I’ve just found the most delicious quote from one of the giant intellects of the 20th (heck, also the 19th) century: Thomas Alva Edison. Speaking in 1931 with fellow industrial giants Henry Ford and Harvey Firestone, Edison, who knew a thing or two about energy said:

“We are like tenant farmers chopping down the fence around our house for fuel when we should be using Nature’s inexhaustible sources of energy — sun, wind and tide. … I’d put my money on the sun and solar energy. What a source of power! I hope we don’t have to wait until oil and coal run out before we tackle that.”

Seventy-eight years later, we’re waiting until we run out of oil and coal before getting serious about renewable energy. Too bad Edison couldn’t have invented a way to live another hundred years; we could use such clarity of insight from a man who was born before the Civil war.

His quote is my new sig.