I recently ran across two articles that I found interesting. They concern developments in the areas of concentrated solar power (not your grandfather’s photovoltaic cells!) and nuclear fusion, respectively.

http://www.blog.speculist.com/archives/001729.html

http://powerandcontrol.blogspot.com/2006/11/easy-low-cost-no-radiation-fusion.html

A future where oil is of limited value might not be too many decades into our future. If only we weren’t enriching the Middle East today, we could be sure they would slide back into complete irrelevancy then… once we were free of their oil and no longer funding their world-wide campaign of hatred against us.

The government appears to have little or no involvement. If our government gets involved in funding energy research, we’ll probably keep investing heavily in converting switchgrass to biofuel. Yes, THAT is going to save a country of 300 million people from oil dependency on our own enemies. (And we will cause efforts like these to dry up due to lack of government interest. The science goes where the money goes, because smart scientists like awesome playtoys just like everyone else.)

Again a caveat: I am not dissing switchgrass-to-biofuel itself. I am dissing people who lack a sense of scale in solving problems. Relying solely on the current most-favored forms of renewable energy is like trying to use a 10-foot rowboat to cross the Pacific. You could supply an economy for thousands, perhaps… but for 300 million people? That’s you and me and everyone we love and everyone else, too, who would all end up sitting in the dark listening to the squeal of the windmills as they rotate their determined little camshaft hearts away, somewhere nearby, outside our darkened windows.