Does Your White Roof Have A Green Glow? - Page 3

The balance will be between greenish solutions of simplicity and the greenish solutions – for a number of reasons – that are the stuff of technology and public relations.

NPR has a podcast of “Morning Edition” that reports on a new solar energy business where solar energy producing companies sell large stores and chains on allowing them to install photo-voltaic panels on their large roof areas. The energy produced by the panels is then sold to the store at rates that are lower than the big utilities charge. The store can then advertise itself to the community as “green”.

(Photos ©Howard Dratch, 2007. Bacalar, Mexico)
Would I paint a house in the Hudson Valley of New York white roofed? No. Much of the year is spent trying to capture every fleeting draft of heat, the wood stove stoked and the furnace roaring while that Nor'easter roars outside and the world becomes deeply white.

There are an amazing number of new technologies waiting, offering themselves, or in the gleam of the inventors' eyes. They could, with support, change the nature of the world into the new color of virtue – green.

Grab your cell phone, push “send” on your email, access the Net and check on the latest and greatest of new science and new ways to make the world a better place. But remember that there are times the analog phone works best, paper and pencil write a shopping list quicker and some kids would be better off making a phone with tin cans and string than having an iPhone in their pocket.

Article Author: Howard Dratch

Howard writes on science, books, movies and news for Blogcritics and on his own blogs from the border of North and Central America.

Visit Howard Dratch's author page — Howard Dratch's Blog