We need to design, manufacture and install hundreds of millions of solar panels on the rooftops of America’s homes. The
Census Bureau predicts there will be 115 million homes in the US by 2010. With the highly efficient panels spoken of
on this site each home would require 12. That is a total of 1,380,000,000 panels. Impossible? No, not really. According to
Wikipedia in 2004 7,505,932 passenger cars were sold in the US and according to another
source about 32,000,000 TV’s are sold annually.
Solar panel production needs to be a major, possibly THE major, industry in America for the foreseeable future. It needs the help of government to get a huge jump start. We need for our government officials to do the math and get serious about this. And we need to do it at home, here in the states (see article).
No amount of money thrown at a project of this size will produce immediate results.
Even with adequate funding it will take years to build the infrastructure necessary
to produce the quantities of panels necessary. That is why we must invest in companies who have been working at these problems for years
already and have knowledge of what needs to be done. Even with the necessary units being produced the effort to implement
them would be a massive one, even if 10-20 years would be allowed for completion.
Since the effects of global warming are, at best, just beginning to be understood, it is even more important that decisive
action is taken now, who knows when it might be too late to implement a solution
and reverse the damage already done. The only answer can be given is “as long as is needed and as soon as possible.”