My most recent book, Bullish on Renewable Energy, offers 14 reasons that clean energy is rapidly replacing fossil fuels on the basis of pure market economics alone. One of my favorite chapters entitled “Cheap Solar” gets at the consequences of the ever-tumbling price of solar electricity.
Here’s an article that explains how this is happening far faster than experts predicted–even recently.
Next week features four meeting in Manhattan followed by motor trips to Eastern Massachusetts, Syracuse NY, and Washington DC for the annual ARPA-E show. Here, the Department of Energy gets to show off its many investments in clean energy—a conference I really hate to miss. Yes, I’m there to learn, but I’m always busy making contacts (our not-so-secret weapon in achieving our business goals.)
Of course, I’m a bit suspicious that the ARPA-E folks go out of their way to make their efforts appear more successful than they really are, but, to be fair, that’s pretty much the norm in the private sector as well. Been there. (more…)
Those who read the comments on this blog recognize frequent commenter MarcoPolo is a man whose position is that free market economics should be the only force guiding our civilization. Using his words, “Attempting to create a “moral” or “ideological” dynamic to any emerging technology is folly,” and he routinely expands that notion beyond “emerging technology” to include all other elements of social progress.
Note: this idea is an ideology in and of itself. It would be incorrect to say that it’s “wrong,” because it’s an opinion, like (more…)
It’s hard to keep in mind all the great ideas that our civilization’s most brilliant minds have produced. The one we chose for our 2GreenEnergy Instagram post today really hits at the core of how the good guys are going to win the battle for clean energy. The caption:
It’s easy to hate the oil companies for their prioritizing profits over the health and safety of all living creatures on Earth. But the way to succeed in making the oil industry disappear is to build a new reality, one that drives those following old practices out of business.
The 2GreenEnergy Instagram feed gets maximum “likes” when the posts offer hope and optimism, like the one show here.
Caption: When we look beyond the thin veil of material success and begin to see our lives in grander terms, we start to experience the limitless joy that being alive offers us—every single day.
As I like to think of myself as a kind and civil person, I generally do not celebrate the loss of anyone’s life. Yet it’s hard to mourn the passing of those who were bitter enemies of fairness, justice and social progress on Earth, e.g., U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, found dead at his West Texas ranch earlier today.
Here’s Scalia upholding his defense of Citizen’s United, in which he states that he doesn’t believe that big money plays too great a role in politics, and here are some other highlights from “Antonin Scalia – On the Issues.” (more…)
It’s heartening to look through the comments to my recent post: “The Environmental Movement: Too Conciliatory?” — insofar as many point out the role of the individual in determining the course of history. We have FAR greater capacity to change the world than we realize. That’s one of the top themes of the whole 2GreenEnergy enterprise, perhaps best epitomized by the famous quote from cultural anthropologist Margaret Mead: Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has. (more…)
It’s the birthday of Charles Darwin, whose discovery of biological evolution ranks in the top couple of moments in human history when a longstanding paradigm was turned on its head.
Thus perhaps it’s a good moment to speculate: which one’s next to go? The problem, of course, is that’s a completely unanswerable question, by the very definition of the term “paradigm.” In many ways they are searchlights that serve to focus our research onto areas that seem most promising, yet in other ways they are blinders, actively prohibiting us from seeing anything else. (more…)
A reader asked me to comment on this breakthrough in Germany re: nuclear fusion. In particular, “Can you speak to its safety?”
Thanks. This is very similar to what my friends at TriAlpha are doing here in California. In fact, from the article it’s hard to know who’s further ahead, especially since all this work is so clandestine. (more…)
One has to believe that corporate malfeasance, e.g., that of Volkswagen with its emissions scandal and ExxonMobil with its conspiracy to hide the truth about climate change, is about to meet some heavy-duty rancor on the part of the citizens of the world who are tired of playing the role of suffering victim. Here’s a little glimpse of what honest-to-goodness wrath looks like. 
