Source: theleafonline.com
The future of a sustainable planet is beginning to look a little brighter in the wake of pledges by top investors to find clean energy solutions, including an ambitious project, announced by Bill Gates at the Paris climate talks this week, to find carbon-neutral ways to produce hydrocarbon fuels from the power of the sun.
As development ideas go, this one is much better than Windows 8. Fossil fuels are a major source of climate change, nonrenewable, and a critical pillar of the global economy. Finding their replacement is crucial to avoiding the worst effects of climate change.
But Gates, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerburg and the other Silicon Valley titans who have created the so-called Breakthrough Energy Coalition need to get the memo that there is already a technology which does a great job of turning solar power into hydrocarbons — and it’s called hemp. Hemp seeds are a prodigious source of biofuels which can replace diesel, and the stalks of the famously fecund plant can be fermented to make ethanol, which already powers millions of cars in Brazil. And the technology to power cars using blends of biofuel ethanol and petroleum-based gasoline is already out there — it was invented, in fact, in the US.
There is no doubt that high-tech solutions will be necessary to propel the global economy into sustainable, renewable fuels. But at the same time, there’s an ancient and decidedly low-tech solution right in front of our faces. All it will take is a repeal of a stupid law, passed over 75 years ago by bigoted bureaucrats.
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