Crude Awakening

What about solar energy?

Solar energy will be an important component, an important part of the solution. If you want to gather enough solar energy to replace the fossil fuel that we're burning today-and remember we're going to need more fossil fuel in the future- using current technology, then you would have to cover something like 220,000 square kilometers with solar cells. That's far more than all the rooftops in the country. It would be a piece of land about 300 miles on a side, which is big but not unthinkable. But making that area of solar cells one heck of a challenge because all of the solar cells every made probably wouldn't cover more than 10 square kilometers. This is not impossible. It's just difficult. It's hard and we're not trying.

You're a physicist by training.

This is not my research field. I do research in a completely different field. I just thought that this was such an important problem that somebody ought to write a book about it. I am not an expert-there is no subject covered in that book about which I know more than anybody else. If you want to know about superfluid helium or certain kinds of phase transitions I may know more than anybody else in the world. I just thought I should lend my pen to this cause.

Have people been calling you an alarmist? A doomsayer?

What people have been saying is 'listen to what he's saying. He's not an alarmist.'

© 2004