La Di Da: The History of Alternative Energy

Few would deny we're living in troubled times: gas is really expensive, the air is polluted and you can't sleep with a hippie these days without hearing about alternative energy. Though most still tune out at the mention of windmills or crystal meth, others are fed up with shelling out at the pump or dealing with a collapsed lung on their morning run. And many are starting to think this alternative energy talk might be more than just the price you pay for a night of free love. So what the hell is it, and why hasn't Ben Affleck been in a movie about it yet? Good question.

Contrary to popular belief, the world hasn't always run on gasoline and Mini Thins. A countless array of fuels have gone in and out of favor over the course of history. Early man preferred to use dirt as fuel, even though it wouldn't burn, because he liked that it was soft and brown. With advances in science, humanity moved on to wood, coal, and witches for its energy-burning needs.

Eventually, man discovered that he was crapping up the planet by running around and burning things in hopes of making his life easier. This didn't concern man much, he actually thought it was kind of cool, but woman was pretty pissed about it and nagged man into searching for alternative non-polluting energy sources. And by this she didn't mean that smelly old donkey he'd had since he was a kid and wouldn't get rid of because it had hilariously large nuts.

In the fourteenth century, Dutchman Happy Goetner made a name for himself as a major proponent of "rainbow power" and was soon after stoned to death for being silly. This setback to the cause of alternative energy was only temporary, however, and Goetner became a martyr for generations of quasi-scientific flaky dreamers everywhere.

The first windmills were built solely to lure in monsters, who could then be burnt to death in a dramatic fashion by bored villagers, and they served this purpose well for hundreds of years. Then, in 1681, townsfolk chased a monster to his supposed doom only to discover that it was just "Big Ed" Chuntrock, the ugliest man in five counties but a hell of a nice guy and pretty decent at horseshoes. After the misunderstanding was straightened out, and Ed forgave the townsfolk for burning down his house, hanging his wife, raping his cat and cutting off one of Ed's own ears with a six-foot-long saw, the village was stuck with a windmill and nobody to burn to death inside it. Thankfully for all, it was soon after discovered that the windmill was also useful for grinding corn and beans, and fans of bean-powder sandwiches danced the night away.

Bean-powder sandwiches fell out of popularity along with farting in the 1930's, and today windmills are used primarily to generate electricity. The machinations of this process are highly complex, with local residents pledging a certain dollar amount for each time the windmill's blades go around, much like a charity AIDS walk, and these funds are used to buy coal to generate electricity. While windmills are considered by some to be an inefficient source of energy, others love to watch the blades spin when they're drunk.

The 1960's saw a rising public interest in flower power and pyramid power, neither of which turned out to be a feasible energy source on a national scale. A scientist from Berkeley named Johan Bertelbong did develop a car that ran off flower combustion, but the thing took so many flowers to run it was like some kind of Dr. Seuss nightmare, and Bertelbong was soon kicked out of Northern California for fucking up the scenery. He was last scene driving slowly out of the region in his flower car, followed by an enormous swarm of bees.

In the 1970's, many pinned their hopes on solar power, until it was discovered that a square mile of solar panels in the Mojave Desert only produced enough electricity to run a small handheld calculator for four minutes. Solar panels are still in use as a fashion statement on the roofs of many flaky liberal dwellings, and proponents argue that they can still be used to heat a small home if you take the metal parts out and use them as skylights.

Many consider hydrogen to be the fuel of the future, and doubters should remember that hydrogen is the magic fuel that made the Hindenburg burn so brightly. Most agree that it'll only be a matter of time before our cars are hydrogen-powered, which will go a long way toward making every day like an exciting video game, with cars blowing up all around you because a leaf landed on somebody's hood or a careless motorist ran over a lollipop stick. Could this really be the future? Shit yes.

But until that day, it's up to us to keep the planet clean. So the next time you're thinking of burning a big, smelly stack of coal to meet your energy needs, remember alternative energy and see if you can get a non-polluting hippie to do the work for you instead.

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