Green Energy is the Future

There’s a common political phrase that’s always amused me: the “green energy debate.”

There are many half-truths and outright fallacies in political discourse, it’s not like that’s a big secret or anything. However, it’s hard to say if there is a bigger example of pure nonsense than arguing whether or not we should be using green, or renewable energy sources. The long and short of it is, we have no choice.

For civilization to continue and thrive, we have to break our addiction to fossil fuels. Not only because they are by nature extremely limited, but because of the immense threat they pose to the environment.

What does this mean for entrepreneurs and business owners then? Only that we are poised for what could possibly be an economic upheaval / shift bigger than the Industrial Revolution.

The fact is, industries that revolve around coal and gas power, fracking, even nuclear power, are all going to go under. This is inevitable. In their place, we will see an array of industries pop up that will redefine the entire economy. Solar panel manufacturing and optimization, advanced desalinization methods, city greening, wind turbine installation, and much more. Green-based industry is going to explode, and rightfully so.

Anyone who is advantageous enough to catch these trends as they are happening will reap the rewards, not only financially, but morally. There’s nothing more satisfying than knowing that what you’re grinding for and making a living off of is also helping others, as well as animals and the environment we all live in.

Start Local

Investing in green energy doesn’t just apply to your personal business. It’s a mindset. One of the best ways to start investing your energy and money holistically is to seek out your nearest organic farm and support them by purchasing their produce. This is critical. Small farms need support, and there’s no better way to show it by eating what they grow.

This is a small measure, but it speaks volumes. Mindset can be everything. Perhaps after you find a farm you like, you can support them through your business in some way. Digital Sages gives discounts to green businesses in need of websites and promotional material, for example.

This model doesn’t apply to every business sector, but you might be surprised what you come up with. There’s always ways to help people if you take the time to think about it. Even if it’s something as small as providing a blanket discount for your services to their employees. What you send out will come back to you.

Go Solar Now

Often when we talk financial freedom, we have to speak in the long term. The decisions you make now can reap great rewards down the road. In that regard, investing in solar power is an absolute no-brainer. The 20-year savings projection for switching to Solar ranges from $7,484 to over $30,000 depending on where you live in the country. It’s one of the few true guaranteed investments you can make. Regardless of the initial cost (which varies from state to state and country to country) you will save money in the long run.

This is beneficial for a number of reasons, not least of which because it cuts your dependence on the electrical grid, reduces your carbon footprint, and even allows you to potentially give energy back to the grid in order to ease the burden on the system. They are also relatively easy to install and maintain, especially compared to gasoline generators.

The perks of solar really begin to add up when you apply the savings for business purposes. A typical business has extremely high overhead power costs, as any brick and mortar business owner knows all too well. Image if you could offset those yearly expenses by running on solar energy?

The amount you can save over a ten year period could amount to tens of thousands of dollars, which could be the difference between staying afloat, or going under.

If you invest heavily in solar for your business, you may even be able to sell your excess electricity back to the grid, further offsetting your costs. Not only will you be saving money, you will be physically improving your community and the environment around you. The businesses that take the time to put their money toward actually helping their communities will be the ones that thrive going forward. Solar is an excellent means of accomplishing this.

Fossil Fuels Are a Dying Industry Regardless of Politics

This shouldn’t be an issue but it is when so many people rely on emotions instead of facts in their decision making processes. To put it bluntly, there is no future for the fossil fuel industries. Fossil fuels are by definition limited, and we have already decimated biomes around the world in an effort to extract the innards of the Earth and burn them for the sake of energy.

This “greenhouse effect” is often not spoken of enough, and is poorly explained in school and in the media. The actual process is simple – we all know the basic science of carbon dioxide trapping heat. More carbon dioxide means less heat escapes and the global temperatures fluctuate and trend higher than they are supposed to. That much is simple, but the deeper whys and hows of it are rarely explained.

