Brave New World

We hurtle toward utopia and Armageddon at ever increasing speeds.

For Armageddon, start with the notion of an unstable North Korean dictator and an unstable American president — and note (as I’ve offered before): nuclear winter is not the solution to global warming.

For utopia, how about this headline I missed in November:

Tesla’s solar roof to cost less than a regular roof – even before energy production, says Elon Musk

. . . Musk said during the meeting earlier this afternoon:

“It’s looking quite promising that a solar roof [can] actually cost less than normal roof before you even take the value of electricity into account. So the basic proposition would be ‘Would you like a roof that looks better than a normal roof, last twice as long, costs less and by the way generates electricity?’  Why would you get anything else.”

That’s including the labor costs and without subsidies for solar, Musk added. . . .

Has there ever been a more exciting time to be alive?  Nearly free energy is on the way, just as we already have nearly free communications (I can make a Skype call to China — a video call, no less — for free!).

The implications — if we can learn to distribute the benefits — are spectacular.  So far we seem to be solving the world’s technological challenges faster than its political ones.  Although with this particular breakthrough, the gains are easily distributed to any homeowner with a roof, which is a good start.  (Less good for coal miners, but we hope some at least can thrive installing roofs.)