GREEN ENERGY GREAT : GLOBAL ESSAY [1]

IN TOUGH times - it's harder to accept - that some economic instability is good - if there were no possibility of failure, there would be no room for success.

ECONOMY : Green Energy Equals Good Business. There's no denying that too much of the world is still mired in an economic slowdown, but some of the brightest examples of significant and lasting opportunity are right under our noses.

In spite of all the recent criticism of free trade and free markets, it's important to remember that in the  15 years leading up to the current economic crises, more people worldwide moved from poverty to the middle class than at any other time in history.

THE PROBLEM is that the population is growing fastest in the areas least able to take advantage of the benefits of the modern world.

Talent and intelligence may be spread evenly across the planet, but opportunity is not.

ALL around the world, in poor countries and rich ones, the private sector, governments and nonprofits are combining their skills and resources to form networks of creative cooperation to boost local economies.while addressing problems like climate change and poverty.

SMALLHOLDER farmers in Africa are planting trees so they can not only harvest timber or fruit but also profit by selling carbon credits on the world market.

But it's hard to top the economic stories concerning clean energy and it's tragic that these achievements aren't more widely known.

GERMANY, where the sun shines on average as much as it does in London, reportedly set the world record for electricity generated from the sun in a single day : 22 gigawatts, or roughly the output of 20 nuclear power plants.

Long mislabeled as expensive and unwieldy, the clean energy sector in the U.S. was actually growing by 8.3% before the economic slowdown, more than twice the rate of the overall economy.

This Publishing continues to Part [2]. The World Students Society thanks H.E. President Bill Clinton.