Nobel prize scientist calls for solution for world energy crisis
www.chinaview.cn 2004-03-12 11:29:29
SourceCHRISTCHURCH, New Zealand, March 12 (Xinhuanet) -- New Zealand-born Nobel Prize winner Alan MacDiarmid has called on all countries of the world to divert a percentage of their military budgets to solving a looming world energy crisis.
MacDiarmid, 76, made the call Thursday at the 4th APEC science ministers' meeting currently held in Christchurch, New Zealand. Hetold the meeting that energy was the single most important problem facing humanity.
He called for "a new crash program, similar to the Apollo programme that put a man on the moon," to develop energy sources to replace oil, coal and natural gas.
Burning those fuels was destabilizing the global climate, and in any case the world was running out of fossil fuels that could be extracted easily, he said.
MacDiarmid, who won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 2000 for the discovery and development of conductive polymers, said he had not worked out what percentage of the world's military budgets should be diverted to energy research, but it would need to be in the billions of dollars a year.
For the United States, he suggested taxing 5 cents on every gallon of oil, raising 10 billion US dollars a year.
Although he was personally excited by President George Bush's plan to send astronauts to Mars, he felt there was a more urgent need to spend such money on developing alternative energy resources.
He said all countries should contribute a share of their military budgets to an energy research fund governed by an international commission.
"The international commission will then give research contractsto industries in different countries in relation to the amount of money that each country has put in."
He said the money should be spent on researching energy efficiency and renewable energy sources such as solar, wind, biomass and hydroelectric power.
He believed there was also huge potential in unexplored geothermal energy, especially if it was possible to extract it from great depths under the Earth's crust.
If such new cheap energy sources could be found, it would also be possible to solve the world's mounting water shortage by distilling seawater.
"The problem is huge, but it is also a magnificent opportunity," he said. Enditem