Launch giant solar panels into orbit and send limitless clean energy back to Earth
Thousands of acres of super-hairy plants around the world reflect extra sunlight and cool down the globe
A modified nuclear reactor that produces 17,000 barrels of gasoline a day-enough to fuel 54,000 Honda Civics.
Sequester carbon dioxide in six-mile-long sausage-shaped plastic bags on the seafloor
Save six billion kilowatt-hours of energy annually (enough to power 20 million lightbulbs for a year) by blasting brew with supersonic streams of steam
Harness the warmth given off by millions of commuters and reduce global energy demand by 15 percent
Draw power from man-made twisters and light up entire cities
Turn civilization’s lowliest by-products-including human waste and animal carcasses-into clean-burning fuels for commuter transport
Capture 90,000 tons of urine every day from the world’s billion pigs and recycle it into plastic plates
Generate heat and electricity for small-town America using pint-size nuclear reactors that will run for 30 years with no refueling, maintenance or noxious diesel fumes
(via < a href="http://www.kurzweilai.net/">Kurzweil)
Some of these seem like better ideas than others…
See also: How Do We Intelligently Discuss Politicized Geoengineering?
June 25, 2008 at 10:52 am
See also the Mars trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson (fiction based on these sorts of ideas).