decides to call for a 100 percent national (that's U.S.A. to our overseas fjordian visitors) green energy future within the next ten years.
Seriously, is this too much to ask? Actual carbon neutral energy might have other side effects, but there's a ton of shit out there right now that frikken harnesses natural powers with none! (and by that I mean "okey, let's dismantle an obsolete windmill-generating farm!" I mean, ya tear it down and it's sent to China for a small profit on the metal, and it's made into a skyscraper. A nuke plant is literally beaten into the earth and left there for a few thousand years to decompose radioactively. (and seriously that's their plan for the obsolescence of these plants...they burn carbon clean, but it takes a while fer the cleanup.)
Less than a week before (I dunno, this was sometime last week) I found a thing on the front pages of Reddit that asked "Anyone else tired of car companies pretending that 30 mpg is something to get excited about?"
Here's the Reddit thread.
Nobody's joking about it...but it's a pretty serious joke tha's happnin' right now. The Toyota Prius gas/hybrid machine is about to install solar panels on it's next gen version which isn't stupefying, it's fjucking practical when you realize it costs near twice as much for gas as milk, and four times as much as water. (not to mention transportation costs of food&goods&stuff everywhere...which I'm sure you've already noticed.) As I just learned thru a (totally unscientific and cursory google search) the GM Chevy Malibu (which was due out circa '07 - and machines I don't often see toolin' round these car lovin' parts o' Southern Cali - just sayin') was predicted to get (and I frikken quote) "is currently rated by the Environmental Protection Agency at 35 mpg highway and 24 mpg city."
That's supposed to be a stupefyingly amazing engineering achievement? This is what our best minds creating a hybrid gets off of an Imperial Gallon of gasoline? My '96 Accura sedan gets that on nice freeway conditions, and compared to a Prius it looks (and drives) like a bad-assed muscle car!
This WCB correspondent (and by "This" I mean..."Your") is quite convinced it's time for this "call out" to be treated extremely seriously. We can, and should, be the leaders in this technology as it's not just a money making endeavor ,(that-is uber bueno btw) it's that folks across the globe will look to our experts to hire to help them make money fixing the same stupid problem!
'Course, nearly a decade ago I ran a write-in campaign for mayor of Minneapolis on the platform of building a giant dome over the city ('cause the winters is so horrible there...) and it was a big hit on the party-circuit. (which is a really bad voting constituency to go after, since they're too hung-over to bother to vote) However, there were more than enough interested parties to ask how I was going to pay for all of it.
To which I responded, "You build a giant dome over a city and make it work, there are going to be so many people who want your expertise it'll pay a thousand times more than what you spent! Engineers, designers, architects, construction workers - hell - anyone who had anything to do with it, will be some of the most highly employable people on the planet."
"Sure...sounds good," You say, "But the proof is in the puddin', no?" To which I respond,
err, if we were on this eight years ago, would the Kazakhstanians have looked to a(n) UK architect (and whatever construction firms they then decided on for) for THIS!?
Ten years...shit, Kyoto wuz in '97...and the best GM can do in the same time-span is give us a non existent hybrid at 35 mpg? Frikken Kazakhstan' walkin' into the future with more balls than the U.S.A.? Anyhoo - pretty sure Gore's got something here, but he's just a dude with a nice microphone...
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4 comments:
holy wow - thats a big tent, great idea really. But us humans have built big and better before.
This was a similar big idea, link,
which was meant to be built in built here in Aus. It got a whole heap of publicity, as any chimney 1km high would.
Don't know here its at, I suspect funding phase.
So if we have built bigger and better before - why not now?
Commercialism?
Hah! I seen that - I searched the Beeb for a link (cause I know thats where I seen the tale) but couldn't track it down...at the time I thought it was super awesome...and it looks like youse guys (just like the U.S. southwest) gots a lot o' sun to make it work.
"Why not now?" is a frikken bueno question my friendly pachyderm...I look at US monumental construction an most of it was done in the 1930's! - Hoover Damn, Golden Gate Bridge, Empire State Bldg...since then? Nada. (worth mentioning) I suppose you could say the Space Station is our equivelant mounumental construction project of the 20-21st Century(s), but it only inspires when you see pics from the NASA website - (which load waay too slow to be taken seriously...)
Anyhoo - sorry fer just using my amero-centric point-o-view in the prev. examples...but it's all I gots! :-B
I'd say (as an answer to yer question) it's a lack of courage in our "elected" reps, and captains of industry...it's the 21st century...frikken Buck Rodgers shit...and we're (not you or I - clearly - but society/gvmnt is) messin' round with 1980's mindframes.
(Cross-posting in yer comments to make it seem like yer supa' popular!)
Didn't think of that, but its true. Apart from space, most massive buildinsg and hence forth aren't in US.
Although the ground zero tower will have to be part of monumental, it wasn't planned as such (or was it?). Lets not go down that path.
Anyway - i do expect a US perspective, its part of it all. All good.
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