"I'd put my money on the sun and solar energy. What a source of power! I hope we don't have to wait 'til oil and coal run out before we tackle that."
- Thomas Edison (1847–1931)
The new "plastics" is clean, renewable energy, according to Ted Turner, entrepreneur, who invented CNN, among a host of other enterprises.
Turner, in a conversational interview at the University of Southern California Center on Communication Leadership, pointed out that in the movie The Graduate, the secret was whispered that "plastics" were the new frontier in business.
That was then, this is now. He strongly advised audience members (including many budding journalists and broadcast students) to shift focus to renewable energy industries. (He himself has invested millions in Dome-Tech Solar of Branchburg, New Jersey, to create DT Solar. And is thinking of harnessing wind on the vast stretchs of land he owns.)
"What tax breaks and incentives there are should go for the new renewable, locally produced energy that creates jobs here in the United States. That keeps the money in our own economy, because we're just bankrupting ourselves, as Boone Pickens says, by spending three-quarters of a trillion dollars a year importing foreign oil."
Turner deflected a query on where the future was for media, saying that he was no longer paid by the industry to give his opinion (their loss).
Instead, he said, he truly wants to save the world and is working on many fronts, including women's rights, the UN, malaria prevention (by simple means such as vaccinations and netting) and humanitarian venues.
Impassioned, he talked about the destruction of the environment and the folly of propping up (by bail-out) the automotive industry still making huge vehicles (he owns the first Prius).
Then he spoke clearly about the madness of having "hair-trigger nuclear weapons" in both Russia and the United States that were "impossible to recall once fired." He passionately expounded on his efforts to get this leftovers from the Cold War dismantled and disabled. "If Russia fired one at the U.S. and Bush called Putin to say, we unconditionally agree to your terms' - Russia would say 'sorry, you have 15 minutes.' There is no way to call them back or even destroy them in the air."
Talk about food for thought.
"Renewable energy also creates more jobs than other sources of energy - most of these will be created in the struggling manufacturing sector, which will pioneer the new energy future by investment that allows manufacturers to retool and adopt new technologies and methods." - Jay Inslee, Congressional leader on the New Apollo Energy Project, an effort to make America the world leader in clean energy technologies.
Regarding renewable energy development, the University of Connecticut has hired six top alternative energy researchers associated with the state’s 21st Century Jobs Act – including Prabhakar Singh, a researcher with the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, Wash., who is now the new director of UConn’s Global Fuel Cell Center.
Some $4 million in state funding has been provided to create a public-private partnership called the Eminent Faculty program, which has enabled UConn to hire national experts in alternative energy technology.
As part of the partnership, UTC Power of South Windsor, the Northeast Utilities Foundation and FuelCell Energy of Danbury, contributed a combined $2 million as an industry match. Other participants at the center include Distributed Energy Systems, CT Clean Energy Fund and national funding agencies such as the U.S. Department of Energy, National Science Foundation, DARPA, ONR.
The initiative is also expected to help meet the state’s goal of reducing fossil fuel consumption by 20% and replacing it with clean or renewable energy sources by 2020.
