Comment Re:mountains, canyons, droughts. Combination yes (Score 1) 317
California does have geothermal potential, the rest of the US does not.
Really? Because I could have sworn the largest geothermal upwelling on the planet is located in Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho.
If you do the research and the arithmetic, you find that renewables can make a significant impact - 11% to 13% of our total energy needs.
Bullshit, wind and solar alone can potentially generate many, many times our current energy demands. To get an idea of just how little land would be needed to generate our current needss with even junk solar cells check out this page which has a handy graph showing 6 solar farms in desert areas that would work. Now granted, that's approximately twice the area that we currently occupy with road and parking structures, but it would be completely possible if we were to set it as a goal like we did with reaching the moon, put 5-10% of global GDP for the next few decades to work on converting to 100% renewables and we could get there easily. The problem is not the technology, or the availability, it is the will to do what we know must be done, because it is harder than the current path which we know leads to problems.