“Was not their mistake once more bred of the life of slavery that they had been living?—a life which was always looking upon everything, except mankind, animate and inanimate—‘nature,’ as people used to call it—as one thing, and mankind as another, it was natural to people thinking in this way, that they should try to make ‘nature’ their slave, since they thought ‘nature’ was something outside them” — William Morris


Thursday, July 28, 2011

How Much Space Would It Take to Power the World on Solar


...that much?! This includes all electrical consumption, all machinery, all forms of transportation. The little yellow dots represent the area required.

5 comments:

Permapoesis said...

great to see the 'energetic' on the map, so to speak...

Henry Warwick said...

That much, indeed. The question then turns to: how? And made of what? You'll note the square in the SW is THE SIZE OF RHODE ISLAND. Sure. Like that's ever going to happen. And how much energy will it take to create those systems, and how much material will it take to build those systems, and who's going to mine the materials, and at what cost (not just economically, but socially, politically, psychologically - ref: see Congo and coltan trade...)

I love it when images like that crop up because they're so full of crap.

"We are so small between the stars
So large against the sky..."

Timothy Morton said...

Wee Dram--there is no way to glean your real name even if one follows the link to your profile. Your comments can therefore not be posted.

WeeDram said...

Earl Dunbar

Ruth Solomon said...

Tim- you seem to be spending most of your time addressing the ghosts of people with wierd double-barrel names that never make it on to the blog. This is becoming an OOO retreating blog..