12th
Google stares a green opportunity in the face
RE < C.
This equation, which comes to us courtesy of Time Magazine’s issue of October 5 , translates as “renewable energy costs less than coal.” It appears in an article about Bill Weihl, “Google’s new green-energy czar,” who is shown wrapped in a sheet of Mylar.
Weihl, one of three featured “Heroes of the Environment,” is the former MIT professor leading Google’s current campaign “to help make the world better.”
Already, Weihl has cut energy consumption in half at a Google data center, and installed an enormous solar installation at the company’s headquarters in Mountain View, California. The company is giving millions to clean-energy start-ups and funding in-house research.
All well and good, but still “one small step for a man.” I have a green-energy proposal for the Google data center in The Dalles that packs the potential of “a giant leap for mankind.”
Phase in an orderly switch from hydroelectric to wind-generated energy. Then lead the charge to decommission The Dalles Dam, create a free-flowing Columbia River between Bonneville and John Day dams, and restore the ancient Native American fishery at Celilo Falls.
Windmills are sprouting on the bluffs and slopes along the Columbia at a fantastic rate, doubling in number over the past summer — a personal observation, not a hard fact, though my estimate was confirmed by a worker who helped construct this forest of green-energy giants.
We met by chance at the Stonehenge War Memorial, just east of Maryhill. In the course of our conversation, I asked, “Wouldn’t it be great if all these windmills one day replaced The Dalles Dam?” He said the powers-that-be would never let it happen. No matter how much energy they generated, windmills would forever play second fiddle to dams.
Another of the three “Heroes” is China’s Sherri Liao. “Chairman Mao preached that humanity must conquer nature,” we read before learning how Ms. Liao, a philosophy teacher who founded Global Village of Beijing, a thriving green-advocacy group, is quietly but effectively upsetting Mao’s applecart.
Hydroelectric dams are throwbacks to Chairman Mao’s credo. The green-energy movement is beyond the control of those in government and industry who cling to the notion that Earth exists for man to exploit. The movement is growing from the ground up, and gaining momentum daily.
Certainly our collective intelligence will find ways to irrigate fields and move crops to market if The Dalles Dam disappears. And with a free-flowing Columbia, Celilo Falls again will serve as the river’s pump, heat regulator and oxygen source, giving new hope to the dream of restoring native salmon runs.
What will it be, Google? Small step or giant leap?
