Why all our problems are so small.

In the midst of an energy crisis, an economic implosion, an increasingly interconnected global economy, terrorist war and the return of the Russian military powers would I say that our problems are all so small. It's because when looking to fix all these problems, we are looking for smaller and smaller ways to fix them, as we really only can go so small.

In the world of microelectronics small is a real problem. As soon as you start placing things next to each other, the particles start reacting and heat develops, which slows down the reactions of all the other processes because they start bouncing around with one another. So, even though the level of processes could in some time be on the particle level, there are trillions of interferences that need to be overcome, most of them are dealing with each other.

And even solutions to channeling these processes so that the heat of each one adds to the productivity of the other, there is the problem of building it. Right now, we have solar panels that can produce energy and thereby qualify as "green". (Although with the level of chemicals it takes to produce them, they really aren't green anymore, but they do a pretty good job or recycling the chemicals to use again.) But even more of a problem is that the can't make the cells fit any closer together. There have been some break-thoroughs with nano-technology, but a lot it has to do with building the builders, and even that is several years off.

But we deal with energy every day, and another large problem is how to fit it into things. Where do we store energy in a way that is useful, convenient and quickly accessed. If it were inexpensive, every home could have a basement full of batteries, with a wind turbine and solar panel charger, but the cost of those kinds of projects, as well as the space required run into more trouble than before. No, to really be able to make solar technology viable, it would require a way to have very small batteries that save as much energy to work for a whole 24 hour period. At present, the size of batteries in addition to the size of the solar panels, well let's just say that 12 acre home lots just aren't available for the common consumer.

As of now, for cars, power plants, metal refiners and all those instruments of the modern industrial and technological age, the smallest, most compact, easiest containment of energy is still the poly-carbon bond molecule, i.e. fossil fuel. It's has huge energy release upon detonation or burning, the energy to mass ratio is reasonable and it's relatively safe in every day uses. But that's just the problem, the areas that are available in the past, have dried up, and ones that are known are even harder to get to, whether it is through hard granite ground rock, or through insurmountable "red tape" which is much harder to combat than the ground.

No, it's small that this world has decided it needs go. Smaller cell phones, smaller engines, smaller footprints. But if we wish to continue with our way of life, we need to decide on which way we would like to go, use the larger, less efficient energy producers that seem so great, but take up lots of room. Or we go back to our small, compact organic carbon, that is oh so small, and which everyone has made such a great big deal.