Solar energy is not just a novel idea. Brilliant minds around the world espouse the idea as an essential way to fuel our society. Great thinkers and movers see the potential in this technology. From inventors to politicians, scientists and poets, people from many different walks of life are saying the same thing. We must develop solar energy systems to bear the brunt of humanities’ energy consumption.
For example, Thomas Edison says humanity is “like tenant farmers chopping down the fence around our house for fuel”. Instead of walking into the forest, a growing, renewable resource (when cared for properly), we are tearing down and burning resources we cannot replenish. Humans should be using “Nature’s inexhaustible sources of energy” as he says. As a man deeply entrenched in technology and progression, he speaks out against humans waiting until the final hour to use solar power. “I hope we don’t have to wait until oil and coal run out before we tackle that (solar power)”, he says. He saw the potential in harvesting the sun long before days of feed-in tariffs and carbon gas credits.
There is another great inventor today who also espouses solar power. Ray Kurzweil, chief designer behind many speech to text and accessibility technologies, has been known to make startlingly accurate predictions with regards to technology. He predicted the year a computer would defeat a human at chess, foretold the rise of the internet and wireless systems as well as others. He speaks of solar power thusly: “within 20 years it (solar energy) can provide all of our energy needs”. The benefits he elucidates include less pollution and greater geopolitical stability when not relying on oil and fossil fuels.
This point is mirrored by poet and author Henry David Thoreau. He poses the question “what’s the use of a fine house if you haven’t got a tolerable planet to put it on?” In his view, without ensuring a healthy and prosperous environment, our other accomplishments mean nothing. An enormous mansion on a barren landscape is a sad sight, rather than a marvellous one. This may soon become commonplace, unless technologies such as solar energy collector and solar thermal energy systems become more accepted and used.
It is not too late however. There are technologies available to give us a beautiful, sustainable future. The most efficient one on the market today is the SolarBeam Concentrator from Solartron Energy Systems. This machine is a parabolic tracking concentrator, which functions as a gigantic reflective sunflower, following the sun on its daily jaunt across the sky and absorbing the solar thermal energy for use by humans. This solar thermal energy can be used for a multitude of purposes: heating, cooling, desalination, industrial process heat, to name a few.
As a society we must make a choice whether or not to heed the advice given to us from many great thinkers. Safe, clean, effective technologies exist; they simply must be implemented on a wide-scale.
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