We know where we must go eventually: toward a sustainable energy infrastructure. Why not head there now?
In the 1970s, Buckminster Fuller proposed superconducting global-scale electrical grids to wheel solar energy collected on the daylight hemisphere halfway around the earth to the nighttime hemisphere.
Given the potential for catastrophic climate change, a question must be asked: What has happened to such far-out and disruptive -- but not necessarily unfeasible -- visions for a renewable-energy future? Right now, hundreds of new coal plants are on drawing boards around the world.
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Manufacturing in the United States is in trouble. That's bad news not just for the country's economy but for the future of innovation.
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