... and why do we have to follow? The sooner the world moves away from oil the better.
If it becomes politically unpalatable they will stop taking oil industry money. If the oil industry loses its seat at the policy table they will lose power, followed by money, followed by influence. It's a vicious (or virtuous) circle, depending upon how you look at it.
Renewable energy has all of its costs right up front. Fossil fuels have major deferred costs which allow the market to act without concern for the consequences.
Which is yet another reason that the market is dumb and should not be trusted with important decisions.
No one I know drives a NEW car, and I live in the UK. We all wait for 2nd/3rd hand cars to get to us.
The UK had new car sales of almost 2.5 million last year, ridiculously high, the highest in Europe, thats almost 10% of households bought a new car/
Maybe I need more coffee, but wouldn't that only be true if every household only bought new cars?
In any case, we don't have to guess these things. Simple search found that in 2011 the mean car age on UK roads was 7.44 years. Even accounting for the long tail, that's actually pretty good.
These panels became such a 'threat' that Obama slapped tariffs on them.
Until recently, Pakistan had one of the highest adoption rates in the world of CNG in cars as an alternative to petrol, you could just flip a switch when you were cruising on a flat. We modified our Laser (may it rest in peace) accordingly.
Don't get me wrong, solar/wind and especially nuclear are great, but it's gonna be a loooong time before we're completely rid of gas, coal and oil.
There's so much of it and they're all so energy-dense and/or cheap that humans are gonna use them either until our planet turns into Venus or we figure out ways to reduce/eliminate those emissions. I'd prefer the latter.
By the way, oil is only part of the problem - http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/ghgemissions/sources.html (not that we shouldn't try to reduce the amount of oil imported from Saudi Arabia and friends).
Carter put solar cells (PV) on the White House. Reagan had them removed.
Obama recently installed them again, but it's a mere 10kW, IIRC.
“a generation from now, this solar heater can either be a curiosity, a museum piece, an example of a road not taken, or it can be a small part of one of the greatest and most exciting adventures ever undertaken by the American people; harnessing the power of the Sun to enrich our lives as we move away from our crippling dependence on foreign oil.”
During Reagan's administration, the panels were moved to Unity College in Maine where they heated water on the campus.
In fact, we might run out of oil before we actually replace it.
That crisis affected a bit more than just the U.S.
It's interesting to read about a new super efficient solar cell on HN every few months, but at some point shouldn't we try to figure out what'll it really take to solve our energy problem?
90's, 2000's oil got cheap again (or was in supply at least) and what was the hottest car model?, gigantic gas gussling SUV's?
We move away from high prices. That is all.
And what the government has been moving away from since the 70's is dependence on foreign oil. A small part of which is renewables and efficiency. But larger part has been domestic production nukes and natural gas (which US has lots of).
That's just as bad as oil, and in some cases worse.
This type of manufacturing process requires tremendous inputs of energy, particularly the forging of materials like steel, aluminum, glass and plastic. Interestingly, lightweight vehicles can sometimes be more energy-intensive to build than heavier cars because lighter metals like aluminum are harder to forge than stainless steel [source: Moon]. Experts estimate that 10 to 20 percent of a vehicle's total lifetime greenhouse gas emissions are released during the manufacturing stage alone
Unfortunately, both nickel-hydride batteries and the newer lithium-ion batteries rely on the mining of nickel, copper and so-called rare earth metals. The production of lithium-ion batteries account for 2 to 5 percent of total lifetime hybrid emissions and nickel-hydride batteries are responsible for higher sulfur oxide emissions, roughly 22 pounds (10 kilograms) per hybrid compared with 2.2 pounds (about 1 kilogram) for a conventional vehicle [sources: Samaras and Burnham et al].
source: http://science.howstuffworks.com/science-vs-myth/everyday-my...
This idea that battery production is more environmentally harmful than burning gasoline is largely a myth pushed by people who are politically opposed to alternative fuels. See also the infamous (and infamously wrong) article from a few years back claiming that a Hummer is less environmentally harmful over its lifetime than a Prius.