{"id":7398,"date":"2014-01-13T14:50:19","date_gmt":"2014-01-13T19:50:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/?p=7398"},"modified":"2014-01-13T14:53:36","modified_gmt":"2014-01-13T19:53:36","slug":"actually-green-solar-power-is-winning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2014\/01\/actually-green-solar-power-is-winning.html","title":{"rendered":"Actually, green solar power is winning"},"content":{"rendered":"

\r\nAn article that dismisses without investigation the fastest\r\ngrowing industry in the world, solar power, after solar has become\r\n\r\ncheaper than any other energy source<\/a>, is not a serious article.\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nRichard Smith wrote for Truthout 9 January 2014,\r\n\r\nGreen Capitalism: The God That Failed<\/a>.\r\nSure,\r\nthere are lots of good points in there (such as we need a carbon tax,\r\nbut it’s not enough), but given that\r\n\r\nonly 90 companies account for 2\/3 of GHG emissions<\/a>\r\nsaying we can’t change that without crashing the world’s economy is\r\nlike saying we can’t deal with horse manure in cities in 1900 without\r\ncrashing the world’s economy, and\r\n\r\npeople did say things like that back then<\/a>.\r\n

\r\nMost of the world’s oil and gas is used to produce power,\r\nso once we\r\n\r\nconvert to solar and wind<\/a>,\r\nwe’ll have plenty of remaining petroleum for other uses\r\nsuch as lubrication.\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nSaying in 2014 that solar and wind can’t power the world is like\r\nsaying in 1994 that the Internet couldn’t become the main form of\r\ncommunication for the world, and people did say that.\r\n\r\n“Allison, can you explain what the Internet is?”<\/a>\r\nThere are already\r\n\r\nmore jobs in solar than in coal, or in non-managerial oil and gas extraction<\/a>.\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\n1994, by the way,\r\n\r\nwas the year Japan finally changed its laws<\/a>\r\nto facilitate domestic Japanese Internet companies.\r\nI was there, and saw the lines stretched across the huge new\r\nconference center north of Tokyo to get CDs with Internet software.\r\nAnd 2013 was the year formerly all-powerful Georgia Power and\r\nSouthern Company lost big-time at the Georgia PSC,\r\nwhich forced Georgia Power to buy twice as much solar power.\r\nThe same GA PSC later refused to even entertain a solar connection tax.\r\n

\r\nJapan now has Internet access ten to a hundred times faster\r\nthat costs less than the slow stuff we have in the U.S.\r\nWe can get on with solar and wind power here, or the rest of the world\r\nwill do it first.\r\nOh, wait, that’s already happening in Germany and Netherlands and….\r\nThe U.S. will catch up, because U.S. companies will eventually demand\r\nU.S. utilities change.\r\n

\r\nAnd for what “eventually” means, think personal computers,\r\nthe Internet, mobile phones, and smart phones, each happening faster.\r\nSolar photovoltaic prices are being driven down and deployments up\r\nby\r\n\r\nthe same technological and economic factors<\/a>\r\nthat drove those previous waves.\r\nJust look at\r\n\r\nNorth Carolina<\/a>, where you can’t even drive down I-95\r\nwithout seeing\r\n\r\na solar farm<\/a>\r\nwith\r\n\r\nlots more coming<\/a>.\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nWe can wait for Richard Smith’s revolution to come while the world cooks,\r\nor we can work right now to remove barriers to solar deployment and stop\r\nfossil fuel and nuclear boondoggles.\r\nYou want a revolution?\r\nStart by taking away the fossil fuel funding that’s corrupting government.\r\n

\r\nYes, we can\r\n\r\npower the world with solar and wind<\/a>.\r\nAnd we can do it\r\nvery fast<\/a>,\r\nwith\r\n\r\nsolar overtaking every other power source in the U.S. within a decade<\/a>;\r\nso fast\r\n\r\nyour jaw may drop<\/a>.\r\nAnd we can do it while improving everyone’s quality of life\r\nwith cheaper and more reliable power using less resource extraction.\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nActually, as I wrote\r\n\r\nalmost two years ago<\/a>,\r\nbefore\r\n\r\nMoody’s verified the U.S. version of the European carbon bubble<\/a>,\r\nbefore\r\n\r\nelectric utility think-tank Edison Electrical Institute<\/a>\r\nannounced distributed solar power was already eating utilities’\r\nafternoon siesta,\r\nand before\r\n\r\nmore than ten nukes were shut down or cancelled<\/a>:\r\n

\r\nCoal is dead. Nuclear is going down. Solar will eat the lunch of utilities that don’t start generating it. \r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nAs\r\n\r\nKathleen Rogers and Danny Kennedy wrote in EcoWatch a year ago<\/a>:\r\n

\r\nRenewables are Winning, Nukes are Dead, and Coal is Crashing\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\nThe solar sun is rising, even on Georgia.\r\n

\r\n -jsq\r\n<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An article that dismisses without investigation the fastest growing industry in the world, solar power, after solar has become cheaper than any other energy source, is not a serious article. Richard Smith wrote for Truthout 9 January 2014, Green Capitalism: The God That Failed. Sure, there are lots of good points in there (such as […]","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[216,14,19,104,559,23,24,36],"tags":[7384,8753,8704,860,8701,8709,2435,8702,12,7,7385,7280,8737,8782,4309,8713,8714,2254,6,8716],"class_list":["post-7398","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-coal","category-economy","category-history","category-nuclear","category-oil","category-renewable-energy","category-solar","category-wind","tag-capitalism","tag-coal","tag-economy","tag-gas","tag-georgia","tag-history","tag-horse","tag-lake","tag-lowndes-area-knowledge-exchange","tag-lowndes-county","tag-lubrication","tag-manure","tag-nuclear","tag-oil","tag-petroleum","tag-renewable-energy","tag-solar","tag-sun","tag-valdosta","tag-wind"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p585fK-1Vk","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7398","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7398"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7398\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7402,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7398\/revisions\/7402"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7398"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7398"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7398"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}