“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete,” said Buckminster Fuller.
Solar technology and the spread of solar power across the planet is doing just this! It’s creating a new model that has made fossil fuel and nuclear energy much too expensive, and it’s unstoppable!
The country that is creating this new model and leading this energy revolution is China. China is producing more solar panels and storage batteries than all the rest of the world combined! Its solar development is a massive economic gain for them, employing millions of workers and dominating solar trade.
The Trump administration announced that the Department of Energy will spend $175 million on revitalizing old coal plants. He is hell bent on staying the old course of fossil fuel dependency when it makes no economic sense. The USA is going to be “left in the dust” as the rest of the world advances towards cheap, reliable, and clean energy. A stockpile of fuel will not be worth much in a global economy that has transitioned to solar. To quote Forrest Gump, “Stupid is as stupid does.”
Governor Ayotte’s announcement that NH will foster a new generation of nuclear power is, in my opinion, just as ridiculous! Nuclear power is expensive, unpopular and dirty.
This new model threatens something else that has long been a core value in this country–capitalism, at least as far as renewable energy goes–for the sun and the wind are not commodities that can be put into barrels and sold. Our sun is the original socialist system and is there for us all. It is inevitable that the old model will become–if it isn’t already–obsolete.