Solar energy and reuse – a Child’s Play?

This morning I had an astonishing conversation with my 4-year-old son. The child’s logic revealed again that ecological principles actually are too easy to understand.

It all started with a youtube video of the recent hyperloop pod competition. The Tunnel video itself wasn’t self-explaining, so I described it as “a new version of the subway. Much faster, so people don’t need to take the plane to travel long distances between cities. Just imagine, how much fuel that saves!”. He understood well. So I continued: “…and you know what, the same guy, Elon Musk, didn’t invent the rocket, but thought about a smarter one. A rocket that doesn’t have to be thrown away. It can be re-used”.
Him: “Just like our yogurt glass we return and don’t throw away”.
Me: “Absolutely. [we watched a speech of Elon with the Mars travel animation. Quite some minutes and heavy excitement about Mars later, I continued] And like with the rockets, Elon Musk did not invent the electric vehicle, but he invented and built ones that many people are excited about. He also thought about how to fuel them: With the sun.”
Him: “With the sun?”
Me: “Yes, we can directly harvest the sun’s energy and use it for cars, homes, everything.” We browsed some images of solar plants and he recognized them from around our home.
Me: “He even invented batteries to store the energy smartly. It’s energy that’s almost always there. Like the wind or water. Do you know how to turn energy to wind? Like with a hairdryer. And the other way around? How do we turn wind into energy?”
He thought a little and described the wind turbine we see in Germany quite frequently.
Me: “with this energy, you could charge an electric car.”
Him: “So dad, why don’t we have an electric car?”

It made me think. Right, why am I still driving this (2 years new) stinking Diesel? Why did I go the comfortable way and didn’t I think about a change?

I do now. And think about a change.

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