Fixing the World...

Sometimes you have to see something a number of times before your brain kicks in. This is the premise of advertising; they believe that you get the impact of the ad on about the 12th or 13th viewing. Tonight I saw a blip from a news story about third world and developing nation having increasing energy demands that may impact the availability and price of energy for all nations. The item focused on someone saying how we needed to make some changes in our usage.

The synapses finally fired. I recall discussions of the total penetration of cellular phones in Scandinavian countries being driven by the problems of constructing traditional infrastructure, and how they ultimately were able to skip the wired step and go right to wireless in reaching difficult locations.

Then I recall that the island of Madagascar is nearly denuded of its once-thick forests because the ever-increasing population keeps chopping them down for firewood, for simple heat and cooking.

Then I think of China, a number of other countries, and the US itself constructing or planning new energy-generation facilities using traditional fuels. Xcel Energy just fired up a new plant that uses natural gas for fuel; this replaced an old coal-fired plant whose 570-foot chimney was imploded the other day. The new gas-fired plant went into construction before natural gas prices doubled and more.

The technology exists to produce energy from so many other sources: solar, which has been badly handled instead of avidly pushed; wind, which is huge in many countries and is blocked by such concerns as the blades on the turbines kill birds; geothermal; tidal, such as with the Bay of Fundy with its 40-foot tide swings; and hydroelectric, which works incredibly well with small impoundments as well as with the misguided dammings in the desert. Not to say nuclear, which is on the upsurge for traditional reactors as well as the new pebble reactors.

Where are the developed nations, where are the environmental NGOs, where is the US with its vaunted inventive and innovative powers - about all we have left as a leadership position now that we've suffered the Bush Presidency - in taking these technologies to the rest of the world, helping them to avoid our mistakes, avoid the expense of infrastructure that's fated to be obsolete before it's built out, avoid the unnecessary expenditure of limited capital? If China has to spend a, well, shit-ton (that's technical language for a whole bunch) of money on new energy generation, why aren't they skipping the bad tech step and grabbing onto the new?

When I think that nothing's happening on the energy front, I remember all the wind turbines I saw in the Netherlands as we flew into Schiphol Airport. Hundreds! Now, they may simply be powering the pumps that keep the sea at bay, and with global warming they may need twice as many and more before they light a single new bulb on dry land, but they weren't any more obtrusive on the landscape than warehouses or cell towers and they gave me hope.

Then, of course, if we can save the developing world some grief and some money by helping them skip forward to the new alternative energies, why can't we make that happen right at home?