VIII—Some Reflections on the Optimal Use of Wind Power

Extract

It is difficult, somehow, to be completely convinced that the world's fuel supplies are about to dry up leaving us in a state of nature with modern technology marooned hard and fast up the proverbial creek. The end of the world itself has been prophesied at regular intervals since the beginning of time and has not yet come to pass. Again, throughout recorded history mankind, with only minor hiccups, has somehow always managed to go forward technically and never backwards. It is difficult somehow not to relax into a comfortable state of Micawberism and to reckon that something is bound to turn up in the fifty or so years we seem to have left to buoy us all up again and carry forward the kind of civilization we all take for granted. It is not surprising therefore that some basic air of unreality tends to cling around any discussion on a return to the use of wind power for propelling ships. It must be the first time ever that mankind has seriously discussed a return to an outdated and largely dead major technology.