My, What Nice Panels You Have

While minding my own business the other day, I walked by a house in Magnolia with a sign out front: “Solar Tour 2005.” Looking up, I see these giant solar panels on the home’s roof. Whoa. It’s cool to see people trying to conserve energy, even if it’s only one out of a million. And I’m not trying to be flip about it, but why don’t we do more of this stuff? Conserve for future generations?

Worth reading is an excellent Mother Jones article on solar power (excerpt here):

"In a perfect world, people would buy clean power even without subsidies, simply because they wanted to help clean the atmosphere. But, as Randy Udall, head of the solar program in Aspen, Colo., points out, much as Thomas Jefferson mystifyingly managed to overlook the fact that he owned slaves, we now collectively overlook our production of 45,000 pounds of greenhouse gases per family per year -- enough to fill two Goodyear blimps. Surely our descendants will wonder why we didn't notice, why we did nothing."

That reminds me of a great bumper sticker I saw yesterday:

“GET INVOLVED: the world is run by those who show up.”