The current solar income of the Earth, or an ecozone or ecoregion or any area, is the amount of solar energy that falls on it as sunlight. This is thought important in some branches of green economics, as the ultimate measure of renewable energy.
Buckminster Fuller first described the concept in his 1970 paper Cosmic Costing, contrasting the photosynthesis on which natural capital and sustainable infrastructural capital depend, with the chemosynthesis of extracting and using fossil fuels.
Paul Hawken is a more recent advocate of the concept, and views it as central to his notion of a restorative economy. It remains a popular notion among those who believe that toxic waste and maintenance problems of direct solar energy devices can ultimately be overcome, or that yields of passive or biological means of gathering and using this energy as biofuels can be made to approximate those of fossil fuels.
Famous quotes containing the words current, solar and/or income:
“Phlebas the Phoenician, a fortnight dead,
Forgot the cry of gulls, and the deep sea swell
And the profit and loss.
A current under sea
Picked his bones in whispers. As he rose and fell
He passed the stages of his age and youth
Entering the whirlpool.”
—T.S. (Thomas Stearns)
“The solar system has no anxiety about its reputation, and the credit of truth and honesty is as safe; nor have I any fear that a skeptical bias can be given by leaning hard on the sides of fate, of practical power, or of trade, which the doctrine of Faith cannot down-weigh.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“There are few sorrows, however poignant, in which a good income is of no avail.”
—Logan Pearsall Smith (1865–1946)