Yuk! Fossil Fuels.

I have said it again and again and will continue to do so…….there is no human health without environmental health! 

How could we possibly expect to be healthful if we keep trashing the planet?

Our flowering friend here under a snowfall speaks volumes!

Seriously…… 

A concerted, monumental transition from coal, oil, natural gas and nuclear power plants to ecologically friendly solar power is absolutely necessary. 

This switch could supply 69 percent of the U.S.’s electricity and 35 percent of its total energy by 2050 (or more depending on innovations). Check out this well written Scientific American article, A Solar Grand Plan: By 2050 solar power could end U.S. dependence on foreign oil and slash greenhouse gas emissions. 

They point out that the potential of solar energy is absolutely astonishing! The energy of sunlight striking the earth for a mere 40 minutes is equivalent to annual global energy consumption. An entire year!

In the U.S. we are endowed with a quarter million square miles in the southwest which receives greater than 4,500 quadrillion British Thermal Units (BTU’s) of solar radiation annually. Converting 2.5% of this energy would match the energy consumption of the U.S. in 2006.

The federal government would have to invest differently than it does now, but the return is much more substantive.  What a boost to our economy! Just what we need!!!

Well, what are we waiting for? 

High prices for gasoline and home heating oil are absolutely here to stay. Globally, we have reached peak oil and our patterns for accessing fossil fuels are becoming more and more costly and more and more destructive. The U.S.is at war in the Middle East, at least in part, for the protection of foreign oil interests. China, India and other rapidly developing nations continue to consume fossil fuels at exponential rates. This trend is sure to add complexities, disagreements, and continued environmental atrocities to the table.

In the meanwhile, companies and power plants operative on coal, oil and natural gas, as well as personal vehicles the world over, continue to ravage our environment as they pour millions of tons of pollutants and greenhouse gases into the atmosphere annually. 

I mean seriously, they are blowing the tops off of mountains throughout my homelands of Appalachia. As if this is not bad enough, these companies then dump their toxic waste into local streams. My people and forests suffer! Horrible, absolutely horrible! Check out this article on Mountain Top Removal in the Boston Globe.

We need to act fact in influencing each other and in turn our policy makers and business!

Change emanates from within and starts at home!

Comments

[Mike Litt]

Hooray for the Solar Grand Plan! The authors have started a website to popularize the plan which they call the American Solar Action Plan (A.S.A.P.): www.solarplan.org.

We need to inform every environmental organization and every congressman and senator about the Solar Grand Plan. And we need to make sure that Al Gore gets the message!