The president of the Royal Society has called for an Apollo moon landings-style push to develop green energy.
“The Apollo project, like the Manhattan project, is an example where a goal was given a high priority and showed things can be done much more rapidly than would have happened in the normal course of events. The scale of funds needed is small in proportion to the scale of the problem and the trillions of dollars now being spent on energy,” he said.
Ben Macintyre in The Times has a constructive suggestion – bring back hitchhiking. (Given our risk-averse culture hard to see it happening in the traditional form, but perhaps if you did it in a semi-organised way – set up “stations” on the outskirts of big cities and record names it might work.
In the same paper there’s a sensible exploration of how to cool down a typical English hot-house – ceiling fans, shutters etc (with lists of stockists at least for the Southeast).
More simply, and most encouraging of all, a high street store (Curry’s) is starting to stock solar panels. If you’ve got the right sort of roof anywhere within reach of West Thurrock, Fulham or Croydon, why not explore the option?
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