...on how you look at the problem.
Cover every roof in the United States with photovoltaics at today's efficiency levels and you'll generate roughly as much energy as the entire civilization consumes. And lots of places in the world have roofs other than just the United States....
But, though there's no problem with resource availability, there are two huge practical concerns. First, such a project would be massively expensive. Second, it generates electricity, which is not readily useable for transportation with today's infrastructure.
Neither of those problems are insurmountable. Though solar photovoltaics aren't cheap, they're not as expensive as many petrochemical alternatives being seriously considered, such as tar sands. That is, we might not be able to afford widespread PV adoption, true...but, if we can't afford it, we won't be able to afford anything else when the existing wells run dry.
(As a side note, we're already scraping the bottom of the oil barrel. Remember Deepwater Horizon? Imagine you're standing on the shore of the Colorado River in the middle of the Grand Canyon. A mile above you is the rim; that's how far below the ocean surface the wellhead was. Several miles above the rim is an airliner flying past. That's how far through solid rock the well was bored before it reached the oil deposits. That's how desperate we already are today for oil...loooooong gone are the days when you had to be careful in Texas with a pickaxe lest you start a gusher. Yes, we've got lots of oil left -- about half as much as the planet's total original reserves, in fact. But -- duh! -- we went for the easy-to-get-to, high-quality half first, and what's left increasingly fits the definition of, "dregs.")
The problem with transportation fuels is more pressing. At the very least, with enough input energy, you can extract CO2 from the atmosphere and turn it into fuel (via the Fischer-Tropsch process, for example) that you can put back into a tank to burn it again, so we have alternatives. The catch, of course, is that it takes a lot of excess energy to do so, and so won't be cheap.
TL/DR: Yes, we can run our society on solar power. No, it won't be cheap. No, we won't have any better alternatives. Yes, that means we're facing some tough times in the not-too-distant future.
Cheers,
b&
P.S. Even worse than the looming transportation fuel shortage is the looming petroleum-based fertilizer shortage. That double whammy is going to result in lots of people starving to death. b&
Source: http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/slashdot/eqWf/~3/P589UnRpDCQ/story01.htm
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From Your Health Journal?..?Always love articles from the Washington Post, and try to promote their site when possible. Today?s article review from The Post is called New bangs, Twitter feed, now what else will Michelle Obama do with 4 more years as first lady? Mrs. Obama has done an excellent job in the fight against childhood obesity, and should be commended for her work. She has brought attention to this issue, gotten many high profile people involved in her Let?s Move initiative, and has helped many families. Let?s Move! is a comprehensive initiative, launched by the First Lady, dedicated to solving the problem of obesity within a generation, so that children born today will grow up healthier and able to pursue their dreams. Sure, this is an ambitious goal. But with your help, we can do it. Combining comprehensive strategies with common sense, Let?s Move! is about putting children on the path to a healthy future during their earliest months and years. Giving parents helpful information and fostering environments that support healthy choices. Providing healthier foods in our schools. Ensuring that every family has access to healthy, affordable food. And, helping children become more physically active. But, now she has 4 more years in the White House, will she continue pushing the fight against childhood obesity or take on more causes? When Mrs. Obama was asked if she was interested in any more causes, she hinted towards woman?s health, but my guess, she will continue her fight against childhood obesity. If the wheels not broke, why fix it. Please visit The Washington Post site to read the complete article. The link is provided at the bottom of this page for their site, but I included a short snip from the article below.?
Megan Kaminski?s first book of poetry, Desiring Map, revels in landscapes and ecosystems ? both natural and manmade ? as well as the disturbances that assault them. Her poems are often characterized as quiet, but they?re wrought with a subtle violence, such as where, according to poet?Dan Thomas-Glass, the ?jet set?s excesses and the bleak horizontals of the mid-country clash to great effect.? Joshua Clover calls?Desiring Map,??a book that approaches us cannily, drenched in form, never word-spent and never without cocktails; a 21st century pleasure with a keen eye on the terrain and something to say.? Since I first encountered Megan?s poetry, I?ve been drawn to the intelligence, the linguistic precision, and the fascination with systems ? ecological, financial, neural ? that inform her writing. Megan teaches creative writing at the University of Kansas and also curates The Taproom Reading Series in Lawrence, recently named one of the top 10 reading series in the Midwest. Megan and I corresponded via email about Desiring Map, in a conversation that touched on ?our very weedy human appetites,? the slippery boundaries of ?I,? catastrophe theory, and?admiration for ?unflinching and unapologetic? female writers.
One of the texts that weighs heavily in my imaginative considering is Marilynne Robinson?s Housekeeping, which presents a kind of feral domesticity. There is, at least at the beginning of the novel, very much a sense of a domesticity that entails keeping a home spiritually and emotionally for one?s family in the face of loss. Even though Sylvie is obviously a horrible housekeeper in the traditional sense of keeping things clean and tidy, there is a sense of care and looking after. Of course, that all kind-of falls apart ? but there is that seed of an idea. And maybe this is part of the reason why I keep being interested in and coming back to this tension.
MK: In some ways it might seem conceptually strange to have a long poem about the economic crisis in a book that is largely concerned with a revision of the pastoral genre and of human possibility within nature. I think these things are all very much connected. The first poems in the book came out of my research and thinking about enclosures, both contemporary and historic. John Clare?s enclosure elegies were a source of inspiration, as were readings about contemporary enclosures and forms of resistance to this privatizing of the commons in Africa and South and Central America. Also playing into this were contemporary works like Lisa Robertson?s Debbie: An Epic (which in some ways revisits and revises Virgil?s pastoral mode) and Stephen Collis?s The Commons.
I also think that there are parts of our society (and in academia and in the literary community, too) that are still very conservative. There are some men and women who are still very uncomfortable with strong women and women?s voices that are unflinching and unapologetic. For me, though, these are some of the most vibrant and interesting writers. I?m thinking of some recent books that I have read that really stuck with me ? Cheryl Strayed?s Wild, Elissa Schappell?s Blueprints for Building Better Girls and Use Me, Kate Zambreno?s Heroines, Roxane Gay?s numerous essays (on her blog and other journals), and Lidia Yuknavitch?s gorgeous and brave essay, ?Explicit Violence.?
I?ve been reading a few Oakland poets recently ? and their work has really been sticking with me. I?m in love with Kathryn Pringle?s latest, fault tree (Omnidawn 2012), and also (perhaps, especially) her first book, RIGHT NEW BIOLOGY (Factory School, 2009). I?m working on a poetry manuscript and also some scholarly work about the body and the city/an ecopoetics of the city and so loved thinking about these things as I have been reading RIGHT NEW BIOLOGY. I am also very much enamored by Tiff Dressen?s chapbooks Messages and Because Icarus-children. And Juliana Spahr?s work continues to be some of the most important writing in terms of shaping my sense of possibilities both in terms of poetry and in terms of seeing/living in the world.?I?m teaching her book Well Then There Now (Black Sparrow 2011) in my poetry workshop next semester, and I am super enjoying revisiting it in preparation for that class.