environment Politics: creativity innovation Solar solar power
by Warren
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Year 3, Month 1, Day 1: Happy New Year, Everybody!
The Chicago Sun-Times runs an article on Prashant Kamat’s solar paint.
A team of University of Notre Dame scientists say they’ve developed a “solar paint” that can inexpensively harness the sun’s power.
The “Sun-Believable” paint moves the silicon-based solar power industry into new territory by using nanoparticles that act as semiconductors to turn sunlight into power.
The Notre Dame team — whose findings appear in the journal ACS Nano — created its paint from tiny particles of titanium dioxide coated with one of two cadmium-based substances. That’s mixed with a water-alcohol mixture to create a paste. When the paste is brushed onto a transparent conducting material and exposed to light, it creates electricity.
The paint’s best light-to-energy conversion efficiency is just 1 percent. But its developers are working to boost that.
I had originally sent a letter to the paper in South Bend, IN — but they told me if I wasn’t a local, they wouldn’t publish it. So I wound up rewriting that letter for the Sun-Times. Sent December 28:
There is no “silver bullet” to halt the slow-motion disaster of global climate change. To handle such a multi-dimensional problem, our country must harness the innovation and creativity of its citizens. The solar paint recently announced by researchers at Notre Dame is an excellent example of what our tax dollars could be funding.
For decades, our contributions have supported the fossil fuel industry with substantial subsidies and tax breaks. Oil and coal were never cheap. We are just beginning to appreciate the health and environmental costs of a century’s worth of burned carbon — not to mention the elaborate and costly machinery of war.
By contrast, government support for projects like Professor Kamat’s paint would be a natural in a sustainability-focused economy. If my tax dollars went to build a new energy infrastructure and address the threat of climate chaos, I’d feel a whole lot happier every April 15.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: innovation solar power sustainability
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Year 2, Month 12, Day 29: Government Should Be The Tool Of The People…
The South Bend Tribune (IN) runs a teaser on a group at Notre Dame who’ve done something awesome:
SOUTH BEND -A team of University of Notre Dame scientists say they’ve developed a “solar paint” that can inexpensively harness the sun’s power.
The team says its “Sun-Believable” paint moves the silicon-based solar power industry into new territory by using nanoparticles that act as semiconductors to turn sunlight into power. Their findings appear in the journal ACS Nano.
The Notre Dame team led by biochemistry professor Prashant Kamat created its paint from tiny particles of titanium dioxide coated with one of two cadmium-based substances. That’s mixed with a water-alcohol mixture to create a paste. When the paste is brushed onto a transparent conducting material and exposed to light, it creates electricity.
It’s nice to read good news. The interesting question was how to turn such a bare piece into a possibly publishable letter. Sent December 25:
The Notre Dame team’s newly announced solar paint is important not only as a fresh initiative in the ongoing struggle against the looming catastrophe of global climate change, but as a reminder of what a reality-based government could be doing with our tax dollars.
In an energy economy based on fossil fuels, our taxes fund substantial corporate subsidies for oil and coal, not to mention some very expensive wars. Furthermore, we’ve got to clean up the messes left by our century-long carbon binge, and address the health impacts of an awful lot of pollution. That’ll cost us.
In an energy economy based on renewable sources, by contrast, contributions to our government would fund projects like Professor Prashant Kamat’s paint — and we wouldn’t have to pay the price in blood and treasure to protect our sources of supply.
I know what I’d rather buy with my tax dollars. Do you?
Warren Senders
environment: irresponsible media Renewable Energy solar power wind power
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Year 2, Month 4, Day 26: Coal-Baggers Unite!
This weekend (April 15/16/17) is the Power Shift conference in Washington. 10,000 young environmental activists came to DC to try and influence the power structure. The WaPo, naturally, covered it as a political story: the kids don’t like Obama’s policies! Oh, no!
Sent April 16:
The real story is hardly that environmentally conscious young people are disappointed in President Obama’s energy policies. The real story is that thousands of people came to Washington to offer their dedication and initiative to free our country, once and for all, from its crippling dependence on fossil fuels — and that the print and broadcast media almost completely ignored them. If the standard reporter-to-teapartier ratio had applied to the Power Shift conference, more than five hundred journalists would have filed stories. While the teapartiers have amusing signs and wear amusing costumes, their contribution to public discourse is based on fundamentally erroneous premises — something which cannot be said of the Power Shift participants, whose perspective on public policy is based on hard and irrefutable scientific facts. What must these responsible and forward-looking young people do to obtain fair media coverage? Wear funny hats festooned with lumps of coal?
Warren Senders
environment: Barack Obama solar power symbolism
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Month 10, Day 7: Weeeeeell, Alllllllll Riiiiiiiight!
Well. After the disappointing outcome of McKibben’s White House visit last month, I was all set to give up this particular facet of advocacy for a while. And then the President went ahead and said “yes!”
Here comes the sun: White House to go solar
By DINA CAPPIELLO – 1 day ago
WASHINGTON — Solar power is coming to President Barack Obama’s house.
The most famous residence in America plans to install solar panels for the first time atop the White House’s living quarters. The solar panels — which will be installed by spring 2011 — will heat water and supply some of the first family’s electricity.
It would be great to think that the letters, faxes and phone calls all of us sent and made actually had a difference.
Dear President Obama,
I’m deeply gratified to hear that you are moving forward with a solar installation on the White House. Such an application of technology is long overdue. While it’s true that this is a symbolic gesture, the simple truth is that in our celebrity-obsessed culture, any act by a public figure has a symbolic dimension.
Putting solar panels on your house sends a message to your countryfolk that you are serious about renewable energy, and about making the shift that we need to make, away from fossil fuels.
I’d like to tell you a very short story. Just before the 2008 Democratic Convention, I hosted a platform meeting, inviting about twelve other people (some of whom I’d never met) to my home to discuss ways for the Democratic Party to change its platform. One couple was in their eighties; I had known them thirty-five years earlier, when I was in high school and their son was a friend of mine.
All of us shared stories of what had brought us to this level of involvement in your historic presidential campaign. Mr. F_____, my friend’s father, said, “When Jimmy Carter put solar panels on the White House roof, I was inspired. I read up on how to do it, and built my own solar water heater. And it’s worked perfectly for the past thirty years, it’s still making hot water today, and it’s saved us thousands and thousands of dollars.” And then he said, “Mr. Obama seems like he’d be a president who’ll inspire people.”
I have been hoping for the past two years that America would start taking really serious action about global climate change. It is, after all, our nation’s population who are the world’s largest per capita emitters of greenhouse gases — and it is our nation, more than any other, which has institutionalized political and corporate opposition to genuine change in the interdependent spheres of environmental and economic policy.
I wrote to you earlier this year, urging you to put solar on the White House — and at the time, I said, “If you do it on your house, I’ll do it on mine.”
It’s going to take me a few months, but I will — and I’ll keep you posted.
Thank you for the inspiration.
Yours Sincerely,
Warren Senders