“Chopping down our fence for fuel”

In 1931, the year he died, Thomas Edison told Henry Ford and Harvey Firestone, his retirement neighbors in Florida:

“We are like tenant farmers chopping down the fence around our house for fuel when we should be using nature’s inexhaustible sources of energy — sun, wind, and tide. 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.”