Somehow it seems that every seeming competition between countries is likened to the Cold War. One is forced to admit that as far as a battle for status and reputation on the international scale goes, there are few events in history that equal the U.S./Soviet arms race, but even so it's the same as every political scandal having "gate" tacked onto its name: Annoying and misleading.
That being said, there is a race for technological supremacy in the alternative energy market, and the first nation to reach a major milestone in this field may become an unstoppable energy-supplying juggernaut.
The way things are going, that nation is probably going to be part of the United Arab Emirates. In the past several months to a year, many nations, including Abu Dhabi and Qatar, have begun dumping billions of dollars into alternative energy research across the globe.
This flood of energetic altruism speaks to the realization amongst oil-producing nations that their number one export is being increasingly demonized even as its supply dwindles. If OPEC begins making plans for the end of oil, shouldn't the rest of the world take heed?
This has to be motivated at least in part by these countries' desire to remain the world's foremost energy exporters, and considering their freedom of funds and obvious motivation, it's hard to imagine them not succeeding. But in the modern flat world, does that really matter? A breakthrough is a breakthrough is a breakthrough.
A large portion of this money is being used to fund research at major technologically-minded colleges and universities around the world, suggesting the desire of the Emirates to advance a wider swath of clean energy technology as opposed to simply developing and owning a small portion of the market. It's obvious that these countries stand to make an unimaginable amount of money off of being on the ground floor of such a movement, but considering the global benefit to their altruism, who cares?
It's inappropriate to compare this sequence of events to the Cold War; that was 50 years of human history devoted to the exacerbation of a problem. Diminishing a problem is an act of peace. Bring on the Green Desert.
Photo: Courtesy of Laron Fomby
