アレックス・オノルドさんのインスタグラム写真 - (アレックス・オノルドInstagram)「Environmental musing of the day: solar! Last night I had a fun instagram live conversation with Tim Willink, the director of @gridtribalprogram. The @honnoldfoundation just pledged 3 years of support for their work and it was nice to hear some of his stories about the impact that solar can have on native communities. I founded the Honnold Foundation in 2012, and at that time I did a bunch of research on the types of environmental projects that also positively impact human life. Solar projects consistently drew me in - the installation of clean energy in places where it was most needed seemed like a clear win-win. So we’ve been funding solar energy access all over the world ever since. Solar is the future - all human energy needs could be met by an area the size of 1% of the Sahara desert. Think about that for a second. More solar energy strikes the earth in a single hour than humanity uses in a year. The potential is staggering. Typical arguments against solar include the cost (which has halved over the last decade and dropped 99% over the last 40 years…) and the environmental impact of manufacturing the panels. Manufacturing panels does involve different chemical processes, though they’re largely recyclable, and the overall greenhouse gas emissions of the solar per GWh are less than 1/5 of natural gas (which is the closest fossil competitor). So like all things in life, yes, there’s an impact, but overall it’s a much better bet environmentally. Final thought: It drives me crazy that renewable energy like solar has become a partisan issue in the US. Energy independence and self sufficiency should be fundamentally conservative issues. It doesn’t make any sense to be sending money to the Middle East for oil (and fighting wars there…) when we can be generating energy at home more cleanly and cheaply. We should be celebrating technologies like solar for keeping money in our local communities and giving individuals greater autonomy. I’ve never met anyone who likes paying a power bill… Photo: @austin_siadak harnessing the power of the sun on top of El Cap last season.」4月30日 0時21分