Solartopia!
Our Green-Powered Earth: Circa A.D. 2030
By Harvey Wasserman

Climb aboard our sleek, quiet, supremely comfortable hydrogen-powered “Hairliner” as we fly halfway around an Earth of A.D. 2030 that has mastered the problems of energy and the environment. Beneath us we see a post-industrial world booming with the wealth and harmony of a revolution in green power, one brewing since 1952, but finally in place:

Solartopia [so-lar-to-pi-a]: A futuristic vision of a society based on natural, renewable energy, primarily from the sun and including power not only from direct sunlight, but also from windmills, hydroelectric dams, energy crops, such as switchgrass and hemp and other natural sources. Usable energy is carried primarily by hydrogen, especially in the transportation system and by electricity and bio-mass.

King C.O.N.G.
In the 20th Century – the Age of Nukes and Oil – the natural secrets and intellectual alchemy that gave Solartopia its improbable birth were dismissed with skepticism and scorn. There were “insurmountable” technical problems. There were political barriers. There were investments to protect.

Ultimately, it took the life-threatening horrors of what we now call “King C.O.N.G.” – Coal, Oil, Nukes and Gas – to force the issue. CONG was an ungodly cabal of desert sheiks, corporate sharks, military madmen and religious fanatics. Together they coated the planet with a slick glaze of petro and radioactive pollution.

Bit by bit, it dawned on our species that something had to be done. And that going green rather than dropping dead just might be good business.

Few dared to guess how thorough and revolutionary the change would be. But that’s the nature of 21st century technology. To ask someone prior to 2010 to assess the prospects for the green-powered world of 2030 would be like asking someone prior to 1980 to describe the Internet and the world of the personal computer.

The energy giants dismissed it all with searing contempt. In public, they made the occasional public grovel toward a renewable future, even touting solar energy and hybrid cars. It was a cynical show, meant to deflect the unease of an increasingly alarmed populace. These “pro-solar” announcements were always accompanied by shocking budget cuts and cynical backstabbing.

In reality, the CONG P.R. machine spun renewables as expensive and unnecessary.

Time has proved the opposite. Our epic struggle for human survival in the new millennium has shown green power to be the essential least cost alternative.

Solartopia, said the barons of CONG, was nothing but a dream, seductive but irrelevant.

In fact, it was subversive and inevitable.

Our Brave Renewable World
This morning our huge hybrid sails through the pollution-free air above Scandinavia. It’s not entirely soundless. But our clean green fuel team moves this sunfeathered bird far more quietly than the filthy kerosene-fired flying fossils of the 20th century.

Those mega-polluters have all been scrapped, every piece of them recycled beyond recognition. The ultra-light bio-plane in which we fly was yesterday’s engineering impossibility. Its hyper-efficient alchemical mix of organic bio-fuels, hydrogen boosters and photovoltaic electricity was long ago dismissed by the petro-polluters as “voodoo physics.”

But a surprise here… a breakthrough there… and… the “impossible” vision of 2001’s “solar fools” is AD 2030’s high flying cash cow.

Green Hydrogen and its Partners
As renewable technologies leaped ahead, green hydrogen hit its early critical mass – but not alone.

A new global distribution net evolved in tandem with a radically revamped electric grid. Production jumped ahead again and again. The compression, storage and distribution efficiencies surrounding hydrogen soared alongside electrical superconductivity and the power of bio-fuels. Peppered with dips and turns, mutations and transformations, the Age of Hydrogen managed to surpass even the most breathlessly unrealistic hype that greeted its millennial dawn.

In today’s Solartopian world, all our public transport, all ships at sea, the buses, trolleys, trains and even the few remaining private automobiles – they all move with hydrogen. In part.

But only in part. Despite its immense potential, hydrogen cannot single-handedly power the hyper-complex, thoroughly integrated post-pollution machine on which our global billions rely.

After hydrogen’s 15 minutes of ultra-hype, when reality set in, the scions of Solartopia turned to complementary sources. Each has its limitations, each has its role to play.

Like bio-fuels.

Corn-generated ethanol and soy-based diesel fuels showed great promise at the turn of the century. They are critical pieces of Solartopia’s energy pie. But they are no more a magic bullet than hydrogen.

Trains, trolleys, cars and bio-planes like the one in which we now fly have shifted to ever-lighter, ever-stronger solarized materials. Nearly all today’s vehicles are coated with photovoltaic (PV) veneer. The PV that make up these veneers started out as rigid silicon-based cells that convert sunlight to electricity. There are still billions of such cells in use.

But as Solartopia took off, new PV materials found their way into window glass and roofing shingles, house paint and finishing materials.

Today there is hardly an exposed surface on any Solartopian building or vehicle that does not somehow generate electricity. They trickle out a small but critical stream of electrons.

Waste Not, Want Not
Sexy as all those new fuels have seemed, it was the revolution in efficiency that laid Solartopia’s sustainable foundation.
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In the Twilight of Nukes and Oil, the west wasted fully half the juice it produced. In their primitive, pre-Solartopian incarnations, China and India – today’s true monster economies – were worst of all.

Back then, the gap still loomed between Solartopian production projections and daily here-and-now consumption. Hydrogen, bio-fuels, solar/wind, tidal, geothermal… they all gathered momentum. But first and foremost, we all had to “face the waste.”

Super-efficient Light Emitting Diode (L.E.D.) lighting, super-compact fluorescents, ultra-light composites, mega-efficient machines, totally tight solar building designs – they all helped Solartopia make organic lemonade out of some very dubious lemons. They squeezed the waste out of an obsolete Bush League energy economy.

Super-conducting, mag-lev and other “breakthrough” nega-watt technologies excited the new century. They took efficiency to breathtaking new levels as they morphed and multiplied in scope and power. Like the desperate return of the crippled 1969 Apollo 13 moon shot, where every electron had to be preserved, our Spaceship Earth learned that survival could only come with zero tolerance for waste of any kind.

Today, nothing – NOTHING! – on Earth is manufactured that cannot be totally and entirely recycled or composted.

The trash that once defiled our streets and highways has long since disappeared. The waste that poisoned our global economy is today unimaginable. The endless, deathly linear consumption that threatened to end human life on earth is yesterday’s nightmare.