Editor's note: This week, Ecotality blogger Steve Caratzas takes a look at a recent New York Times article that outlines Thomas Edison's green thinking. This post was originallly published on June 3, 2007.

The New York Times has a terrific article about Thomas Edison, and his unparalleled impact on our daily lives, as well as our current (you should pardon the pun) environmental situation.

No individual deserves more credit, or blame, for America’s voracious electricity consumption than Edison, who conceived not only that generating station but also the notoriously inefficient incandescent bulb and a slew of volt-thirsty devices.

However, Edison was also a green visionary of sorts, whose ideas about sustainable energy encompassed windmills and an energy-self-sufficient home.

Edison also, like other scientists of his day, was beginning to understand even then that fossil fuels wouldn’t last forever.

Makes you wonder how the global warming denialists would have dealt reacted: “Electricity? Balderdash! Nothing will ever replace the tallow candle! I deserve the right to live in a state of perpetual semi-darkness! Progress be damned!”

In 1931, not long before he died, the inventor told his friends Henry Ford and Harvey Firestone: “I’d put my money on the sun and solar energy. What a source of power! I hope we don’t have to wait until oil and coal run out before we tackle that.”

Sorry, Mr. Edison. We let you down.