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Other People,
Other Countries Have Seen the Light!
By Rubin Patterson, Ph.D
The Truth Contributor
While the Bush administration was busily stomping on the
brakes for eight years, other people around the world were
pressing hard on the accelerator toward renewable energy.
During my visit to South Africa this past week, I gained a
new level of appreciation for the efforts of others
regarding this issue.
I participated in the Solar World Congress in Johannesburg,
a gathering organized by the International Solar Energy
Society, with delegates coming from 78 countries. Although
the U.S. brought the world a series of
“how-did-we-live-without-it technologies” such as the
telephone (both landline and mobile), television, the
computer, the Internet and the i-pod, people in other
countries today aren’t sitting around waiting for Americans
to bring them 21st Century
“how-did-we-live-without-it technologies” such as renewable
energy and other green technologies.
If America keeps up this lackluster effort, our energy
dependency will simply shift from petro-states to foreign,
renewable energy leaders.
When we think of renewable energy leaders today, we tend to
think of countries like Germany, China, Denmark and Brazil,
but not the United States. The talent, the infrastructure
and the capital are obviously all here in abundance; it’s
just the leadership that has been missing until recent
months.
I don’t think – no, in fact I know – Americans don’t know
how far we are behind others and how perilous this is in
terms of our collective global progress and our more
parochial national job prospects. The conference last week
has jolted me into a new realization. Not only are these
nations racing forward in these exciting green
areas, they are doing it with such gusto and are gaining
confidence while the US has been asleep at the switch for
years.
China allocated some $221 billion in green activities as
part of its 2009 stimulus packages, twice the amount
allocated by the United States. And with wages in China
being a fraction of American wages, think about how far all
that extra spending will go in transforming China’s economy
around renewable energy efficiency.
Okay, you might say – China has foreign exchange reserves of
$2.3 trillion whereas the U.S. government is essentially
cash-strapped, as it has an $11.4 trillion national debt and
a federal budget deficit of $1.4 trillion.
Wow! Is it that, if the Bush administration hadn’t wasted
anywhere from $700 billion to $3 trillion on the Iraq War
for fossil fuel energy (not to mention all the lost lives),
the U.S. would have had more of the wherewithal and
leadership to accelerate the advancement of the nation and
the global economy toward alternative energy? I know –there
is no need to litigate the whole Iraq War all over again.
Mind you, the Solar World Congress was attended by folk who
incessantly think hard about next era energy and the
associated new eco-friendlier society. These thinkers
included academics, NGO professionals, government officials,
activists and some investors, for good measure.
Personally, it was a bit painful for me to listen to all the
America-bashing, which was primarily Bush-bashing. It was
painful, but I just kept telling myself, “Well, it is true;
they aren’t making anything up.”
However, they indulged in Obama-praise as much as they
indulged in Bush-bashing. The lesson I took away was the
importance of joining with others to keep pushing the Obama
administration in ramping up support for renewable energy
research, development, and commercialization. After all,
when I attend the next Solar World Congress in 2011 in
Germany, I don’t want to have to sit through another round
of tongue-lashing directed at the United States for its lack
of national commitment to renewable energy.
All types of renewable energies were covered, from the
highest of high-tech to the lowest of high-tech. Some
Chinese and German scientists and engineers probably wowed
the conferees the most with new solar technologies.
Nevertheless, probably the strongest buzz surrounded the
non-rocket science technology of solar water heaters and the
so-called solar cookers.
Solar cookers are a form of low high-tech that is simply
clean, easy to deploy, and just plain wonderful! I am so
excited about this particular tech because it stops the
needless premature termination of life in sub-Saharan Africa
and South Asia.
People in those regions, primarily women and girls, cook
foods often indoors, which undermines respiratory systems,
eyesight, and other physical functions due to massive smoke
inhalation, which in far too many instances lead to death.
Solar cookers end such risks by simply allowing for the use
of a form of solar thermal energy to cook foods.
With the solar cookers, a cook can boil water in just a few
moments, cook rice in 20 minutes, and fry chicken in about
the normal time, all at no cost. Solar cookers can be bought
for about $300 and have a life span of about 10 years. Think
of all the lives that could be saved for about 30 bucks a
year.
Everywhere in the world various groups of people are working
together and are in a competitive rush to advance remarkable
green technologies. Entrepreneurs and nonprofit entities are
more eager than most governments to get on with such
advancements.
A general conclusion seems to be that if governments are
going to stand in the way, not much can happen with
renewable energy development in a country, or at best
progress will happen only in fits of starts and stops.
Cheap technology like the solar cookers don’t have expensive
lobbyists the way Eskom (South Africa’s monopoly electric
supplier) has and that some of the world’s premier
energy-intensive mining firms have. The latter groups get
the big South African government subsidies while the solar
cooker advocates and entrepreneurs struggle just to get
noticed.
A good example is the 20-something-looking South African
named Crosby, who begged for a dollar here and couple there
just to get to India to stay in a dingy little hole in the
wall to learn from solar cooker NGOs and entrepreneurs there
in India.
Crosby wanted to learn about how they pushed their
government in Delhi to seriously get behind this simple and
life-saving technology. With solar cookers, India gets the
opportunity to soak up millions of unemployed people to
start work producing the cookers, to deploy them and to
train the locals around the country.
Meanwhile, the health of the population improves because of
the decline in smoke inhalation. What’s not to like about
this win-win proposition!
Crosby returned as an even greater evangelist for this
technology. He now has a small enterprise and an NGO
operation to advance solar cookers in South Africa. Crosby’s
success reassured me that progress is coming, and older
folk, fossil-fuel-benefitting corporations, and even
non-committed superpowers can’t stop this progress.
The Congress closed with a terrific resolution. Here is one
passage from it: “The global target of 100 % renewable
energy is both attainable and necessary by the middle of the
current century. This is motivated on the grounds of
ecological, economic and social sustainability.” The
commitment of the Congress must serve as a “light” that
guides the United States toward a greener society.
By the way, if any of you would like to join me, along with
others, in traveling to South Africa next year for a trip of
a lifetime – if not a life-altering foreign experience –get
in contact with me.
Rubin Patterson, Ph.D., is professor of Sociology and the
interim director of the Africana Studies program at The
University of Toledo. He can be contacted at rpatter@UTNet.Utoledo.edu
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