snip (considerable)
On the other hand, also coming into my screen today was a blog entry
from The Oildrum, specifically
a<http://www.theoildrum.com/node/5485#more> guest blog under the
byline of "Gail the Actuary" in which an expert on space-based solar
power explained how a new approach to the launch of vehicles may be
able to cut the cost enough that space-based solar energy would
become an answer, even the answer, to our future energy problems.
Space-based solar arrays are one of those technologies that are
always somewhere over the horizon, and some would say over the
rainbow. If you take a few minutes to read this blog, and again the
comments, you find the dissonance on full display. On the one hand
you have a person saying that there may be an energy answer after
fossil fuels. On the other hand you have lots of people not only
saying it is not possible, but directly arguing that a human die-back
is more desirable than cheap energy.
And so it goes.
At the end of the
<http://www.tapsns.com/blog/index.php/2009/06/world-on-fire-notes-and-impressions-from-fire-2009/>Fire
2009 conference, an audience member said he felt depressed, that the
environmental problems discussed there seemed too large and the time
seemed to late to respond. David Brin, the great science fiction
writer, also in the audience, responded that we have to hope that
humans come up with the breakthroughs, technological and social and
values-based, that enable the enterprise of civilization to continue.
The alternative is despair.
I thought this summed up things quite well.
http://www.futurist.com/2009/06/15/energy-and-the-future-space-based-power-and-cognitive-dissonance/
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