Geo-exchange probably costs more than private wind turbines or solar panels ($13,000 for a 3.5 ton system, what!) but is more available, because wind or solar can be limited by geography or weather.

But Geo-exchange can meet heat requirements for most homes, at least theoretically; depending on the house, installation costs may be impractical. And since it still requires electricity.

All that said, however, Geo-exchange is more efficient than just about any system out there, and would complement renewable systems very well.

1) You are underestimating how technically difficult it is to enrich Uranium. If someone gives you the plans and the technology its not so bad. Generally speaking its not to hard to ensure that plans for enrichment never get distributed. It happened once but they are more secure now. Certainly it wouldn't be a problem at all if we dismantled all the enrichment plants and destroyed the detailed planes.

2) If you give a country a fission plant you give them an excuse to need fissile material. Once they have a reason to have and produce fissile material it becomes impossible to determine if they are building a bomb or not. If they don't have a fission plant then you know immediately that any fissile material is going into weapons research.

3) There are about a bazillion (that's a technical term and totally not an exaggeration) other things wrong with fission. That's not to say we should shut down the plants we have but we shouldn't be building more and we should simply let them run out their lifespans and replace them with something else. There is obviously enough renewable energy out there that we don't need them. For instance, I learned just the other day that MIT estimated the US hot rock geothermal resource at 200-2000 times the annual energy consumption of the US.

In short, we don't need to use it and it can be used to hide weapons technology. It really is ethically irresponsible to use a dangerous resource that out puts highly toxic waste when we have other options just because someone invented it.

The answer to our energy crisis is a cooperative movement towards currently more expensive technologies, but god damn they're more expensive because they aren't used. They'll get cheaper. This isn't a pitch to use one or the other but there's plenty of green power sources compared to the current model of energy production. Boohoo we'll have to pay out the ass to save the planet, but at least we'll have a planet worth living on.

You don't really need a yard to produce your own power at home (though I guess you'd need a house, atleast for now). They've begun developing homes capable of producing all the electricity it needs to power its own functions while being insulated enough to require scarsely more than human body heat and light bulbs to remain warm during the dead of winter. The Solar Decathlon Winner –"Living 2015" Prototype from 2007 produces more power than it needs, with the ultimate goal being private homes that are not only self-sustained but put surplus power into the grid.

Of course, this relatively small house cost 550,000 euros to build, so it isn't like it's available to most people today, but then again prototypes don't come cheap.

The practical part of alternative energies is that they can actually be cheaper in the long run than conventional means of energy (coal, oil, gas), especially as nonrenewable resources become scarcer. The real obstacle is initial cost on many of these systems.

Well that is, in other words, what I said.

And it'll probably be my rationale for investing in these alternative strategies as I accumulate more wealth.