Recently Richard Branson, Al Gore standing beside him, offered $25 million to anyone who could "find a way" to do something that has been routinely done for about 3 billion years: Remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
Sigh...
All of our fossil fuels are of course, "removed carbon dioxide" and the real problem is really "adding carbon dioxide" to the atmosphere, but putting it back. Removing carbon dioxide is well known if you have energy.
How circular must a circle be before it's seen as a circle?
I suspect that I am thought of - by kinder people - as a "pro-nuclear activist" and by less kind people as a "nuclear shill," but really what I am is an "anti-fossil" fuel activist. I want fossil fuels banned. The best sequestration strategy in my view - and mostly I regard sequestration as a bunch of wishful thinking - is simply to leave the already sequestered carbon in the ground in the first place.
Anyway.
We've been hearing a lot about "green" technology these days, just as we've been hearing about it for the last several decades. Lately, to make it even sexier, we've been hearing about how "green technology" is the new "dot.com" technology, those prescient "Silicon Valley" types are rushing in. What is defined as "green technology?" Round up the usual suspects. They are the same ones that Hyman Rickover discussed in 1957.
I suggest that this is a good time to think soberly about our responsibilities to our descendents.
We're saved.
Here's more information about this new gold rush from the New York Times:
Silicon Valley’s technology investors have taken to the ramparts, threatening to tear down the oil and gas industries’ dominance with innovations that use ethanol, solar and wind.
(March 14, 2007) A chief champion of the cause has been Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, one of the marquee venture capital firms. Its principals, John Doerr in particular, have passionately advocated development of alternative energies as a way to create energy independence and clean up the carbon-saturated atmosphere.
But Kleiner has also poured millions of dollars into Terralliance, a company that makes technology to enable more efficient drilling of oil and gas.
The investment underscores a fact that is much less bragged about in the valley: For all the boasting in the region about investing in clean technologies, there have also been a smaller number of bets in companies set up to promote the development of fossil fuels — the source of many of the problems their other investments are meant to fix...
...We’ve made 14 investments in cleantech and greentech," he said. "We’re extremely committed to that investment thesis."
But others aren’t so sure.
Daniel Kammen, professor in the energy and resources group at the University of California at Berkeley, said such investments by Kleiner and other firms that portray themselves as green-friendly are inconsistent with their marketing message.
"They’re being hypocritical," he said of the firms. The former vice president Al Gore, the billionaire Richard Branson and other figures with ties to Silicon Valley’s green movement "should hold these companies to a higher standard..."
To tear down the oil and gas industries’ dominance
Often I'm accused of being allies with "Greenwashers" of nuclear energy. 'Nuff said.
The unit of significant energy is the exajoule. As primary energy the two largest forms of greenhouse gas free energy are nuclear energy (About 28 exajoules) and hydroelectricity (about 10 exajoules). Combined all other forms - solar, wind, tidal, biofuels, blah, blah, blah - of renewable energy produce less than 5 exajoules.
World energy demand dominated by fossil fuels is 470 exajoules and rising not falling. This bears repeating as we hear all about "Green Buildings" and LED lightbulbs and so on. World energy demand is rising.
I call for a program of the immediate phase out of fossil fuels, with a timeline of less than 20 years. This would involve massive investment and massive struggle on a serious scale but I argue that with all of humanity pulling together - Governments and businesses working closely with scientists as in a 1950's Japanese monster movie - it could be accomplished. It will not be simple, it will not be easy, but yes, the most important form of clean energy now available, nuclear energy, will need to be involved.