I'll get to renewable energy and why we'll survive the climate change apocalypse in a moment.
But first this...
I came of age in the 1990s. One of those grunge loving, flannel wearing Only Happy When It Rains types. I started my online life on ISCA BBS. It's of those telnet bulletin board systems in 1993 where you connected your modem to the phone system with blinding speed at 28.9Kbps and you heard the modem scream in pain with that traumatic connecting sound...you know the sound. Or maybe you don't. It sounded like this:
Ahh...that takes me back.
But not THAT far back. It was only 20 years ago. Since then the world has changed. The Internet in the space of that time went from relative obscurity to a national boom, to a national bust, to a national boom again and now it's killed Newspapers, changed the retail industry, crippled the US Postal Service, given TV a run for its money...meanwhile cell phones have crushed what was once a profitable and booming long distance calling industry.
Twenty years on and we barely recognize the world of twenty years ago. It didn't just pop up overnight. Prior to the 1990s there was a LOT of technological advancements that made it all possible going back decades. But once it got its footing.....that was it.
Renewable energy in 2014 is about where the Internet was in 1994. Cities and states have advanced the infrastructure. It's cheap. It's accessible. Most folks have a rudimentary awareness of it. You've got the geeky early adopters who have been using the stuff for decades to show us the ropes. And now the slightly less geeky folks like myself are putting up solar panels on their garages just for kicks. And lawmakers are paving the way for this new reality. And you've got Americans making a living in renewable energy sectors all around the country....in Conservative AND Liberal districts.