This piece (ht: Instapundit) is a useful reminder that the good ol' entrepreneurial business is the way forward. Earnest Gummint committess won't cut it. Bit like the UN in Darfur - no skin in the game, so no real incentive to step in and help.
Moore's law: explanation here - capability rises/price halves roughly every 18-24 months. Works for me.
The money quote:
"You may not like their politics, or their attitude, or their style. But if we really do have an energy revolution in this country and free ourselves from our addiction to fossil fuels, it will be because of hard-charging, take-no-prisoners entrepreneurs like T.J. Rodgers — not UN committees, environmental groups, or government officials."
I plan to fully solarise my house in 2-5 years time. Like, net grid-producer, not consumer. Bye-bye to power bills, and much more resilience. There is a host of up-and-coming firms making thin-film solar, and the grid-tie plus feed-in-tarriff contractual stuff is starting to get worked on by the more aware power companies.
I thus don't fret too much about the lakes, the need for more power stations burning whatever - plutonium, coal, natural gas - or the State of Fear pronouncements about pylons, wind power or draining Gaia of all her internal heat via geothermal take.
The Sun will do it for me. Oh wait. It seems to be cooling. Toyota!
One often finds that the entrepreneurs are using science and technology developed by publicly funded research done for the good of all. The technologies that allowed the Internet to be constructed are a good example. The US space programme saw computing take leaps and bounds to the point where it became possible for us to have computers in our homes. The entrepreneurs didn't "get" the Internet until there were over 40 million people using it every day.
ReplyDeleteThe market does some things well, but funding the develeopment of long term, transformational technologies isn't one of them. The return is too far away.....if any at all.