Hot Stuff

This  government promised a further £1.3 billion in tax breaks for the giant oil companies, while they have stopped helping smaller, pioneering businesses develop renewable energy. Hmm. Think drilling and fracking versus wind, wave and sun. With enough solar panels in the Sahara we could power the world….

They said there was a field where nothing grows, where the land is dry as old bones; where there’s dirt and sand and a hot wind that can rasp the hide off a rhino. This field was a half a continent wide and half a continent deep; and once, more than a thousand years ago, it had been green and its springs ran clear; but now it’s a field where nothing grows, not even a shadow because there are no trees. And in the sky there’s not a cloud; just a hard, white sun pouring down onto the sand.

They said if we mirror this land with glass, and tilt it all towards the sun, row on row on row, like bathers on the beaches of Cannes or St Tropez we’ll harvest enough light to warm the world; and this field of dirt and grit and stone, and long rolling waves of sand will be worth more than all the oil and coal that still lies buried miles beneath the sea, and all the great forests of the world.

And if we did that, they said, it might well save the world; and then they went back to drilling holes down through the ice and the ocean floor; they built nuclear reactors and promised they wouldn’t leak or explode; and they tore down the forests, and they fracked for gas; and they spilled oil into the ocean and turned the ice black.

And the sun shone down on the desert sand and warmed the dunes.