Five things are certain about the solar panels going back on the White House roof:
The great unknown: could this solar energy zap Team Obama with the courage to confront the nuclear/military madness now destroying our nation?
These new panels go far beyond those Jimmy Carter installed and Ronald Reagan tore down. Carter's $30,000 rig was installed in 1979 to heat water, which it did.
Reagan's 1986 tear-down symbolized his assault on the green power industry on behalf of King CONG (Coal, Oil, Nukes & Gas).
We at Greenpeace marched with many others in 1991, at the launch of the first Gulf War, demanding George H.W. Bush reinstall the panels. He wouldn't.
We asked the same of Bill Clinton. He wouldn't either.
George W. Bush did quietly install some solar features on the White House.
After a first refusal, Obama says he'll now re-instate solar water heating to the White House roof, and will add photo-voltaic cells that will generate electricity.
Team Obama is clearly responding to the anger of the Democratic base, which expects the White House to be truly green.
This includes ferocious opposition to atomic energy. The administration recently granted $8.33 billion in loan guarantees for a double-reactor scam in Georgia. Barely underway, the project has already emitted $100 million in hikes for the state's ratepayers. The builders are now asking for an extra $1 billion. Endless delays and cost overruns are as certain here as they were for the "first generation" of reactors and are now being endured in Finland and France.
But Steven Chu's Department of Energy may want still more guarantees for yet another disastrous reactor project in Maryland, Texas or South Carolina. And Obama has pushed Congress to hand more money to a failed industry that is efficient and reliable only in wasting billions of public dollars.
Can we dream that the new solar panels will zap some green sense into Obama's energy planners?
Likewise with the military. Obama's magic opportunity came when he "evaluated" escalating the war in Afghanistan.
But through weeks of deliberations, he met only with "experts" in suits and uniforms. He never talked with his once-ardent and hopeful supporters in the grassroots movements for peace, justice and environmental preservation.
Now we read, from Bob Woodward and others, that the generals refused to even provide the President with the exit strategy he requested.
Who runs this country? The civilians or the military?
Obama's tragic decision to escalate the war robbed the nation of the resources needed to rebuild our economy and employment.
So the Democrats now stumble blind into mid-term elections, void of a vision that shines with any real hope for an economic turn-around.
Restoring solar power to the White House is a tiny but tangible step toward the Solartopian future necessary to our survival.
Now must come the definitive demise of atomic power. Imagine what an amazing green-powered Earth we'd now enjoy had all those billions not been squandered on that failed technology.
We need a fearless focus on the gargantuan military budget that cripples our moral and fiscal core. Imagine what Obama's Nobel Prize speech -- and mid-term election prospects -- might resemble had he not jumped in to the Afghan quagmire.
We've been a quarter-century fighting to restore those solar panels to the White House roof. We seem to have won that one.
Given what we've seen of this administration, it might seem delusional to think it would seriously confront the nuke/military madness.
But we are winners as well as dreamers. And without that happening, we don't survive.
Bob Woodward is a writer of fiction. He also claims in his book that the 2007 USNORTHCOM exercise ARDENT SENTRY was a SECRET test of the US government's ability to respond to a nuclear detonation in an American city. There was nothing secret about it. There were public announcements about it.
http://www.fema.gov/news/newsrelease.fema?id=36009
http://solartopia.org
Solar electricity is not even a blip in the total production - even in a place like Germany where they have been spending billions every year to attempt to build up an industry. Every kilowatt hour that the solar panels produce costs more than 40 cents. The payment system is a reverse Robin Hood where many people who do not own their own roofs pay subsidies to people who own big roofs.
The White House solar system will have something in common with all solar power systems - it will require a large capital investment that will be idle for about 70% of the time and it will only produce its rated power level for a few minutes at noon on clear days.
-- They will have generated toxic waste in production;
-- The PV electricity delivered will cost more than any other source;
-- They will be targets for political opponents hoping to highlight useless spending;
-- They’ll be delivering a tiny fraction of the buildings needs throughout their short life;
-- They’ll make the US no freer from the carbon dioxide addiction that threatens us all.
Photovoltaic electricity has its place but generating electricity that could come from the grid is an extremely poor application. It is only generally viable for homeowners when supported by huge subsidies and continued grid electricity.
The ExternE evaluation of lifecycle costs (p17 http://www.externe.info/expolwp6.pdf ) of various generating options showed greenhouse gas emission ten times as high for mounted PV panels as nuclear power. Still miles better than any hydrocarbon combustion, of course, including the cogen non-reduction options widely lauded.
In fact, the majority of Americans support nuclear power. It is by far America's largest source of electricity that does not produce greenhouse gases. New nuclear plant projects will create jobs and local investment as well as clean reliable power. And a combination of nuclear energy and renewables, including solar, is the best way to meet our nation's energy needs while protecting the environment.
Your King CONG reference is quite the clever smear, but your ignoring one very important fact that makes the premise of your peice a boldfaced lie:
You Solar Dystopia cannot function without billion of cubic feet of natural gas. Why do you think 'Clean Natural Gas' commericals are full of windmills and solar panels? Why do you think the largest financial backer of antinuclear groups like Sierra Club and Greenpeace are Fossil Fuel companies!
The only way an intermittent renewbale generator can work is if there is natural gas available as a 'backup' for 75% of the time. This of course is more than a stretch of the word 'Backup.' That's like your starting pitcher going 2 innings in every game - time to send him to the bullpen!
The one truth that even you are incapable of lying about is the fact that the only source of electricity that has EVER displaced any significant quantity of fossil fuels in the passed 50 years in the United States is Nuclear Power which is 20% of our power that would otherwise be fossil fuels.
I can see through your lies even easier than your dentist sees through the gap in your teeth! I welcome all Huffpo readers to research this themselves - it will only prove me right.