Looking back on the previous century, communication and transportation clearly made the greatest contribution to societal change.
This was the age of the automobile, the airplane, television and radio, closing out with the ubiquitous presence of the internet, web media, and social networking.
One hundred years from now, as society looks back, the Energy solutions we choose will define this century.
Remember when cars ran on gasoline? Remember typewriters? As we ponder the challenges of our current lifestyles, growing societies throughout the world, 'social reminders' can be very helpful.
We reflect on ways of the not so distant past as a mental exercise, a mind jolt to our complacency and to what is possible.
Appreciating television and radio is a great 'mental exercise' for the very reason that they are so passe, such worn technology.
Everyone has one.
Yet think for a moment of the dreamers who bear their inception.
Information will wisp through the air, invisibly, undeterred and undetected by nature's other forces, then obligingly reassemble at their assigned destination producing images and sound and emotion thousands of miles from their origin.
This technology won't belong to kings and queens, rather, you will find it in the home of nearly every citizen.
A much more noble vision of the 'boob tube,' yet it is quite a miracle in our daily lives.
One that had no resemblance to devices before it's time using applications of physics no one had dreamed of.
Now most of us essentially carry one around in our pocket.
In the past few years electric cars have been a novelty.
Some say in only a few years they will represent fifty percent of our planetary fleet.
This seems fantastic.
Impossible.
But I carry more 'data' on a pocket key-chain memory stick than all the banks in New York city twenty years ago.
The term 'Gigabyte' had not been coined yet.
We are addressing many crises.
The world economy leads the parade at this time, but feeding ourselves and caring for our health on a global scale keep pace with our current leader.
Not to mention global warming and all the human habits that threaten Mother Earth.
What is possible? Please allow fantasy to provide the limits for your imagination.
Let your dreams nurture your science.
For only dreams pierce existing rhythm creating Life's watershed moments.
Will windmills and sunshine be our salvation? Will each home provide it's own fuel? Will the exaggeration of this past century's lifestyle with work on one side of the city and stores on another and necessities yet another and care another, return to the village common? Will we find communities designed for economical living? Self-sustaining and complete? Will our experiment with the 'Highway' contribute some planning and design to our culture with regard to energy use and production? Energy will define us because we all, all political parties, all classes, all religions, and all ages share and depend on our energy resources.
The ones we depend on now are being depleted within the view of the coming generation.
The lifestyle we live now is in many way a product of an 'endless supply' of energy with no regard for it's source and consequences.
Energy will define us but so will our dreams and imagination.
I am a strong proponent of 'renewable energy'.
I really like the term, 'renewable'.
I like the idea that renewable energy resources don't belong to one country or a political persuasion or religious following.
They belong to us, all of us, and appear to have little or no damaging effects, extra maintenance costs, or clean up.
Renewable energy will make significant reduction to global warming and the coal intensive resource of energy for much of the industrialized world.
Imagine, imagine a little house with a windmill on top and a few solar panels.
There is no electric company and there is no electric bill.
There is no intense production of electricity and the many chapters electric power undergoes being stored and transformed and supplied to users has been closed, because each family has the capacity to produce their own.
It may seem like a 'fairy tale,' but we use devices every day that would have seemed much more fantastic to our forebears.
Let your dreams, your dreams of the possible, nurture your science.
Consider the different life, freedoms that freedom from energy would provide.
Imagine a neighborhood without any cables strung throughout the sky, with local resources, renewable resources that belong to your community.
When I began my web design business 4 years ago, there was a 'little something' missing.
I didn't have any customers! I quickly came up with the idea of creating a Web Site dedicated to renewable energy and was amazed at the progress already being made throughout the world.
I discovered that Denmark get's 20 percent of it's energy from Windmills.
And this was 4 years ago! "Like giant pinwheels, turbines spin at the Middelgrunden Wind Park off Copenhagen, Denmark.
Wind generates about 20 percent of Denmark's electricity, and the nation is a leader in turbine technology.
" (quote from National Geographic) What do foreign oil dependence, war in Iraq, a record trade deficit, farm failures, and record setting oil prices have in common? They could all go away with renewable energy.
There isn't a greater calling to the planet today.
Wherever you live, whatever you do, whatever your politic, our energy demands are greater than our ability to provide.