Gorbachev Urges G8 to Back Solar Power, Not Oil or Nuclear

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/0427-03.htm

By Philip Thornton

Former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev urged the world's biggest industrialized nations to set up a 50-billion-dollar (44-billion-euro) fund to support solar power, warning that oil or nuclear energy were not viable energy sources for the future.
Gorbachev -- who chairs an environmental thinktank, Green Cross International -- called on leaders of the Group of Eight (G8) industrialized nations to invest in renewable energy sources, in a statement marking the 20th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster.

As leader of the Soviet Union in 1986, Gorbachev led the immediate response to the world's worst nuclear disaster, which led to at least 4,000 deaths and sent a radioactive cloud over parts of Europe.

The Green Cross proposals were contained in a letter sent to the leaders of the Group of Eight industrialized nations who are due to meet in Russia in July. Some of the proposals were reported last week in the Financial Times.

"This idea reflects our vision of a way of helping the energy-impoverished in the developing world, while creating concentrations of solar energy in cities that could be used to prevent blackouts," Gorbachev said.

Solar energy would also "lower electricity bills, and would provide a source in the future for generating renewable hydrogen fuels," he added.

"The fund could easily be raised by cutting subsidies for fossil fuels like oil and coal."

..snip

Like the plan JFK had to send a man to the moon by the end of the sixties, we need something similar to attack our oil problem.

I am a big fan of solar, the only problem was that it went public before it was highly effecient. It is way better now.

n/t

like oil and coal." And let us not forget the new and improved subsidies for nuclear, direct from our fearless muy macho 'who is afraid of a little radiation' leader cheney.

They should be required on all new construction.

They are cost effective now. The price would be very attractive with increasing economies of scale.