This is something that I’ve been thinking about and following passively for a while, but it’s no secret that there’s going to be a lot of money in the “green” energy industry in the next couple years, with demand sure to be increasing steadily in every facet of the energy economy. It’s exciting, but it can be disheartening to see how slow the industry is slow to pick up adoption and interest from our government. And this is really the key to turning our economy around. Thomas Friedman writes about this stuff all the time and wrote a post on this in particular topic just the other day:
Indeed, when this bailout is over, we need the next president — this one is wasted — to launch an E.T., energy technology, revolution with the same urgency as this bailout. Otherwise, all we will have done is bought ourselves a respite, but not a future. The exciting thing about the energy technology revolution is that it spans the whole economy — from green-collar construction jobs to high-tech solar panel designing jobs. It could lift so many boats.
I see this as a new sort of industrial revolution coming but only if we focus on harnessing the energy of hard-working Americans, people that care and want to keep their communities alive. This is going to have to work with the Walmarts and McDonalds of the world to get their practices a bit more under control and sustainable, but that takes serious government intervention. Remember, that was originally how corporations were created and chartered back in the early days. The government controlled everything. And while we’ve had decades upon decades upon decades of economic growth and massive growths in terms of power, I worry that sometimes we may let it get a little too far out of control. Maybe that makes me a liberal, but sometimes I even feel socialist in that view. Like I believe the government should kind of take care of everybody and everybody should get a fair shake at earning what they deserve, but in some ways we would create a more fair system. A more fair tax system, etc. It’s hard work to see how complex our systems are already; how do you break these down from their current massive form to something more manageable?