Marburg, Germany adopts law requiring solar cells on its buildings

You may have missed this story, but it was an hourly news headline on Yahoo a couple of days back. Anyhow, the local government in Marburg, Germany adopted a new agressive law requiring all new building and any building-including homes-installing new roofs or water heaters to put in solar cells. Of course, the citizens screams about it because it means more money out of their pockets for renovations and construction but I, for one, applaud Marburg's city government. This is an idea that I wholly support and it's one I wish more local and state governments in America would adopt. Especially in places like Florida, Arizona and New Mexico, I have felt that putting place new building codes requiring roofs to be covered in a certain percentage of solar cells would greatly benefit America's energy needs. There are already areas in Florida where people with solar cells on their roofs are being paid-that's right PAID-to sell the excess energy their solar cells produce back to power companies. In many cases this results in a profit for private citizens because they are producing more energy than they are using per month. What a great idea, and it's one I would like to see spread. As anyone who reads this blog knows, I'm no "tree hugging hippy", but to not utilize the most abundant power source we have-the sun-to provide our energy needs more so than we do now is rediculus. If 4-6 solar panels were installed on every home in the south, America would greatly reduce its energy dependance on foreign oil (and other imports) and drastically reduce the costs of heating and cooling our homes and buildings. But no, our politicians have to take huge monetary kickbacks from oil and energy companies whom have no desire to see the widespread usage of alternative energy sources because it means less profits for them and instead of getting on the "clue bus"-as one of my former teachers used to say-they would rather prevent us from utilizing alternative energy methods than to invest in them themselves and make a profit through them. How pathetic!...but I digress...I can only hope that, one day, America has leadership both in the White House and in Congress, which no longer is susecptible to big oil and traditional energy companies. Unfortunately, I just don't see that happening in my lifetime. But I'll still be keeping my fingers crossed that it does.