Harold R. Hay: Solar Pioneer
(Page 16 of 17)
September/October 1976
By Mother Earth News Editors
The really valuable solar energy ideas—the non-polluting ideas that would allow you and me to become energy independent by harnessing the sun's rays which fall right in our own backyards and on our own roofs—never seem to get much attention. The "experts" and their public relations machines never seem to publicize those ideas.
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PLOWBOY: They never seem to publicize the kind of ideas you work on.
HAY: Oh it's not just me. There are others. People such as Steve Baer and Harry Thomason. People who've taken their own time and their own money and worked with their own hands to develop a solar energy system that works. I think that individuals like this—I call them "creative activists"—should have half the votes on the board of directors for any foundation or government agency that controls funds for solar research. The people who actually come up with the ideas and get their hands dirty out in the shop should have at least half the say-so when it comes time to parcel out the money.
PLOWBOY: Good idea. That would probably keep the people engaged in solar energy research—or any field of research, for that matter—working a lot more efficiently than they now work. But what about those individuals themselves? How would you have them prepare themselves for a career in research?
HAY: I've become very blunt with my recommendations on that subject because, it seems to me, far too many of today's young people think they can do research work without properly preparing themselves for it. I get exasperated when I see individuals leave the field of sociology or art or whatever to make methane gas . . . especially when they want to make it in an old inner tube.
Now there's nothing wrong with making methane gas and there's nothing wrong with making it in a tube. But it's ridiculous for someone with a background in sociology to fool himself into thinking that he's doing meaningful research when he does something like that. He might be solving his own energy problem and I think that's a very fine thing to do. . . but he's making a mistake if he kids himself into believing he's advancing the state of methane gas production in any way that's going to save millions of barrels of oil a day. That individual should be working in the field for which he was trained.
However, if he searches his soul and finds that methane gas research is what he really wants to do, then that person should change his fields. He should go back to school and take chemistry courses and biology courses and engineering courses and learn the basics of the field and prepare himself to research methane gas. But there isn't any shortcut. He's going to have to learn the fundamentals before he can expect to advance the state of the art in his newly chosen field.
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