http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tidal_power
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wave_power

Anyway I figure we can feed the west coast off geothermal with that ring of fire dealie they got going, coastal can use tide and wave generators since waves rarely ever go off, hell you could probably adapt some of those turbines for use in a river without having to completely destroy the local ecology. The main problem doesn’t seem to be power generation so much as continuous power generation. Most green forms don’t generate power at a constant speed so you would have to either use a massive set of monitors and control mechanisms or an ass load of batteries to store and release the charge at the proper frequency and voltage. And solar power has those evil clouds as an enemy, one of the reasons solar is the goto source for electricity in space.

Although fuel based generators may be more effective I think getting those damn dirty hippies to shut up is worth a bit of an investment.

Sounds great in principle, but there are a couple of problems with that. First, a lot of cities are not positioned such that there are convenient natural features that can be exploited for power, and even when they are, some of those methods are almost as environmentally questionable as setting stuff on fire. Wind power is fairly innocuous, so far as anyone knows, but hydropower rarely is (you generally have to build dams, which screws up river ecosystems pretty badly, or at least huge turbines, which aren’t too friendly to aquatic life forms that get sucked into them along with the water), and good places to tap geothermal energy are actually pretty rare.

Another big problem is even where such methods are available, the efficiencies are, at least at the moment, pretty crappy. The reason why everyone uses oil, gas, and coal is because the ratio of effort to yield is extremely high–that isn’t the case with most renewable energy sources. Now, that isn’t to say that we shouldn’t be working hard to improve those efficiencies–I think we absolutely should–but that’s why we aren’t already using more of those kinds of energies–we simply don’t know how to get enough energy out of them to replace fossil fuels.

Adapt and fucking conquer, already, that’s how Western culture works!

I heard about this a couple months ago, and thought it was pretty nifty. Your assessment is probably accurate regarding big oil companies and their response to something like this, but wouldn’t it be nice if corporations were actually smart? If they were, instead of trying to squelch this, they’d be hiring this guy on and funding him, so he could give them a replacement business model for their current, unsustainable dependence on a finite resource. Then, they could have a means of remaining in business once oil becomes too expensive to be a viable source of energy anymore–as is bound to happen eventually, if it doesn’t soon.

This could probably elevate a lot of stress.