Impulse Solar

Today is the unveiling or presentation of Solar Impulse. It is an impulse indeed, and an inspiration, as it is meant to be, to a lot of people. Of course, Bertrand Piccard is for a good part the one who inspires with gentle, visionary and up-beat charisma. Yes we can applies very much to Piccard. Obviously the project, fabulous and fascinating as it may be, is not meant to show off the future of aircraft propelling, but precisely to inspire, to motivate and to raise awareness. For me, even though I know full well no aircraft I will ever travel in will be fuelled by solar power captured while on-flight, I find the project one of beauty and elegance.

Pierre Veya in Le Temps points out that birds - who everybody recognizes are way ahead of humans when it comes to flying - don't get their energy from the sun directly. Birds eat grains and use energy from sun and earth produced in sophisticated processes and stored in amazing crumbs.

Perhaps the most profound and teachable lesson of Solar Impulse is that we have still a long way to go until our aspirations, our entertainment and our business all are sustainable.

Meanwhile Switzerland's - and Europe's - plans and spending still banks on nuclear energy, which is an aberration of any sense of sustainability. Major international corporations invest mig time in projects to produce solar energy in the Sahara and sell it to Swiss mountain farmers and city dwellers.

There is one lesson nature teaches us, and it seems that investors, manufacturers, policy makers, and consumers aren't getting it: produce or capture energy where you are going to use it. That is, decentralized, local, small, sustainable. The future's blowin' in the wind - and in the sun.