Photo Volaics and Solar Thermal Mass

I wrote this in response to my dad emailing me about peak oil/energy and the rise in oil price but I decided to share it here since he reads this anyways. Please do ask if you need me to explain anything here in more depth. Yesterday, there was brief discussion here about the actual cost of PV (photo-voltaic) power. A few people had heard of a study that calculated PV power as being more costly to our planet than it's worth in terms of resources and end-of-life waste. It's better than what we're using now and certainly PV has it's use and needs to be adopted as an alternative but in terms of global sustainability, we all need to reduce our energy use. We need to eliminate the heavy hitters like heaters, coolers, and industrial mass-production of unnecessary polluting crap. Technology, oil, and metals aren't going to solve our problems, they created them. Here at the Ecovillage, we are learning how to directly utilize the sun to heat our water and space. And the opposite of that is using wind and night-time temperature to cool. I learned yesterday that all the effort we put into making a building air-tight is to keep hot or cold air in and to circulate that air and this method can be reduced and possibly eliminated if we manage temperature with radiant energy via thermal mass heated by the sun and cooled by the lack of sun. Natural wall systems "breath", they don't have a membrane and this has many health benefits for people and the planet. I keep learning more and more benefits of natural building. We're all a bunch of nature loving geeky builders and designers. I'm loving every minute.