The 19th of my 31 images of hope is Solar Power. It isn’t complicated. There is the sun. There is a wind generator. (It is not a windmill, since it is not grinding grain into flour.) There is a solar collector. This could represent either or both a photo-voltaic collector and/or a heat collector. Then there is a hydro-electric generating dam. These are all solar. It is the sun that causes the winds to blow and that evaporates the water for clouds to carry it inland to rain and feed the rivers, etc. Solar power is not alternative power. It is just power. Fossil fuels all started out as solar power. Plants and animals of bygone aeons lived on what the sun provided. Their remains got buried and digested in the earth in such a way as to yield concentrated, portable, ancient, solar energy. The thing is, this was likely a once in the life-cycle of the planet event. At least, it’s not going to happen again in the life-cycle of our so-called civilization.
For the last couple hundred years, we have been burning fossil fuels as if they were income, when they are really capital. What is even more foolish, is that governments, particularly the US government, have been subsidizing their consumption. Today (2018), if the US were to subsidize solar energy at an equal level that it does petroleum (to say nothing about the wars for it), it would be 20% cheaper. The price would only come down as usage increased. I don’t get why so-called capitalists, and so-called conservatives are so profligate that they do not conserve their capital. They burn it, while creating great deficits to do so. All the while refusing to lay the groundwork for us to live on our income, the sun. We should have been using this great find of fossil fuels to build solar collectors of various sorts to fuel the world’s technology cleanly. That was Edison’s vision. All these capitalists see is the next quarterly report for what they are doing now. So they rape the earth and pollute our water for one more drop of oil. What is the Middle East doing? They are building total, solar cities. Why? They know that the oil is about gone.
Our only hope to not literally drown ourselves and our children is to abandon fossil fuels now and commit totally to solar power like Pres. Jimmy Carter wanted to, 40 years ago. Let’s hope it’s not too late.
Painting is acrylic on 6″ x 6″ x 1.75″ stretched canvas.
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