Venture capitalists invested $1 billion in solar companies last year, up from just $100 million in 2005. This is an exponential increase and it’s really only just begun. Solar is still just a toddler.
The country is going into a recession, or at least a slowdown. Huge amounts of money is exiting Wall Street, fleeing the now-toxic wasteland that is debt-backed securities.
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if all that money got put to actual use, building and creating stuff, rather than in creating bizarre financial instruments that benefit few, if any. The long-term effect of the current debt crisis will be years of pain. The long-term effect of r&d into cleantech will be an economy and country transformed.
Hey, if most of our transportation were EVs powered by renewable energy sources, then we wouldn’t have to go to war to get oil, now would we? Many countries would then breathe a sigh of relief and the world would become a more peaceful place as countries everywhere moved to renewable power and clean transportation.
Such a future can happen. In fact, I’ll say that it will happen. Because it has to. And such a development may be precisely what pulls us out of the coming economic slump too.