This is the type of article that gives me optimism that maybe our society is finally moving into more forward thinking/futuristic concepts:
I’ve long felt we’ve been using old technologies for waaaay too long. The gas powered automobile, for example, has stuck with us for over a century now. To me, this is like going into a computer store and picking up 1994’s latest computer model.
What always holds people back is familiarity. We’re comfortable with cars because we understand them, and the idea of a car that uses only electricity to run, or runs by itself, is a cognitive leap our brains may find hard to take.
So too with renewable energy. For decades we’ve known that energy could be made from something that occur naturally each and every day: Wind, tides/currents, sunshine.
What kept us from investing strongly into this potential tech was, I felt, two-fold: We are comfortable with the current polluting technology (which, by the way, is reasonably cheap compared to the big investments needed to pursue renewable energy) and this idea that what we have now works, so why mess with it?
The answer to the later question goes right back to what I said about buying an old computer, and it would appear that large U.S. companies are now becoming more comfortable with the idea of using renewable energy. The early work is done and the price to get the process working for you is coming down.
As I said, articles like this fill me with optimism about the future. Perhaps we’ve started to turn that corner and can finally create a more “clean” world.