Experts agree on a few things about geothermal energy.

Pros:

1. Geothermal is a very clean energy, with zero emissions and zero waste.

2. Because it is from the earth’s own energy, the resource is stable, indefinite and regenerating.

3. Resources can produce abundantly amounts of energy

Cons:

1. Geothermal is expensive. Both locating viable resources and building geothermal plants is incredibly front heavy – capital-wise.

2. Because the temperature of a geothermal resource must be very high, it could be considered a limited resource.

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With the oil prices so high, the demand for corn as a fuel source and food demands from China, the world is facing food shortages in less fortunate countries around the world. The old saying is apropos here, “Give a man a fish, feed him for a day; teach a man to fish, feed him for a lifetime.” We have to show the world how to grow and cultivate their own food sources instead of just giving them hand outs.

A way to teach those countries how to feed themselves, and teach us how to feed ourselves more efficiently, has been brain stormed at Columbia University. Professor Dickson Despommier of Environmental Health Sciences gave birth to the idea in his Medical Ecology class which examines the health consequences of a damaged environment. Over the last three years he has focused on the effects of agriculture on the environment which lead to his idea of Vertical Farms.

He gives the idea to the class of a community of 50,000 people who have no other food source than a vertical farm. The students had to figure out the size of the farm to sustain that community and the result was a 30-story building that covers a New York City block. One building of this size is equal to 588 acres of farm land. One hundred and ten of these farms could feed NYC instead of the expansive 64,680 acres of farmland equal to that.

Dickson says that the vertical farm is to farming as the skyscraper it to offices. He also believes we need to give as much attention to vertical farming as we did to space exploration. His goal is to replace all horizontal farming with vertical and let the land replenish itself. The farms would house plants and animals up to pigs. Cows, he said, would have to be raised elsewhere if desired. Nothing is new here, all the foods are being grown under roofs as we speak, but this would bring it all to one central location and make the community it fed more sustainable and would reduce emissions and cost from transporting food all over the globe.