Following on from my sunshine post yesterday it got me to thinking about why our use of this fantastic resource has been so painfully slow to develop. Or even, I might go so far as to say, pretty non-existent.

Sure, we have solar panels and solar powered electronics, even solar powered cars, but when you take a close look at the current technology available it all seems a bit, how can I put it?… Primitive!

Why is that, do you think?

Could it be perhaps, just ever so slightly, a small tad to do with the fact that sunshine is free? That nobody has yet figured out a way to sell it to us?

Or that the all-powerful oil companies, and the electric companies, and the gas companies just might not want us to develop efficient solar powered devices because at a stroke that would put them all out of business overnight?

Believe me, if they could find a way to package and charge us for our sunlight they would have developed far, far more sophisticated methods to harness the power of the sun by now. We would all have completely solar powered houses, and factories, and machinery, and we’d all be driving around in 200mph solar powered cars.

And boy would we be paying through the nose for it!

But no, they can’t charge us for it so they’re gonna do all they can to stop us having it.

Could this also be the reason why the medical profession has always warned us to cover up, smother ourselves with sunscreens and stay out of the sun lest we shrivel up and die?

Could it be that if they really admitted how beneficial the sun was for us, how essential to life it really is, and how it helps to cure many ailments (including cancers), then the pharmaceutical companies would also be reeling as we abandoned them in droves to go and lie in it?

And think of this: besides all the pills, and prescriptions, and drugs, and cr@p they sell us every minute of every day, who do you think makes all the suntan lotions?

They’re not stupid, are they? Which can only mean that we must be!