Grist has a story on the work in progress in India on building 20 gigawatts of solar power generating plants by 2020. Apparently they’re on track to accomplish that. India gets a lot of sun and needs a lot of jobs; the plants provide not only the hi-tech jobs one would expect, but also opportunities (?) for people to wield mops to clean the solar panels… as many as 36,000 of them in a single plant. Moreover, it’s good news for America as well: India is purchasing many of its solar panels from American companies.
Meanwhile, America’s fossil fuel industries continue to obstruct every effort to move to solar, or any other renewable energy source, here at home. Suck it up and breathe through a filter, folks… remember, you owe it to the 1%. U-S-A! U-S-A! …
Steve Bates - Yellow Doggerel Democratic Views 
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India: Agreements between AREVA and NPCIL for the supply of two EPR reactors and fuel for 25 years:
http://www.areva.com/EN/news-8633/india-agreements-between-areva-and-npcil-for-the-supply-of-two-epr-reactors-and-fuel-for-25-years.html
Fighting 1% wars:
http://mondediplo.com/openpage/fighting-1-wars
Steve,
Best wishes for the New Year’s Eve!
French giant Areva planning to sell six reactors to India:
http://www.thehindu.com/news/international/article2712034.ece
Areva in talks to build nuclear plants in India:
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/areva-in-talks-to-build-nuclear-plants-in-india-2011-10-07
Enfant, I am as uncomfortable with nuclear power as the next person, but I admit that India faces a real problem. I doubt that even 20 gigawatts of solar power is anywhere nearly enough to run a country that large, with a population that large. There are a couple of other “green” alternatives besides solar, e.g., wind, tide and falling water, but availability of those forms is largely a matter of luck… your area either has them or it doesn’t. My area has lots of wind blowing across Texas prairies and farmland, and indeed I am 100 percent wind-powered in this house. The electrons look just the same. 🙂
At some point, a society without enough natural green energy sources is faced with an unpleasant choice: burn fossil fuels or go nuclear. I’m not sure which I consider more damaging to the environment. We’ve had nuclear power in the world less than a century, and already had two or three major disasters (depending on what you count as “major”) in that short time. But we also have rampant diseases induced by burning coal and oil, and those power plants aren’t getting any newer. So I don’t know quite what to do. Conservation is the best answer, of course, but don’t tell Stella she can’t have her air-conditioning! 🙂
Happy New Year to you as well, Enfant!
If the US would complete the energy conservation program that Jimmy Carter told them they needed, and started investing in alternate energy resources, we wouldn’t be discussing all of the bag-of-rocks stupid wars in the Middle East.
Even the whackoes in charge of Iran have figured out that fossil fuel isn’t the answer. They would rather sell it than use it. And I heard a rumor that Saudi Arabia is going into solar for energy, and especially for desalination plants.
Hell, the Department of Defense is one of the biggest advocates of alternative fuels and energy in the country. At an estimated cost of $400 per gallon of diesel delivered in a war zone, they are looking for a better way of powering all of the high-tech equipment that is being forced on them. One of the Spec Ops guys was complaining the other day that he carries more weight in batteries than ammo. I doubt that, but every extra weight when you are walking around the back of nowhere, is a pain.
Bryan, you have to consider people’s actual motivations. It’s not just that self-anointed “conservatives” (who for convenience I’ll label “GOPers”) lie constantly for the most trivial or the most heinous of reasons… though that is true. It’s not just that Obama’s “let us reason together” bullshit is, well, bullshit… though that, too, is true. No, it’s more than all that…
GOPers are people who have internalized an a priori decision: that if they are confronted with a choice of increasing their current wealth at the expense of the environment in which we all live (not to mention the cost of the vanishing of honest dialogue), or seeing humanity survive another hundred years on this planet, they will unhesitatingly choose their personal and corporate wealth, and send humanity straight to Hell, without a single qualm.
In other words, Obama’s biggest political mistake is assuming that his opponents are people of good will who will contend in good faith. They aren’t, and they won’t. GOPers have transformed from a once-conservative political party into evil corporate shills for the most destructive entities on planet Earth. When it comes to risking the environment, they are evil. And there’s no use pretending or behaving as if they’re not evil.