(03-01-2019 02:06 PM)NIU007 Wrote: Not yet.
Yes, maybe some day. And we should do what we can to hasten that day. But we need to recognize that day may take some time to come, and trying to force the issue before we are ready will do more harm than none.
Saying we want a green energy society some day is a laudable goal. Saying that we have to be 100% green energy in 10 years is an absurd one.
And I know, I've heard all about how JFK created a space program that put a man on the moon within a decade. Except that's not what happened. We had a space program that was well on the way to putting man on the moon by probably 1975, and JFK's "within the decade" deadline just ratcheted up the urgency. Actually, we had two competing ideas, one from NASA to go directly from the moon, and one from Werner von Braun's Redstone Arsenal army skunk works to put a space station in orbit first, and go to the moon from the space station. The NASA approach was the only one that could deliver within the decade, the von Braun approach would take longer because of the intermediate step, and what JFK effectively did was choose the NASA approach over von Braun's. I had several relatives who were working at the von Braun skunk works, and I remember that the JFK speech infuriated them. Before JFK's speech, we had astronauts, three of them had already flown in space, the rockets that eventually took us to the moon were already under design, and many of their features were already under testing.
Here is a video from 1955 with von Braun outlining the Army plan:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eXIDFx74aSY
There is nothing in progress which will get us to a green society within 15 years. The Green Stupid Deal is not a questions of accelerating something that is already very well underway. It's creating out of whole cloth things that simply are not anywhere close to being ready. And a JFK speech won't change that reality.