Put it like this: during the course of millions of years, certain amounts of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases would be released in the atmosphere over a given period of time. Volcanic eruptions, fires, animal exhalations, and the like.

These are natural processes that never would have peaked over a certain set amount, and within those parameters the Earth found a balance.

Now, think of all the millions of years of animals that lived and died to become fossilized and transmuted into the stuff of the Earth, these fuel sources we crave? Only very rarely would these fossilized remains be cycled back into the pool of carbon dioxide naturally in those millions of years. Most of these natural processes of decay and preservation locked millions of years worth of carbon dioxide within the Earth. Yes, millions of years worth, that otherwise would have never seen the atmosphere again for millions of years to come.

Within the span of only a hundred years, literally tens of millions of years worth of this decayed matter (oil, shale, coal, etc.) has been dug up from the Earth and burnt off as fuel, releasing into the atmosphere.

And anti-climate science hacks will look you in the eye and attempt to tell you that there is “no such thing” as global warming and that the scientists are all wrong. “We’re not harming the environment,” they claim. Simple logic alone will tell you that is complete nonsense – it’s no wonder that these people take money from the fossil fuel industries. They thrive and subsist on propaganda.

The basic self-evident fact of the matter is, humans have performed an extremely unnatural, destructive act by burning fossil fuels, and the effects are all too real. Ocean acidification, global temps on the rise, glaciers that have existed for tens of thousands of years melting in ten. The disappearance of important wildlife all over the globe, disturbed animal migration patterns, the rise in global droughts and mosquito-borne illnesses.

All this and more is already upon us – what business in their right mind would want to side with all of that?

Especially when there are safe, effective, and incredible options out there to replace these crude methods?

The foremost reason why fossil fuels are a dying industry is not their inherent limited supply, as some would claim. It’s simply that as a global society we are all waking up. If you’re creating a business that is truly working on a model designed to provide a service and become a pillar in your local community, why on Earth would you invest in something killing both your community and the planet at large?

Green energy is the future whether people like it or not. Some will make the change happily, some will follow begrudgingly, and some will kick and scream like children as they are forced to let go of the old ways, and still others will fight the change tooth and nail, because they know their coffers will suffer if oil and coal are no longer the hot commodities on the market.

This is the reality that we all have to face.

There is no room in a progressive, advanced, holistic society for crude practices that involve pillaging the Earth of its millions-year-old resources just to burn them off for our petty whims while simultaneously destroying the planet we are on. It doesn’t make sense on any level.

Green Energy Will Be a Trillion Dollar Industry

No question about it. Already, advances in solar panels, wind farms, and other forms of clean energy production are making people rich, while also helping the planet. This is just the beginning, though. We are still in the phase where green energy is unfortunately considered a luxury, not a necessity, and as such, it is not taking the lion’s share of the energy market.

As we enter the 2020s and it becomes abundantly clear that coal and oil are dead resources that could never support our 8 billion + population, more and more research and development will be dedicated to green energy. It will be at this point when we will see mass conversions to clean energy, from giant solar roads to wind farms, to advances in hydro-electric and sustainable farming and automobiles. These advances will be heralded as miraculous innovations despite their obvious necessity.

To be sure, we cannot go forward as a society without green energy. Our future quite literally depends on it.

What is disturbing and quite sad is, right now research and development into this incredible source of energy is being held up because of all the mixed messages and propaganda people receive from the oil industries.

It doesn’t help that we have card-carrying lunatics in the White House who deny climate science because they are in bed with big oil. Their stupidity will be everyone’s suffering if measures aren’t taken to invest far more heavily into green energy.

While you can only do so much to help on the federal level, you can take steps now in your own home and business to invest in green energy now. Sustainable water recycling, solar panels, geothermal heating, gardening, recycling plastics.

You can do your part, and not only will you be helping the planet, you will be saving money in the long run. Nothing more satisfying than knowing you’re being rewarded for doing good.