Sep 2008
Just in time for "peak everything"...
04/09/08 08:57
EAT THE
LIGHT: The Fourth Age of Solar
by Geoff Olson
In a 2000 interview on CBC Radio’s Ideas, ethnobotanist Wade Davis recalled a “horrific book that came out called The Secret Life of Plants.” One of Davis’ plant-gathering colleagues, Tim Ploughman, was “infuriated” with the book’s thesis that houseplants respond emotionally to human voices and the music of Mozart. “I remember Tim saying to me, ‘Why would a plant give a shit about Mozart?’ And then he said, ‘And even if it did, why should that impress us? They can eat light. Isn’t that enough?’”
Whatever the merit of the slab of compressed pulp that so annoyed the two ethnobotanists, there’s no denying that light-eating is a very impressive trick. In fact, it’s evolution’s greatest routine, the foundation for the pyramid of life. Every cell of algae and every humble weed chows down on photons, as a matter of course. That’s real magic. Let’s see David Copperfield and Kris Angel sit down for a tray of rays.
Human beings may not be able to “eat light” as directly as plants do, but our fossil-fuel addicted civilization is beginning to taste the possibility of reducing its steady diet of dirty energy sources like coal, oil and nuclear. With the explosive growth of renewable energy, we are now on the cusp of the fourth age of solar.
Read More...
by Geoff Olson
In a 2000 interview on CBC Radio’s Ideas, ethnobotanist Wade Davis recalled a “horrific book that came out called The Secret Life of Plants.” One of Davis’ plant-gathering colleagues, Tim Ploughman, was “infuriated” with the book’s thesis that houseplants respond emotionally to human voices and the music of Mozart. “I remember Tim saying to me, ‘Why would a plant give a shit about Mozart?’ And then he said, ‘And even if it did, why should that impress us? They can eat light. Isn’t that enough?’”
Whatever the merit of the slab of compressed pulp that so annoyed the two ethnobotanists, there’s no denying that light-eating is a very impressive trick. In fact, it’s evolution’s greatest routine, the foundation for the pyramid of life. Every cell of algae and every humble weed chows down on photons, as a matter of course. That’s real magic. Let’s see David Copperfield and Kris Angel sit down for a tray of rays.
Human beings may not be able to “eat light” as directly as plants do, but our fossil-fuel addicted civilization is beginning to taste the possibility of reducing its steady diet of dirty energy sources like coal, oil and nuclear. With the explosive growth of renewable energy, we are now on the cusp of the fourth age of solar.
Read More...
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