The Oil Drum

There is several orders of magnitude more solar energy falling on the earth's surface each day than we use as a species so far. Energy availability is not the issue. Capture and conversion to useful forms is the issue. Furthermore, while I know that some people here diss the space program, serious studies have been done about increasing the captured solar energy from earth orbiting power stations and beaming that energy back to the ground as low intensity microwaves. None of thid involves creating energy, just capturing it. So go figure - we already have more energy hitting the earth's surface than we use from fossil fuels. And we already have the know-how to even expand upon that to capture more solar energy in the near earth region.

So what's the problem? The problem we have is not in capturing available renewable energy. The problem we have is one of mindset, of psychology, and of deliberately choosing to begin going down a road towards a renewable sustainable lifestyle. This problem is not only about energy. It's also about the myth of endless growth (which must stop) and that includes the endless growth of human population.

Even at 6 billion people, we have the knowledge to make the world a sustainable place. It would be very very different from the culture in which we live today but it doesn't have to be medieval serfdom or mad max. We just have to choose to do it. The sad thing is that so far we have actively refused to deal with these issues, especially the myth of endless growth being sustainable.