Iraq: Solar Dynamo

It kind of makes me want to punch out every window in my house that we're now falling behind Iraq in the solar power chase.

In a city with constant electricity shortages but no lack of sunshine, the new buzz is solar energy.

Teams of engineers have appeared along major Baghdad roadways, bolting panels and bulbs to rows of towering steel poles to make solar-powered streetlights.

The workers who turned up recently in the upscale Karada district approached the task with near-religious fervor.

"We are lighting up the city with solar power," Sajad Hussein declared when queried by curious residents. "People say it is a gift from God."

Now, Iraq is doing this because they can't get their grid in working order, not out of concern for the environment. But here in the US of A, the President put a two-year moratorium on solar project development in public lands in the West until outcry forced him to reverse it It seems that there's less bureaucratic red tape for solar developers in frickin' BAGHDAD than here.

On a somewhat related and more hopeful note, here's a great interview between Grist and the woman who may become Vice President, Kathleen Sebelius, who has tirelessly fought against the construction of new coal-fired power plants as Governor of Kansas and increased their wind energy output. She found a way to sell that in conservative Kansas - by arguing (correctly) that future carbon pricing costs will be borne by the state with additional coal plants, and most of the benefit in energy would be going elsewhere anyway - and it's a good lesson for how we can move forward on renewables.