Will We Finally See The Light?

One of my big investing interests is in solar power. The Bush administration was sharply criticized by environmental groups for walking out of a round of informal discussions aimed at finding new ways of curbing greenhouse gases. That was in the year 2005.

Since then, focus has shifted to China because of its awesome hunger for energy. China and the United States, pollute more than anyone else. The U.S. pollutes more per person.

Thanks to this focus, more people are seeing the effects of pollution world wide and the consequences it will have on our very near future. For instance, the Florida Keys may no longer be inhabitable in just 20 years as sea water continues to rise.

One of the best answers for global carbon reduction and alternative energy is with solar power. Germany has taken the lead in helping communities embrace solar usage. Rooftops everywhere are being populated with panels. Farmers are beginning to devote a percentage of their fields to farm the sun's energy. And the 1st video below shows a combination of technologies in use today.

Solar is a good investment in the future and something we should all start talking up. The U.S. needs to see the light, not ethanol as a viable source of alternative energy. Scientists, engineers and the United States need to step up and take a lesson from Germany. Why not take the proven technology, improve it even more and put it to use in the this country!

Check out a couple of these videos:

Scientists of the University of Kassel in Germany prove that the entire country can be powered by renewables only. They connected biogas, wind and solar power in a distributed way and show it can deliver both baseloads and peakloads.

Solar energy breakthrough in Israel

To illustrate the decisions on the energy package presented to the European Commission on 23/1/2008, the EC's audiovisual service has produced an infoclip on photovoltaic energy. The Serpa Solar Plant, in Portugal, is one of the largest producers of solar energy in the world. Its construction was completed in January 2007 and the plant's 52,000 panels cover an area of 60 hectares. Enough electricity is produced to power 8,000 homes and farms in the Alentejo Region which reduces greenhouse gas emissions by over 30,000 tons per year. The European Union granted 3,675,576.63 euros to help co-finance the project.


How solar works and at the cost savings, value added to the home, environmental benefits and security and energy independence benefits.


Lawrence Kazmerski, director of the National Center for Photovoltaics in the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, discussing the prospects of solar-photovoltaic (PV) technologies. Ashamedly, the current prospect for future energy resources in the U.S. does little to reduce carbon emissions. It is time we changed that fact!!

War Funds Clarification

I received a question from someone asking me to clarify the content of my last post in which I mentioned: "the money pouring out of the U.S. for the “war on terrorism”".

Sure. One would argue that the United States profits by going to war no matter what the reason. While I am not disagreeing that the U.S. profits from war, I would say that the profit has a narrow focus in that it benefits only employees and shareholders of the specific companies which profit from war.

The point which I meant to express was that all these billions of U.S. dollars which is the money of the people largely through taxes has no benefit for them. That through expenditure of funds for war, the programs of the people get cut and others get grossly underfunded. This of course as a direct result of the war spending.

There is no doubt that war means big money. But it only benefits a very tiny percentage of Americans. Millions of Americans however are being and/or will be affected by program cuts. And amazingly, even our men and women serving in the armed forces who are sacrificing their lives and quality of their lives will be seeing further program cuts in veteran medical care. So even here, what is bad now gets worse. Why must we use these dedicated men and women like expendable pawns? Anyway, I hope this clears up any uncertainty.