Here comes the sun!
Are we on a new turn of the upward spiral? Is the earth round? Will the sun rise tomorrow?
Yes. And yes, and yes.
Here's why. Apple, the sleekest, sexiest and most progressive tech company with the most loyal following globally, has overtaken fossil fuels (Exxon) as the most valuable company in the USA. Why should anyone care? Here's why. Crude could finally be on the way to obsolete, as more of us turn our faces towards the sun, that freely available source of clean, sustainable power.
Why has political will, the corporate sector and big investment money shunned heavy investment in this viable and infinite power source? Because the sun shines down on all the world, and it would upset the existing balance too much, equalizing things between those that have the power, and those that don't. Literally, metaphorically and financially.
All it needs is for the world's top 10 billionaires to put some money into the pot, and throw open a global challenge to the world's best Tech students, and award a big, fat prize to the ones who come up with a way to harness solar energy, then store it and distribute it via grids in a way that can be mainstreamed globally within 24 months. The technology exists; in every area of our lives, from IT and space tech to the Genome study. If they could reduce computing from a mainframe computer the size of a city block to something you can slip into your pocket, that technology ought to be adaptable to reducing solar panels to the size of a wristwatch, and capable of providing the power requirements of a city block.
Impossible? Well, I can dream. And if enough of us do that, we would have seeded the idea and it will be out there. And if it's out there, pretty soon somebody will come up with a breakthrough that will be exactly what that previous paragraph talked about. That's the nature of thoughts, you see. They do, like you and me, have a life. They're made of the same stuff... energy. And solar energy is so much an idea whose time has come.
So move over, fossil fuels. Here comes the sun. If it happens in the next two years, remember you read it here first. If not, well, I'll just have to recalibrate my space-time continuum scale. Damn thing always gives me trouble.