JOB for 21st century: energy farmer

[yurbud]

One solution to the wars, terrorism and escalating prices related to the decline of the world's oil supply is to break away from large scale power plants and start an energy internet that people feed INTO as well as take out of.

This is already done with people with solar panels on their roof. The electricity they aren't using goes back into the grid, and they can end up getting a check instead of a bill at the end of the month.

We should encourage people to do this on a larger scale. Farmers can put up windmills without sacrificing much cropland (simply plow around them), and land that is otherwise too barren to farm or windy to live on would suddenly have an economic use.

Here in California, there's a lot of hot sunny desert we could put solar panels on that are only being used as a coyote and scorpion playground right now.

We could even give people rights to do this on public land the way we currently do with oil drilling, coal mining, and tree cutting.

[skids]

1. Actually, manufacturing could make a comeback...

...if applied to large-scale production of energy "appliances."

There are many articles in E&E. I would think nowadays the E&E forum would have a lot more regular readers...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topics&forum=115

[yurbud]

4. good idea to plug energy forum. I wanted general readers to think too.

[Selatius]

2. Didn't Carter aim to have a solar panel on every roof in the country?

I remember he even had one planted on top of the White House as an example. Of course, Reagan tore it down when he came to office.

We have to do it now. It takes a great deal of fuel to begin production on a mass scale of solar panels, and the fuel is running out.

[yurbud]

3. while less efficient, solar thermal is easier to make

use direct solar to heat water, use the water to turn a turbine or something like that.

We have one of those in the desert here in CA. You just need mirrors--it works like a solar oven. You can even heat the focal point to thousands of degrees.