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If you look up alternative energy technology you’ll find articles of hope.  Energy freedom is a term to be  embraced.  I once lived in  a home we heated with a wood burning stove. heating our Wisconsin home cost nothing more than the price of a chainsaw.  It was a lot of work and I do prefer flipping a switch to stoking a wood burning stove at 2 am,  if the source of energy at the other end of that switch isn’t harming our exquisite planet.

Do you think there are energy sources out there for our near future that won’t harm the planet?   Michael Parfit writes for the National Geographic.  He has researched energy alternatives and summarized his findings nicely.  To read the entire article for yourself go to…

http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0508/feature1/text3.html

He states…

the world’s concern over energy has haunted presidential speeches, congressional campaigns, disaster books, and my own sense of well-being with the same kind of gnawing unease that characterized the Cold War.

Martin Hoffert of NYU discussed on PBS.org…

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/warming/beyond/

If you were to transplant someone from 100 years ago into the year 2000, the things we do now would certainly seem magical to them.  We’re only limited by the creativity of our scientific imagination and by our will to try to find the solution.

Professor Hoffert opens eyes and minds.  He explained that most of the technological advances of the last 100 years were driven by the military and by fear.  The market (on the other hand) will only support technology if it shows a profit within 3 years.

He introduced some pretty fantastic scenarios of mining uranium and platinum from other planets and bringing it back here to power our fuel cells and nuclear reactors. There is also an idea that would only work if us planet dwellers got along and worked together.   The idea involves the dark side of the planet buying energy from the sunny side.  Space based solar collectors would collect energy from the sun and send it to us and our switches.  I am all for anything that doesn’t involve me chopping wood or harming the planet.

What professor Hoffert proposes is a policy in which developed nations initiate programs of research and development for dramatically and drastically transformative systems of energy production on the Earth. Not all of these are going to work. But the ones that are successful – and there is a possibility that several of them might be successful in some combination — will totally transform our civilization and bring us into changes that are as dramatic as the changes that took place between the end of the 19th and the end of the 20th centuries.

This is so exciting!  Who wouldn’t be excited about a new renewable energy future. Especially after watching newscasts of dead or dying pelicans smothered in oil and that sad dolphin that gasped its last breath on national television.

There is a facility of  smart people assembled by the US government called The National Renewable Energy Laboratory. http://www.nrel.gov/.  Go to their website and just peruse the great things going on there. I just wish they had more influence on the market.

Hitting us in the pocket seems to be the only way to inspire us to conserve resources.  There are just too many of us and resources are getting scarce.  We have to go farther out to sea to find oil, we have to spend more money to have clean water fall from our taps. Some of us care about leaving a clean and livable planet to our offspring and others of us just don’t want prices to go up in the immediate sense because of “scary global warming crap” they say is made up by governments to control us.  I say the market makes up garbage propaganda to control us into buying what they are selling.  (You don’t need Febreze if you keep your house clean).

Derek Thompson a staff editor at Atlantic Business states,  When something is free, you tend to use more of it. It’s true for buffets and open bars, and it’s the same with carbon. Today producers and consumers can burn coal and drive gas-guzzlers without fully paying for their contribution to rising carbon dioxide levels. Carbon emissions have a cost, but carbon emitters don’t pay the price. Economists call this a “market failure.” You can call it, “a recipe for toasting the planet.”

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2010/06/why-carbon-pricing-matters/58386/

I just threw this little guy in here because he is so damn cute…

Second-generation biofuels use biomass-to-liquid technology, they include cellulosic biofuels from non-food crops.   http://bioenergycenter.org/what-is-bioenergy/

Bio energy is my personal favorite and our National Bioenergy Center is doing wonderful things to change us from having to continue with oil drilling and coal mining and shale blasting for fossil fuels.  Folks in Haiti made a living chopping wood until there were no more trees in Haiti, Folks in Afghanistan made a living growing poppies and selling Opiods to the point where the whole country is stoned and angry, Folks in the US and Canada have made a living in the fossil fuel industry for so long they are mortified of the idea of no more need for fossil fuels. They — and we need to move up. Many people I have met in the US are already living “off the grid”, with wind and solar.

The future of the planet and it’s ecosystem are more important than the stock market.  I believe that the truly smart players will be the ones figuring out how to make money from doing what is right for the planet.  Difficult step for those movers and shakers out there.  It will be a step up into the breezy sunshine.