Talk of the Bay, Thursday with Rachel Anne Goodman
What if we could end poverty AND tackle climate change with one big idea? After four years of calculations and studying this concept, author and engineer Robert Stayton has laid out how this would work in his new book,
Sharing the Wealth of Solar Energy With Everyone on Earth
“A thought-provoking idea if ever there was one!”
– BILL McKIBBEN, author The End of Nature
In this book, author Robert Stayton explores the idea of a worldwide solar cooperative that would give each newborn a set of solar panels, the proceeds from which they would be given dividends as they grew, providing a universal basic income, while drastically scaling up the building of solar farms around the world. In this interview, Robert talks about how he got the idea, how it works, and what it would mean for people’s lives and sense of security.
In 1997, Robert and his wife built a passive solar home in Santa Cruz County and outfitted it with an off-grid solar photovoltaic system. He has been living with solar energy since then, always looking for new ways to apply solar in his daily life. He drives a solar-charged Plug-in Prius, heats his water with a solar water heating system, and bakes his bread in his solar oven. He has served as host to hundreds of people who have toured his home to see his solar efforts.
Robert’s book Power Shift combines his science background, teaching experience, and personal commitment to solar energy into a unique perspective on how humans use energy and where our civilization is going
Solar Dividends : How Solar Energy Can Generate a Basic Income for Everyone on Earth. This new book by Robert Stayton rides on an apparently radical idea: that all people on Earth can earn a basic income, financed from the generation of solar electricity alone. This comes from a known scheme used to incentivize the generation of solar electricity, the feed-in tariff, but other financing mechanisms are also suggested in the book, such as combination with carbon taxes, redirecting existing subsidies on fossil fuel companies to solar electricity generation and taxing corporations from feeding on common held resources (commons).
Learn more here: http://solardividends.org/
