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10x the total parking spaces seems pretty damn huge to me, I've seen some big carparks.

• roenxi 8y ago
  In addition, carparks in the US could be argued to be an ecological and sociological disaster. If you could somehow have cars without carparks (maybe the car folds up, I dunno), it would be one the biggest quality-of-life improvements in my lifetime. Probably about on par with the smartphone for me personally, probably a bigger improvement for people who are very poor.
  • chrisco255 8y ago
    Self-driving cars will alleviate this problem, since the cars will just rent their time out (like Uber/Lyft today) and after they drop you off at your destination they zip off to pick up the next human. Even if you choose to own your own car, the car itself could go back home during the day while you're at work.
    • tboughen 8y ago
      Though if owned self driving cars are used we have to choose between keeping parking spaces and increased traffic congestion. If there is no parking space, the car will have to arrive at work when you are leaving (which is usually the same time as everyone else) meaning two extra rush hour journeys each day.
      • chrisco255 8y ago
        That's already the current situation. Generally all traffic congestion is into a city area in the morning and outwards from a city center in the evening. There isn't typically congestion in both directions. Either way, between that and being able to get work done in your car (so you could leave earlier). I don't think it's too bad.
        • bluGill 8y ago
          That is only true because lanes are built for the rush. When I've seen reversing direction lanes (in for the morning rush, out for the afternoon), the opposite direction now has congestion because of all the people working different shifts who can't take that lane.
  • amanaplanacanal 8y ago
    I agree, to the extent that car-parks take up valuable space in cities. I assume that solar would not have that same problem.
• njarboe 8y ago
  If some other type of energy generation system used as much land as solar there is no way environmentalists would have ever supported it (rightfully so, I would say). I think solar was just not practical until very recently to actually be used at grid scale. So in the past saying one should stop burning coal and use solar was just a way of saying stop using power altogether and do some kind of back-to-the-land thing.
  • ZeroGravitas 8y ago
    Efficiency has always been the smartest and cheapest approach, using lots of tech we already understand. It's always worth mentioning, especially as it's a multiplier of other greener sources.
• burlesona 8y ago
  The article was talking about the need for WORLD energy production, whereas I was comparing it to the amount of land used for parking in the US alone. If you spread that much land use among the entire world it isn’t that crazy. Moreover re: the other comments about parking being an ecological disaster, I agree, but that’s more because of the car-dependency that parking comes with than the pavement itself. Pavement is ALSO a problem, particularly re: surface water permeability and flooding. But most solar and wind installations don’t require the same vast expanses of impermeable surface. Lastly, remember that wind, at least, can and is often installed off-shore, so when you consider the surface of the ocean as a viable place to distribute some of this land use its even less concerning - at least relative to the continued burning of fossil fuels and associated greenhouse gas emissions.