Erinys. "Now immense amounts of money will be wasted on this instead of directed to actually protecting the environment via effective and directed programs."
I do not buy this argument about immense amounts of money being wasted. Same argument was used against the space program and in my opinion we have all benefited immensely from that. I would argue that the advances in digital electronics, computers and communications were given a gret push by spending the money on the program.
Sooner or latter the fosil fuels will run out. Energy from the Sun, wind and waves will always be there, at least for a couple of billion years anyway. We may as well get started now. We will not be closing down our coal fired power stations but as they get old we should be replacing them with other technologies. I have installed solar hot water system on a house I build 20 years ago because to me it just made a good sense. I used solar panels on a farm in remote location, where connecting to the power grid would be a lot more expensive. I had radio, TV, electical power tools all powered by Sun. It works and it is not hard to implement . There are exciting new technologies using wave energy, even John Howard was impressed when he visited the site during election campaign. Government does not have to pay for it, all it has to do is set the policy. Brian.
