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Meeting the energy and materials needs of the next century may be one of the easier hurdles we face, since today's oil and coal fields could be replaced by fields of solar generators and wind turbines located in remote deserts and plains. As novelist Jules Verne envisioned more than a century ago, hydrogen can be derived from water using solar- and wind-generated electricity. This pollution-free fuel can then be sent via pipelines to our cities and industries. Now used to power many space rockets, hydrogen could one day fuel cars, homes and factories. Even in the Information Age we still live in a material world, and restoring our balance with nature will mean finding new ways of providing the millions of tons of metals, wood, cement and plastics that we depend on. Today we clear vast forests and rip open the earth to obtain many of those materials. We leave behind denuded landscapes and toxic wastepiles. A better way is to close the loop--recycling virtually all the materials we use and designing everything from newspapers to buildings so as to minimize their materials requirements. Recycling programs in European and North American cities have in the space of a decade reduced the amount of household waste more than 50%, and some cities are aiming for 90%. Products such as computers and automobiles are being redesigned for easy reuse. Some leading companies, for example, are producing a new generation of cars that can be quickly dismantled, with most of the remnants suitable for use in new vehicles or other items. Virtually eliminating waste and greatly reducing our dependence on virgin materials once seemed like a pipe dream, but it has now become a practical goal. |