Here's Elon Musk's Plan To Power the US on Solar Energy (inverse.com)

An anonymous reader shares an excerpt from Musk's keynote speech: Tesla CEO Elon Musk -- whose company makes electric cars and has a new solar roof panel division -- reminded more than 30 state governors at the National Governors Association meeting this weekend exactly how much real-estate is needed to make sure America can run totally on solar energy. "If you wanted to power the entire United States with solar panels, it would take a fairly small corner of Nevada or Texas or Utah; you only need about 100 miles by 100 miles of solar panels to power the entire United States," Musk said during his keynote conversation on Saturday at the event in Rhode Island. "The batteries you need to store the energy, so you have 24/7 power, is 1 mile by 1 mile. One square-mile." It's "a little square on the U.S. map, and then there's a little pixel inside there, and that's the size of the battery park that you need to support that. Real tiny."

Comments

Re:Fantastic!

[bobbied]

That's exactly the problem. Fossil fuels are not paying for the damage they do to health and the environment. They get to spew pollution and everybody else has to subsidize the damage. Fossil fuels shouldn't be allowed to free ride on everyone else.

So am I to assume that YOU don't have electricity in your house and don't depend on anything that uses it? After all, MOST of your daily supply of electrical power comes from fossil fuels. I also assume you Don't ride in a fossil fueled vehicle to work or buy goods (including food) transported by Truck, Train, or Aircraft? Don't have ANYTHING that's plastic rayon, or nylon in your home or in your wardrobe. No washer, dishwasher, clothes dryer, hair dryer, heating or cooling, no electric or kerosene lights, paraffin wax candles (only natural sources of wax, or whale oil for you to use as light sources)?

Oh, and you better just forget about buying almost ANY food out there, because we'd not have much food at all if it wasn't for Petrochemicals and the things like synthetic fertilizers they allow us to make.

And if you think Fossil Fuels are this big of a problem, I ask you to think about what happens if we just stop using them... Are you going to be the one picking which half of the world's population gets to die and which get's to suffer from malnutrition for their lives? Because THAT's where we are going to go if we do what I assume you are suggesting...