Political advantages of Solar

People need to consider the political advantages as well as the environmental advantages of Solar.

Historically one of the major causes of wars have been a clash over resources. We can removed the need for people to quarrel of Oil, Coal and Uranium by going done the Solar/Wind path.

If we go done the nuclear path, countries with large supply of Uranium will hold more political sway and the potential threat of aggression towards those countries will grow as the addiction to Nuclear power also grows, in a similar way to the countries/cartels that have/control Oil. (http://www.energybulletin.net/4026.html)

Countries that also provide the ability to store nuclear waste product will also have increased political sway. The primary benefactor of nuclear power as a country will be Australia, as we have the worlds largest supply of uranium and our north west region is the one of the best places to store nuclear waste. (Remote and tectonically stable. Is it any wonder that our Prime Minister currently doesn't want to take nuclear power "off the table"?)

The sun is a resource that can be harness across the globe and isnt' reliant on a hand full of countries to provide the basic materials for the generation of the energy (yes some countries do recieve more sunlight than others, how ever the distribution of the primary resource is alot more evenly spread that Coal, Oil or Uranium.)

Imagine the rebalance of political power when each country has it own truly independant source of energy, that isn't reliant on a second country for the primary resource.

There are more than just environmental gains to be made by turning to solar long term. We may have to have nuclear as a short term solution but please don't let politicians hide the long term answer behind the lines "currently it's not cost effective" or "that it can't supply enough power". These are technical issues, which we as humans have a history of solving. This is not a resource issue which we as humans have a history of fighting over and manpiulating each other for.

Progress is rapidily being made on the issues Solar and Wind has. So please go do some research into where Solar and Wind is currently at, and how it is being used across the world.

"With this in mind, Dr Mills and his colleagues are talking to Macquarie Generation about a 240 Megawatt station at Moree which would require 4.4 square kilometres of array and occupy 6.1 square kilometres of land. The plan is that such a plant would provide peak electricity by using storage in the form of a steel-lined cavern dug a couple of hundred metres below the surface. Pressurised water contained by the surrounding rock would hold the heat generated during the day and allow electricity to be supplied when it is needed, not just when the sun is shining. By adding storage, Solar Electricity becomes a serious contender in the competition to supply our energy needs. And of course it does so without producing greenhouse emissions.

Most interesting of all, Dr Mills' costings for his arrays were almost unbelievably low. He claims that the system is comparable in price to coal, when the handling of coal costs are taken into account and when a similar sized turbine is used. Solar Thermal seems to be cost-competitive for the first time in its history. And if the size of the audience attracted by the talk is anything to go by, the interest in using this non-polluting energy source is already here. "

http://nsw.royalsoc.org.au/talks_2004/talk_Sep2004.html