{"id":15034,"date":"2012-12-11T14:30:25","date_gmt":"2012-12-11T20:30:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/techcitement.com\/?p=15034"},"modified":"2013-02-07T14:21:14","modified_gmt":"2013-02-07T20:21:14","slug":"solar-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/techcitement.com\/culture\/politics\/solar-2\/","title":{"rendered":"The Future’s Bright! The Future’s … What, Exactly?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Part two – be sure to read “The Future’s Bright! The Future’s Danish<\/a>?” before you dive in. You’ll be glad you did.<\/em><\/p>\n

America is a great and blessed nation, abundant in natural resources, purple-capped mountain majesties, swaying fields of wheat, and whatever other romanticized notions you want to paint your wagon with. What it also has are huge coastlines, rivers, vast plains, deserts, and wind. Perfect for large-scale renewable energy creation.<\/p>\n

While Europe has partaken in the pleasures of the harbor, America in comparison is skirting around dark alleyways, airport toilets, oil-slicked parking lots at night, and indulging in funny handshakes in secret rooms.<\/p>\n

America\u2019s renewable energy generation has been slowly increasing, reaching 13 percent in early 2011. Considering that its previous peak was 11 percent in 1998, it has been a slow creep from 2001\u2019s low of 7 percent. States like California, Iowa, and North Dakota get more than 10 percent of their power from wind, solar, and geothermal sources. A low 3 percent of the nation\u2019s power comes from wind power alone. America is also home to the world\u2019s biggest solar-thermal power plants in the Mojave desert, near Las Vegas. Recently opened Sheperds Flat Wind Farm in Oregon is the largest wind farm in the world, producing 845 MW. Google funded $100 million of the investment in the wind farm and have spent another $250 million in other renewable energy projects.<\/p>\n

It’s oddly quixotic for America to view renewable energy in such a negative light given its history of projects like the Grand Coulee Dam in 1933, the Hoover Dam in 1936, or the Niagara Falls hydroelectric plant dating back to 1881. Projects like Solar One were developed in the 1970s under the Carter administration, which also installed solar panels on the roof of the White House. At the dedication ceremony in 1979, Jimmy Carter said:<\/p>\n

In the year 2000 this solar water heater behind me, which is being dedicated today, will still be here supplying cheap, efficient energy … A generation from now, this solar heater can either be a curiosity, a museum piece, an example of a road not taken or it can be just a small part of one of the greatest and most exciting adventures ever undertaken by the American people.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So, what was the turning point for Europe and America? Why did one go forward and the other backwards?<\/p>\n

\"An<\/a>

Image Source: Invisible Themepark<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

In 1986, the Reagan administration removed the panels and gutted the R&D budget for the Department of Energy. The administration eliminated tax breaks for wind turbines and solar energy, and it doubled down on importing foreign oil. In an ongoing series of political negative doublespeak, “renewable energy” started to be called “alternative energy,” with all that is implied.<\/p>\n

Europe has been gradually and more firmly moving away from nuclear power after the Chernobyl disaster when a huge radioactive cloud drifted over northern Europe, dumping fallout across the entirety of Northern Europe and killing 10,000 people. Over the last 15 to 20 years, the effects of global climate change (call it global warming if you want, and I\u2019ll call you an ambulance) have been more pronounced throughout Europe with unprecedented floods, forest fires, shortened and missing summers, and exaggerated snowfalls in the winter.<\/p>\n

\"Icicles<\/a>

Image Source: AP \/ Guardian UK<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

The year 2003 alone saw a heatwave that killed 50,000 people across Europe, killing over 14,000 in Paris alone. At least 30 people died in America this summer<\/a>. This year alone has seen snow fall on Central London in early December — something that has never happened in 40 years — and record cold weather earlier in 2012 saw hundreds of deaths in Eastern Europe as temperatures plummeted to -30 degrees. These haven’t been freak events, as one U.S, news pundit dubbed Hurricane Sandy, but a series of interconnected problems that have been gradually escalating within the space of one generation. And unlike America, the 24 hour news cycle hasn’t fully eroded people’s memories and attention spans in Europe, no matter how many British Royals get pregnant.<\/p>\n

It has only been since around 2005 that solar power generation has been undertaken seriously in the United States, with numerous 500 MW generation plants being built. California is currently considering feed-in tariffs (that have been proven to be successful in Germany, Denmark, and the UK), to be followed by Hawaii and Michigan. Energy companies such as PG&E have voiced stiff opposition to such tariffs.<\/p>\n

In recent years, political groups have created scandals out of thin air to discredit renewable energy. One such whipping boy used by various politicians has been Solyndra. A Californian company producing thin-film solar cells that received $535 million in government loans in 2008, based on applications made in 2005 under the Bush administration. However, early 2008 saw the price of polysilicon dropping sharply. North America had a large influx of natural gas reserves around the same time from shale gas. The Chinese government started to aggressively invest in the silicon open market, floating some $14 billion. Solyndra, and several other U.S.-based companies, found itself unable to compete. Coupled with ambitious over-expansion and spending, and poor management, the company fell into bankruptcy in 2011. The drop in the market also tore down several other companies, like Beacon Power and Konarka, placing them in the hands of private equity firms.
\n
\nThe three biggest opponents to renewable energy have been the oil, coal, and natural gas lobbies, who have paid billions to politicians to make sure energy policies go their way. These three quantify as the fifth largest lobbying group in the U.S., which is more than defense, agriculture, transportation, spending over $3 billion between 1998 and 2010. Lobbyist Jack Abramoff said to NPR in 2011<\/a> that:<\/p>\n

