The very first substantial renewable-energy revolution– the one that dotted the US with hydroelectric dams and eventually made power common in every American home– started at a bankruptcy sale. In 1877, Jacob Schoellkopf went to an auction for a waterway owned by the Niagara Falls Canal Company. A succession of business owners had tried and failed to harness the ferocious power of the falling water. That night he told his wife, “Mother, I purchased the ditch.”
Two years later on, Thomas Edison made a light bulb that shone for 40 continuous hours in his lab. Three years after that, Schoellkopf installed a generator listed below the falls to power 16 electrical lamps above it.
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Nor can we rely on the standard high-carbon energy companies that sell oil, gas, and electrical power to lead us into a tidy energy shift since, in addition to bankrolling opposition to climate change, they are greatly vested in an infrastructure and service design that stands to be overturned by new innovation.
Right about now, people usually begin to mouth the phrase moon shot— in tribute to the taxpayer-funded development binge that began in 1961 and ended in 1972, arranged around the discrete goal of putting a man on the moon and bringing him safely home. And the job of really lowering emissions while coping with an altering planet is significantly murkier t