Going Solar

ONCE UPON A TIME, say, fifteen years ago, solar energy was prohibitively expensive. Twenty times more expensive than coal. President Bush and his advisers were looking for alternative energy sources, and they agreed: solar is a non starter. Now, all that has changed, for several reasons. For one, government subsidies, state and federal, have brought the price down, primed the pump, and presented a more even playing field for private investors. Republicans made fun of Obama's solar subsidies, especially when Solyndra, the most famous, went belly up. Of course, republicans are married to coal, and divorced from climate change, Obama, and reality. With the infusion of private investment, research and development, plus good old fashioned free market competition, there ensued a wave of small but collectively meaningful technological improvements in solar panel efficiency which drove the price of sunlight down from one dollar per kilowatt hour in 2005, to a measly four cents today. Today, the thing to do is to go solar. Put solar panels atop every house across the fruited plain. Every building, public and private. Run stop lights and street lights off stored energy from the sun; go running, and fuel your wrist watch interval timer calorie counter heart beat blood pressure monitor with the sun! Solar collector cells have greatly improved too, reducing in manufacturing cost and improving with a lighter, cleaner carbon footprint in their manufacture. The upshot is that the old argument that it harms the environment more to make solar storage batteries than to dig up mountain tops, strip away the coal, burn it, and dismissively toss the residual carbon dioxide into the atmosphere is now completely bogus, whereas before, it was only partly bogus. Listening to Trump and his wolves who currently but hopefully temporarily occupy the EPA hen house rant about bringing back "clean coal", which doesn't exist, becomes more amusingly tragic every day. Haven't these incompetent hacks ever heard of capitalism? Hint: solar is better than coal and natural gas not only because it is healthier for one and all, but because it is cheaper, more competitive in the sacred cow of the economic free market. Instead of assuming that Trump supporters will be raptured into heaven with the coming of the lord, and that therefore we must get our profits now while the getting is good by subsidizing corporate coal and oil, the ecosystem be damned, why don't we come to our senses, vote Trump and his sixty one million member gang out of office, and, hey, while we're at it, save the planet and our posterity to boot?