And again I find myself onboard a collection of metals and man-made materials soaring through the air. If anyone ever doubted human ingenuity, they need only travel commercially. Hundreds of people traveling 100s of miles in an hour. An infant can make a trek that was considered impossible 100 years ago. Interplanetary travel is possible although not yet practical. We can outrun the cheetah, outfly the eagle, outswim the shark. The elements bend to our whim. We have conquered the planet so completely that we have done damage to it. But, we learn; that is our gift; that is the single thing that allowed us to conquer. It saddens me when others think we cannot continue to learn. You can easily find detractors of the steps taken, but "carbon footprint" was an abstract notion discussed among small circles ten years ago. The number of solar and wind installations continues to imcrease. We are learning to live within our means... slowly, maybe, but that depends on the time scale used. It took us millions of years to start any civilizations of note, thousands more to harness steam power, hundreds more to gain powered flight, decades more to split an atom, years more to harness an atom's energy... We now act as if our reliance on fossil fuels always was and always will be. That the modern day rail barons will be able to stop progress when their predecessors could not. We, like every generation before us, think that the variables will not change. We imagine that controlled fusion is impossible because we haven't figured it out in a few years. We imagine that the electric car is being held back by some kind of conspiracy rather than consumer choice and actual technical concerns. We fantasize that the gains in efficiency in solar panels are being slowly delved out over time.
The fact of the matter is that every single human is capable of invention; that controlling the flow of information is nearly impossible. Two bike mechanics gave us flight. A patent clerk gave us relativity. An alchemist gave us the laws of motion. A special effects company gave us MRI. I would be no more surprised if MIT won the next X Prize then if a group of West Philadelphia high school students did. Modern civilization and the United States in particular have brought about a distributed base of wealth. Not as distributed as we may like, but distributed none the less. If there is a cause worth fighting for, there is someone funding that cause. Although most of the world's wealthy horde money just as their predecessors did, many realize that this is futile and have brought their influence to bear. The X Prize is a shining example of this type of entrepreneurial distribution. If you want something done, do it. If you can't do it on your own, find a group of like-minded individuals. If what you build, design, figure out, etc. has merit, someone will buy it. If you don't believe it, think about the founding of the company you work for. Although there may have been acquisitions/dispersals/etc. if you go back further, you will find an individual with an idea. The idea sold. There was no secret vote by 13 10,000,000th level Masons. There was no papal audience. Just supply and demand. Just 1 idea and customers who thought it worth paying for.
There are electric cars. Thus far, I only know of one with performance specs worth a damn. It retails for $100,000 and around 500 have been sold since its creation. There are several different methods for generating power from solar energy. None of them are all that efficient. There are dozens of battery technologies. The best ones still contain heavy metals and the organic methods don't come close. Rechargeable batteries were rare and spotty 20 years ago, now they power billons of devices and outlast the devices they are in. LEDs still aren't quite available in white and until they are, there's compact fluorescents. You want change. You don't have to make it happen. Just let others know that you are willing to pay for it. The Chevy Volt won't die because of some grand conspiracy. It will die because they can't sell it for less than $40,000. But Honda, Nissan, and Mazda see the market opening and will sell the electric-leaning hybrids. They have to in order to counter the Toyota lead. Simply put, the only thing holding it back is the perceived profit margin and a bunch of naysayers who keep waiting for a perfect solution.
There is no perpetual motion. There is no free energy. Now that we're past that, let's start embracing current innovations and stop following snake-oil salesman. You want change? Cast your vote. The ballots are measured in U.S. dollars. Figure out where you are going to spend yours.
