Congress Approves Clean Energy Provisions of Stimulus; Consistent With Apollo Economic Recovery Act
In an earlier post, I said I believe the availability of renewable, clean energy is the most important issue facing us at this time. A major component of the Stimulus package passed by congress this weekend was investment in clean energy. Of the $800 billion approved by congress, over $115 billion is allocated to clean energy investments which are consistent with the comprehensive measures proposed in the New Apollo Program. For a good summary of the initiatives included in the Stimulus package for energy related investment see the summary on the Apollo Alliance website.
February 18th, 2009 at 10:18 am
I agree, providing energy supplies for the future, especially ones that don’t vastly complicate our lives by devastating the planet, is THE biggest issue we face. It’s physics and therefore inarguable. Every life form is limited by the amount of energy they can capture and elaborate. Most life forms capture solar energy only, and elaborate it only into complex biochemicals as part of their bodies. We are unique in our various uses for energy, and also in the fact that we have found ways to exploit the stored solar energy of millions of years (fossil fuels), but it is still just elaboration of energy, in the end. Energy that we capture from the sun or exploit as stored energy forms the basis of all our lives, and allows us to to create everything we have, that we call civilization.
Just as the economy is collapsing in great part because we are trying to spend much more than we earn, so our civilization - and our sustained population - will begin to collapse as the supply of energy becomes more and more constrained. Wealth, life, and energy are intimately interrelated. If we wish our children to have more than the annual budget of energy that we currently capture form the sun - which only fills a fraction of our energy needs - then we must assign a sizable portion of our wealth and energy resources to creating infrstructure that will capture more solar energy (in the form of harvesting the sun directly through PVC, solar hot water, and wind, wave and other forms, as well as geothermal which is the only viable long term source of non-solar energy).
However the truth is, we can’t replace all the energy we currently get from fossil fuels with renewable energy. We are starting too late; we simply will not commit the level of resources needed; there are too many of us. An enormous job needs to be done in conservation and retooling our lifestyles to begin living within a reasonable energy budget. I’m skeptical we can pull this off but we have to try.