May 5th, 2024

Every structure should harvest solar energy, even for emergencies


By Letter to the Editor on November 13, 2021.

Editor:
 Re: COP26’s shortcomings, etcetera.
As individual consumers, far too many of us still recklessly behave as though throwing non-biodegradable garbage down a dark chute, or pollutants flushed down toilet/sink drainage pipes or emitted out of elevated exhaust pipes or spewed from sky-high jet engines and very tall smoke stacks – even the largest toxic-contaminant spills in rarely visited wilderness – can somehow be safely absorbed into the air, water, and land (i.e. out of sight, out of mind).
It’s like we are inconsequentially dispensing of that waste into a black-hole singularity, in which it’s compressed into nothing. 
If possible, every structure should independently harvest solar energy, at least as an emergency power storage system.
There already are fossil-fuel-powered generator systems that engage once the regular electric-grid flow gets cut off, so why not use clean solar energy instead of the very old school and carbon intensive means?
Furthermore, especially when considering most humans’ very vulnerable over-reliance on electricity, it may no longer be prudent to have every structure’s entire electricity supply relying on external power lines that are susceptible to being crippled by unforeseen events, in particular weather storms of unprecedented magnitude.
Meanwhile, it seems to me that if the universal availability of green-energy alternatives will come at the profit-margin expense of traditional ‘energy’ production companies, one can expect formidable obstacles, including the political and regulatory sort.
If something notably conflicts with corporate big-profit interests, even very progressive motions are greatly resisted, often enough successfully. And, of course, there will be those who will rebut the concept altogether, perhaps solely on the illogic that if it was possible, it definitely would have been patented and produced already and made a few people very wealthy.
Frank Sterle Jr.   
White Rock, B.C.

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buckwheat

Hey Frank, you should campaign to get rid of the trains running down your ocean front every day. You know those triple diesel burners from Warren Buffets BNSF. If you don’t you are a hypocrite.

Dennis Bremner

Might want to close North America’s Largest Coal Distribution Facility in Vancouver on your waterfront too? Maybe stop the deforestation that makes you the leader in Tree Cutting in Canada too? Maybe you should stop lecturing till you clean up your own backyard?