This article is an energy review and update, as well as a critique of US and Western energy policies, or a lack thereof. This is not about Eastern energy policies because they will follow our political and market leads in dealing with a necessary and long overdue shift out of the archaic energy infrastructures that have been perpetuated for corporate profits and political profiteering.

Let's talk about energy first, and this is very old information that is continually suppressed and marginalized by the existing energy politics. The sun, and wind are free. Oil, coal, gas and nuclear are
NOT free - and they are very toxic. Just as we had the foresight to build hydroelectric dams we must shift into solar, wind and hydrogen technologies. Solar and wind technologies have less ecological downside than even the hydroelectric dam systems by the way. Hydrogen burns to leave water, not carbon, and hydrogen can be easily created with solar or wind electric generation

What's so good about free energy? It can be easily collected and added to the grid, or used in free standing private and corporate energy supply projects. Windmills and photovoltaic panels make good sense and there are even less expensive ways to gather the free energy that is present over most of the planet, most of the time.

Sunlight can also be reflected or focused onto water pipes that create steam to drive electric generators in the same way as the nuclear power plants have done - but without nuclear accidents and the
cost of obtaining and maintenancing highly toxic nuclear isotopes that are a strategic risk and target in themselves.

Sunlight can also be reflected by mirrors to heat large mass structures with built in updraft wind tunnels - since heated air rises - to drive electric generator fans well into the night.

Photovoltaic cells are coming down in price - they work very well and inexpensively. There are also THERMOvoltaic cells that work with heat instead of direct sunlight, and they are continually being refined. They both use FREE heat and sunlight.

Windmills work well, they need not be the huge, corporately constructed and maintenanced models. Private individuals, like farmers, can build and easily operate these to drive generators. The generators could be made more available with hookup kits that go directly to the power grid to provide the farmer with extra income from energy companies. And individual windmills can provide beautiful variations, as sculpture on the landscape. Esthetics awards could even be given for originality and uniquely creative designs - they don't all have to be like the repetitive designs shown now.

Just as we shifted out of burning coal for heat in the 50s, we must shift out of petroleum, gas, coal and nuclear as much as possible for cleaner, less expensive, less strategically manipulated energy supplies. The sadly renewed threats to use more coal, gas, petroleum and nuclear are corporate propaganda for profits and continued political influence. Do you know how many politicians just can't say no to oil money contributions?

Certainly we can use those fossil fuels, but they should be at 10% of our energy supply, not 90% of our energy supply. The airlines industry should be congratulated, especially Virgin and other leaders, for looking at energy saving alternatives. The automobile industry has repeatedly succumbed to big oil's economic and political pressures for decades.

About the petroleum propaganda that all of our plastics that are used in every industry MUST come from petroleum - this is absolute rubbish. We should be using ceramics, glass, and polymers that are created from other than petroleum derived substances. As much as possible they should be either easily recyclable or biodegradable or both. The numbers of these materials technologies that are marginalized by petroleum politics and profiteering is as great as the energy technologies.

In glass and ceramics alone, made predominantly from silicon (sand), we could create more durable building products, with less fire risk, less risk of rot, better insulative properties, better electroconduction technology properties, etc. than plastic siding and oil tar based shingles and paints.

Silicon is the most plentiful element on Earth, and many of its substances are almost free for the gathering. Brick, tile, siding products and roofing products made from ceramics and glass compositions are already on the markets but they are being sold rather expensively at present as designer alternatives to the older more petroleum based materials. The price can come down with mass production and marketing.

Local building codes must be forced to uniformly support newer building materials and technologies, not just the same old technologies that builders foist off as expensive, traditionally accepted status symbol designs. Just as the prices of these newer materials decrease, so should the taxation for control on the use of toxic technologies increase.

Leaders like Arnold Schwarzenegger, Pope Benedict and Al Gore, who are actively using newer and less toxic technologies should be congratulated. The man or corporation who popularizes an inexpensive
electric automobile should receive the Nobel Prize.

These solar, wind, and hydrogen technologies should be supported as humanitarian works by the billionaires. Alleviating the worldwide politics and profiteering of big oil, with it's toxic residue and stimulation of politically based wars worldwide, would be far more beneficial to mankind, other species and the planet than any other humanitarian endeavor I can imagine.