Forbes Magazine — not exactly your typical environmental magazine — says; “We could power the entire World by harnessing Solar Energy from 1% of the Sahara.” It goes on to say; “There is no way coal, oil, wind, geothermal, or nuclear can compete with this.” It’s not only Forbes making this kind of definitive statement, which closes the argument.
Over the last twenty or so years explanations of how this can be accomplished have been all over the internet. The one I like is called landartgenerator.org. It has a map of the planet showing prime regions where these solar stations can be built. It even shows our own little square in southwestern Canada — which looks to be about the same area as the Alberta Tar Sands. The Manhattan Project in World War II, and Nasa’s 60’s moonshot , are two examples of many in the history of human ingenuity, when resources and people were assembled in a big way to achieve an urgent and important goal. There is no genuine obstacle to doing the same thing again. According to the Forbes article, the cost of the Sahara project in 2016 was less than the Big Bank Bailout of 2008. When Notre Dame burned last week, a few out of touch billionaires raised a fortune to rebuild it. Why can’t the whole of humanity do the same for the entire planet? We have to ask ourselves what exactly would stop us from doing this? It’s time to cure the devastation that oil, coal, gas and hydroelectric have inflicted on the planet, which threaten to foreclose humanity’s future. If your MP or MLA isn’t supporting switching to solar, maybe he or she should not be re-elected come next election.
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