COP26’s shortcomings, etcetera

Editor:

As individual consumers, far too many of us still recklessly behave as though throwing non-biodegradable garbage down a dark chute, or pollutants flushed down toilet/sink drainage pipes or emitted out of elevated exhaust pipes or spewed from sky-high jet engines and very tall smoke stacks — even the largest toxic-contaminant spills in rarely visited wilderness — can somehow be safely absorbed into the air, water, and land (i.e. out of sight, out of mind). It’s like we are inconsequentially dispensing of that waste into a black-hole singularity, in which it’s compressed into nothing.

If possible, every structure should independently harvest solar energy, at least as an emergency power storage system. There already are fossil-fuel-powered generator systems that engage once the regular electric-grid flow gets cut off, so why not use clean solar energy instead of the very old school and carbon intensive means? Furthermore, especially when considering most humans’ very vulnerable over-reliance on electricity, it may no longer be prudent to have every structure’s entire electricity supply relying on external power lines that are susceptible to being crippled by unforeseen events, in particular weather storms of unprecedented magnitude.

Meanwhile, it seems to me that if the universal availability of green-energy alternatives will come at the profit-margin expense of traditional ‘energy’ production companies, one can expect formidable obstacles, including the political and regulatory sort. If something notably conflicts with corporate big-profit interests, even very progressive motions are greatly resisted, often enough successfully. And, of course, there will be those who will rebut the concept altogether, perhaps solely on the illogic that if it was possible, it definitely would have been patented and produced already and made a few people very wealthy.