Do you think the current level of investment in renewable energy sources is sufficient?

Too many powerful groups stand to lose a lot of money if people turn away from fossil fuels.
They won’t go down without a fight and they have a lot of resources available to them.
They’re also not afraid to play dirty.

Forces like these are purposely holding back alternative energy innovation.

no it’s not.
if the governments would invest as much money into renewable energy and/or fusion power as they did with the space race…

Haha, I can bet that we aren’t ‘gettig it just right’.

Sub-question: can we make a solar panel, wind device, etc. that is truly capable of capturing more energy than it took to create/ship/implement/repair? If we had no fossil fuels left, but only a store of energy from wind/solar/water etc. could we ever be sustainable?

BTW, I think the cornstarch spoons are hilarious as it takes a ton of petroleum to make the corn let alone process it into spoons. It’s great that you can compost them but why not metal spoons that can be used over and over and over again?

@nzigler I’m not sold on the idea of bio-fuels, it just seems counter productive to me to divert food resources to fuel resources in a world that appears to be struggling to feed itself.

@RareDenver agreed. i’m really pessimistic about ‘sustainability’. I’ve yet to hear the proposals that could make truly sustainable, free of fossil fuel, solutions a reality. there is only so much energy in any form and its use and manipulation always comes with an adverse effect.

i just try to buy as little as possible and consume the same. i avoid things that are unnecessarily wasteful or designed for convenience but consume massive resources.

it is shameful
thousands of years of human civilisation and we still have to quench our energy demands by burning stuff. it is time for some sophistication. solar, wind, water, geothermal, fission, fusion, quantum fluctuation energy, lots of possibilites for us to ditch fossil fuels.
my personal favourite is fusion.

I think the current level is probably adequate, where I feel more money and energy should be invested is into changing the situations that are contributing to the depletion of the existing fuels.

I recently read that if the manufacturing of plastic bottles were stopped the amount of petroleum that would be saved could extend the life of current supplies dramatically. LIquids used to come in glass and had a refund so were recycled, now it comes in plastic that ends up in the oceans and land fills. Similar case with plastic bags, disposable diapers, and on.

One of the ironies of life here is that plastic bags are banned, you must bring your own cloth bag or purchase a paper bag when you go to the grocery store. However there is a movement afoot to replace glass in bars with plastic cups so the patrons don’t take each other’s eyes out in drunken brawls with broken glass. Go figure???

In general I would say no, especially in terms of investing in educating people about energy use and renewable energy. That being said, this summer I did a lot of field work which required me to travel through many states. I was amazed at the number of wind farms I saw in Wyoming, Colorado, Idaho, Washington, and Iowa. I’m usually a bit pessimistic towards how the United States acts towards the environment, but seeing that gave me a bit of hope, and a realization that maybe there will be some positive progress on this issue in the very near future.

@nzigler Well what about wind energy. If we built windfarms on every reservation in middle America it would produce enough energy for the entire US. Seems sustainable to me.