By Dave Milton
As global warming continues to pose a threat to our lives as we know them, it might be counter-intuitive to imagine that the sun holds the answers to the questions facing us going forward.
We ignore the causes of global warming at our peril and and at the peril of all species that call this earth home. It’s dreadful to contemplate that we could herald the demise of four billion years’ worth of life.
The relative infancy of solar power is no obstacle to its advance; today’s technologies develop at such a speed that yesteryear’s pipe-dream is both today’s reality and tomorrow’s promise. And it’s that promise that this community must heed. It is time to bring the full energy of the sun into Sunshine Valley.
With its east-west orientation and relative southerly location, Grand Forks is ideally located for the establishment of solar power farms. As the slag fund diminishes and eventually ceases when the slag piles finally expire, now is the time to make solar power the substitute and our future source of wealth.
Failure to act now in a bold, enterprising manner will mean the same old, same old: Some corporation – likely from off-shore – will step in and do it for us, reaping the usual benefits and leaving us further impoverished.
I am one of those citizens who firmly believe that some things are so important to national identity and good governance that they properly belong in the public domain: education, health and wellness, housing, energy and transportation and management of natural resources are some of them. Creating wealth to pay for them, without reverting to taxation is another, and solar power is an option whose time is come.
Some local, enterprising souls are already producing solar power for themselves and selling excess into the grid and I’m assured that there will soon be more local solar power production. Most are examples of private wealth (not everyone can afford a suite of solar panels on the roof), creating more private wealth. I’m talking about common wealth; an improved version of what public well-being is about; an honest-to-goodness investment of human capital in ingenuity, enterprise, risk and shared benefit. I’d call it a well-tempered society.
Common to many of the ideas in my short series, I am convinced that local young adults be tasked with the research to bring to table sound information by which to promote – or reject – these notions. Vast information is available and our kids should be invited to present their findings. These are tomorrow’s entrepreneurs, technicians, managers and parents. Youngsters thrive on challenges and I can tell you from experience that they respond well to them. Give them tangible responsibility.
Technology is marvellous: Don’t you just love the sort of widget that detects the location of the sun and swivels the solar panel towards it, and tilts the panel to harvest the maximum benefit of full exposure? That’s only the start of it. Let’s build community renewal by employing the best energies of the oldest among us – the sun. There’s an appealing interplay in our youth working with solar energy’s powers to benefit our community.
– This opinion piece is part of a series on economic development in Grand Forks.
