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Germany breaks world solar power generation record in July with 5.1 TWh
- dossy 13y agoThat's a great accomplishment, but compare that to the US's [4143 TWh of energy consumption in 2010, alone](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_the_United_States#Current_consumption http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_the_United_States#Cur...). Compare that to Germany's "whopping" 5.1 TWh of solar energy output, and that's hardly 0.12% - that's like saying "it takes $100 to purchase (some object X) - look at that panhandler, they earned 12 cents towards that goal - isn't it amazing? You only earned 1 cent panhandling: you should panhandle harder." No, the reality is, investing money in solar energy without aggressive technological advancements that reduce our consumption is an arms race that we can NEVER win.
- dossy 13y agoOh, and before people start the old tired "but if we invest in solar energy today, it'll give us a head start!" realize that those dollars and effort spent is a finite and limited resource. A dollar and its corresponding effort spent on solar energy can no longer be spent on anything else, because spending it uses it up. We HAVE to be smarter about how we spend our limited resources, or we're just paying feel-good lip service. Which, is okay: it's important to feel good! But, don't try and make other people feel bad because they're not making the same choice to ignore pragmatism and embrace feel-good jingoism ...