world market, where we’ll be forced to bid against China and Japan, with all the profits going straight into the pockets of the huge oil corporations who pay almost ZERO taxes towards the upkeep and maintenance of our country and don’t care much about our people – including the brave servicemen and women who are over in Iraq and Afghanistan protecting their interests.
At least taxpayers in Alaska get yearly royalty checks for oil company use of their public lands…but there’s a better solution coming up over the eastern horizon – literally.
And – not to wax poetic – the solution lies in revolution; a Solar Revolution, to be exact.
That’s the title of a book by Travis Bradford. It’s not a new book – MIT put it out about four years ago – but now that the political, social, environmental and particularly the economic consequences of America’s oil addiction are becoming painfully clear, this book is finally getting some traction. That last point is the most important because as marketplaces once again start functioning the way they’re supposed to – by meeting and serving real, human needs instead of gambling with “financial instruments” that even professional economists can’t figure out – the Solar Revolution is going to move forward by the efforts of small-scale entrepreneurs, motivated by good old fashioned self-interest.
Now, you’ve probably heard that solar technology is too expensive to be a viable alternative to oil and coal (and even hydroelectric, which exacts its own environmental costs). This may have been true at one time, but with current incentives, it’s not true today. After all, just think about what has happened with the personal computer over the last twenty years. Twenty years ago someone would pay between five and ten thousand dollars for a big machine that at best allowed you to do some word processing and play “Pong.” Today, you can get a high-end laptop that will fit into a small suitcase, allow you to watch movies, build virtual models and surf the World Wide Web for a couple hundred dollars.
According to Bradford (himself once one of those Wall Street buyout kings), this is what is going to happen within the next twenty years. Thanks to advancing solar technology that is getting cheaper by the day, by around 2030, the Solar Revolution will have created energy that is virtually free (something that’s really got those oil execs’ panties is a twist). Why? Because everyone’s home can be its own power plant. The new “energy grid” won’t be a grid at all; each individual home and building will have its own photovoltaic array to meet its users’ energy needs. It’s already happening in Germany, where people take out loans to install solar panels on their homes, which then pay for themselves over a few years as the owners sell their excess energy back to the utilities. It’s happening in Japan as well – and in Hawaii and the American Southwest, which Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) has aptly described as the “Saudi Arabia of Solar.”
Does this mean you should wait for solar technology to drop in price before you buy? No way, and here is why. Solar is affordable today because of government subsidies. (State and Federal) These subsidies are intended to drive demand up, which helps the solar manufacturing industry reach economies of scale, thus driving down the base price of solar. As prices drop, it is likely that the government subsidies will diminish in tandem with the price reductions. The net result is that you -the consumer -won’t really achieve any lower cost in the future than you can achieve right now. We suggest you do yourself a favor and switch to solar today because the bottom line cost to the consumer isn’t likely to get any better, any time soon, and you can reap a multitude of savings between now and the theoretical date Bradford suggests of 2030.
Recommended Reading: Go to your local library and check out Solar Revolution today, or order a copy online – used copies are going for as little as four bucks. (Remember to reuse and recycle)