\n

Access is vital in lobbying. If you can’t get in your door, you can’t make your case. Here we had a hostile senator, whose staff was hostile. And we had to get in. So that’s the lobbyist safecracker method, is raise money and become a big donor.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Four percent of U.S. coal mined is exported and of 90 percent is used exclusively for power generation. Following Hurricane Katrina, a high-profile marketing campaign was launched by several companies announcing \u201cclean coal\u201d (despite the fact there is nothing remotely clean about coal as it’s simply transferring one waste stream to another).<\/p>\n

\"Coal<\/a>

Image Source: Treehugger.com<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

The year 2005 saw the W. Bush administration consulting with Exxon regarding its stance on the Kyoto protocol.<\/p>\n

In briefing papers given before meetings to the US under-secretary of state, Paula Dobriansky, between 2001 and 2004, the administration is found thanking Exxon executives for the company’s ‘active involvement’ in helping to determine climate change policy, and also seeking its advice on what climate change policies the company might find acceptable.\u00a0 [The Guardian<\/a>]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In 2006, oil and gas companies spent over $19 millon on political campaigns, with the biggest spenders being also among the top-ranked polluters, including General Electric, Conoco, and Exxon. Some of these businesses have actively interfered with more than just American politics: According to the International Sustainable Energy Organization for Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency, the second World Climate Conference in 1990 “was sabotaged by the USA and oil lobbies.” This $19 million has borne bountiful fruit. U.S. government grants somewhere in the vastly wide region of $10 to 50 billion of tax subsidies go to these companies every year. And these figures don’t account for ecological costs of these industries to governments. At least another $120 billion in health-related costs is coughed up from the public purse.<\/p>\n

During the fourteenth session of the United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development, the International Institute for Sustainable Development Bulletin reported, “One minister is said to have challenged the North\u2019s renewable energy lobby with the words: why not ‘light up’ the dark zones of the world by ‘extinguishing some of the candles’ in yours?”<\/p>\n

A major policy change that has happened in Europe — and needs to be the way out for America — is decentralization of energy production, as well as removal of lobbying groups from their positions of financial and political power regarding the future of renewable power. Lobbyists dictate government policies, they use their advertising to influence the public, and they operate with little or no oversight, with much of their lobbying money going to influence policies that would seek to reduce it even further.<\/p>\n

It will be hard to envision a future with plentiful gadgets if the power to supply them comes from resources that simultaneously destroy it, whether that means pollutants from coal, polluted groundwater from shale gas fracking, oil-rig explosions, reactor leaks, or oil tanker spills. Leaders of industry — not just energy, but transport and countless others — can’t continue to deny, ignore, and lobby against the reality that surrounds us daily. Japanese car manufacturer Mazda doesn’t plan on “relying on vehicles that are strictly dedicated to meeting environmental needs.” That’s pretty much a “screw you” from the automotive sector who persist in building bigger, heavier, and less economical vehicles<\/p>\n

As an aside, the first car I drove was a Ford Aspire. It would get 30+ mpg in 1995. Ford discontinued the Aspire in 2000, and their next small car, the Focus, gets a paltry 24 mpg. To add to this contrast, the 1995 Honda Civic got 39 mpg, but the 2005 Honda Civic gets 29 mpg. Contemporary hybrids get little more gas mileage than regular gas-powered cars from two decades before.<\/p>\n

While wind and solar power is slowly advancing, the political desire is weakened by greed, the lure of fast profit, and reliance on outmoded forms of generation. By the ease that Greenwashing has taken place, and the public\u2019s complacent acceptance that they are somehow to blame. Nuclear power is proven to be a fool\u2019s game that has taken repeated disasters for nations to realize this while their leaders continue to insist on the plants’ safety. Shale gas — the new, exciting, high-profit exploitable resource of the 21st Century — is potentially an ecological minefield of disasters. Ethanol requires hectares of arable land and more energy used in its production than it can create.<\/p>\n

\"Deepwater<\/a>

Image Source: US Coast Guard Photography Archive<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

You can have the best of all possible futures, but only if the desire to profit from the worst parts is stricken from the equation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Part two – be sure to read “The Future’s Bright! The Future’s Danish?” before you dive in. You’ll be glad you did. America is a great and blessed nation, abundant in natural resources, purple-capped mountain majesties, swaying fields of wheat, and whatever other romanticized notions you want to paint your wagon with. What it also […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":32,"featured_media":15080,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[905,907,908,730,906],"tags":[3686,3684,784,3666,3667,3664,3663,3668,2759,3662,1259,3685,3665],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/techcitement.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15034"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/techcitement.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/techcitement.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/techcitement.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/32"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/techcitement.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15034"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/techcitement.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15034\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15152,"href":"https:\/\/techcitement.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15034\/revisions\/15152"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/techcitement.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15080"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/techcitement.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15034"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/techcitement.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15034"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/techcitement.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15034"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}