Well, Jo Dirt usually doesn't own his property anyway, so it's really a matter of giving incentives to the landlord. For enough incentives, rich people would eat their babies.Charlie wrote:Mulu, don't take this the wrong way, but Jo Dirt, meaning people who live under the twenty-three grand a year mark, meaning most people, do not have the startup money for solar. Most of us live on the edge and paycheck to paycheck. What savings we can glom onto goes towards offspring or, in my case, addictions.
Absolutely, but I would also include strong tax incentives to install on existing structures too, especially in the sun belt, and over time those incentives would become penalties for not installing. Basically make solar part of the building code, like fire exits.Charlie wrote:What needs to be done is to reign in people who burn tires for electricity, and to introduce legislature making it mandatory for builders to have non-optional, and usable, solar systems on newly built homes.
Depends how cheap they become. With a huge increase in the industry, prices would drop and technology would improve. A northern house burns a lot of electricity keeping cool in the summer, no reason to waste those rays if it's economical to capture them. I'm not saying it is economical, haven't looked into it, I'm just not ruling it out.Charlie wrote:I agree in not putting in solar panels onto areas where you get 3 feet of snow on your roof. That's just silly. Well not silly, stupid.
This is one of many reasons why we're failing as a species.Charlie wrote: Unfortunately, corporations who's board members have an incurable gold fever pretty much have a chokehold on the US government. Land developers are also paving over every square inch of landscape in order to make a buck, or a few million. People who make money, vast sums of it, don't really care if they're doing something wrong. They want to live in comfort, and it is their legal right to do so. To them it's not an issue of morality, nor do they care. People who complain are merely fools to be brushed aside.
About twenty years ago I said to a friend that people would not respond to the crisis of global warming and pollution until it hit them in the face. As long as they have breathable air and drinkable water, they'll just keep doing what they're doing. The problem is, global warming is slow to reverse. If you wait until it's really starting to hurt, well it's like cancer, you may not be able to recover at all.Charlie wrote:I gravely worry it's going to take a deep and ghastly wound from which we will never truly recover
Fortunately the lunkheads are losing power in the US, largely thanks to Iraq with a bit of help from Katrina. I think we're going to get a positive policy surge in 2009. Heck, even our governor Arnold is behind solar.
And apparently volunteerism won't work, so it's going to take a Federal ban on two-strokes.
zomg? wut you guys don't like Drufpbaal? What if we called it dark matter instead. What is the point of our continued existance? Not trying to sound all Nihilistic and shit, but just playing devils advocate, i.e. pulling a killthorne. No energy we have or could use would get us to other stars in any reasonable amount of time, even then we're talking about a generational ship in which lives are dependent upon wonderful technological systems that could potentially go awry. Even so, we better chose the right solar system to go to don't want to pick one that is barren and devoid of sustaining life. Say we find a planet to sustain our lives long into the future. We will see the end of it all. All galaxy clusters disapearing, decaying and giving way to entropy. But who knows. I see the chances of our survival pretty fuckin limited. Best to enjoy your time while you have it and if you believe in a god and that gives you solace on your death bed. **Walks off whistling Always look on the bright side of life.**