rocketpig said:
Even under the mightiest of solar generation schemes, powering a vertical city like New York will be nearly impossible once you add in weather. That's a lot of people. Between 5-10% of the country lives in that one area. Again, your ideas sound great in 2040 (as do many others), but what should we do now? Even if someone develops a super-solar generator tomorrow (which is far from a given no matter how much money is thrown at the problem), it will be well over ten years before it's widely implemented. That's the problem with some of these theories... They take too long to implement and/or they rely entirely on magical technology that doesn't exist yet. Instead of hoping for a cure-all technology that hasn't been invented, why don't we try to use some of the things available to us currently (nuclear fission, domestic drilling, geothermal, solar, etc.)? |
Yes... we should do those things too (assuming domestic drilling has a benefit before 2030 as the OP's article states). I just meant that the best thing in the long term for our energy/environmental crisis would be higher oil prices, not lower, because it would encourage research.