The Importance Of Green Energy
Green energy is forecasted to be the great industry with the 21st Century, paying great dividends to the country or countries that pioneer and successfully capitalize on it. Economically, environmentally, and even militarily, the capability to produce sustainable forms of energy is really a prize that will set the fate of the world for centuries to come.
Unfortunately, the United States is in danger of losing the green energy race. Our country is addicted to oil and the politicians are addicted to corporate money, so change has been virtually impossible.
On the other side of the world, literally, are the leaders of China, who have embarked on an ambitious plan to produce solar panels as well as implement solar farms themselves for domestic use. The Chinese are also big on wind farms and nuclear power, other technologies which Americans first developed but have now abandoned.
Sounds ominous? The chattering classes are all up in arms about the issue, but nothing has been getting done, not even with the election of Barack Obama. The interests are just too entrenched. Everybody stands to lose something, and contemporary American culture seems to have lost sight of any notion of the common good.
It’s a crazy situation. You can find American citizens, engineers and scientists, educated with American tax dollars, who now conduct their work in China or are employed by firms that do the rest of their work there. In effect, United States tax dollars are educating the individuals whose work will ultimately benefit the Chinese!
Of course, these scientists and engineers are only working for the highest salaries. But the companies they work for – American firms, owned by American citizens – complain that they simply cannot do business here; they need to go where the action is, and that’s China. To do anything else would be like trying to sell ice at the North Pole.