ABSTRACT
Global climatic change, stratospheric ozone depletion, and loss of biological diversity are among the issues thrusting themselves onto the policy agenda. If the present understanding of the greenhouse effect is even approximately correct, avoiding potentially catastrophic climatic change will require stabilization of the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Many indices of human activities are growing exponentially: population, energy use, economic activity. Energy brokers ail change in the physical and biological worlds, as money broker’s transactions in the economic world. There are many solar energy technologies available. Biomass derived from energy plantations or residuals from agriculture, forestry, or waste streams can be converted to heat, electricity, alcohols, or methane. The solar energy flux can be captured by many means: hydropower, biomass, wind, waves, photovoltaic conversion, ocean thermal conversion, direct heating, and others. The only non-fossil primary energy sources which have the potential to replace the fossil fuels are atomic power, with commercialization of plutonium, or solar power.
