The Author of an article about energy use makes some good points.
He doubts whether people in the US for instance, can sustain necessary reductions in energy use without a lowering of living standards.
He is most probably right, but only if we continue to live in the specific lifestyles in which we have become accustomed. In the longer term, with more sensible planning - all our energy and environmental problems are easily solved. We don't have to have a lowering of living standards nor do we need to use less energy.
We simply have to do things differently.
There is a whole world of possibilities that even the so called experts have never given serious consideration. It is enormously wasteful for farmers to grow crops as they presently do.You see farmers growing one crop of vegetables or whatever on maybe hundreds of acres of land. Why spread crops over hundreds of acres of land, when you can have intensive farming whereby crops are grown in layers like shelves reaching say as high as a ten story building ? Can you grow food like that ?
Of course, but we are creatures of habit and we tend to do things much the same as our ancestors did , except that we use more modern equipment to farm like they did thousands of years ago. Would it be too expensive to grow food in crops one level on top of another ?
No, we would only need to build shelves with say Bamboo poles and Bamboo webbing and the cost of the shelving would be quite cheap. Bamboo is one of the strongest timbers, it grows quickly and lasts for centuries. We have millions of
under-employed people who could be taught how to build shelves made out of Bamboo, and once the shelves are built, they would be in place for as long as was needed. So soon a ten acre farm could produce as much food as a hundred acre farm does at the moment.
How would the higher shelves be accessed ? By mobile vehicles like cherry pickers
which have a high reach.
It sounds a bit far fetched but like most other innovations would soon be thought of as the only sensible way to produce crops for a quickly expanding world population.
Also by going higher - we can have intensive farming areas close to large rivers which presently simply flow into the seas and are not used at all.
By simple changes in how we do things, we can comfortably cope with all the
environmental problems that presently seem so daunting.
We can also solve the housing problems of the world by approaching housing in the same way as we will when we switch to intensive farming.
It is as foolish and wasteful to have single houses built across the countryside as it is to farm large areas with one crop farming as we have done for thousands of years. Rather than have most of the world's population living in what we can describe as vast urban sprawl, we need to house people in housing estates which have unlimited leisure and recreational facilities combined with reasonably high rise home units
By doing this we change our housing environment in the same way as we will have to change our farming and agriculture practices
Towards this objective the residential/leisure housing estate described
on another page of this website, might be helpful.
Next we need to alter our transport and electricity practices which are very wasteful .
A century ago there was a steam driven motor car called the Stanley Steamer. It could run at 100 miles an hour when it got steamed up.
It only requires some technical innovations, to have most vehicles running on steam power.
Steam, being produced from water, is the most environmentally friendly power source. Why don't all our transport vehicles run on steam ?
Because the big oil companies want us to use only oil products because that is how they make their profits. There is no money for them in people driving steam powered vehicles.
So the air pollution problems of the world are easily solved, we simply go back to steam powered vehicles. Don't dismiss that option.
Most people do not know that the major power stations that produce our electricity - are actually steam powered.
It is steam which turns the big Turbines in the power stations.
The highly publicized Coal, gas and nuclear fuels, in reality only boil
water in the Power Stations.
This boiled water becomes steam, and then turns the turbines.
We only need to find a new way to boil water in large quantities.
If you put a cup of water in a micro-wave oven, you will find that the water quickly boils.
It will be comparatively simple to adapt microwave technology to boiling large quantities of water in the power stations, and then we can have unlimited electricity at low cost and negligible pollution.
How insane is it to bother with Uranium and all the environmental problems that go with finding somewhere to put the wast products of nuclear fuel, when we can forget about Uranium altogether and just use Steam and micro-wave technology in the big power stations?
Next is the environmental problems caused by cars and trucks and aircraft.
They can all be switched to steam driven engines, even aircraft.
There was a successful steam powered aircraft in the the US in the1930's which could fly at very high altitudes. Almost certainly the Oil companies helped end that option by buying the inventors out and closing down the idea of steam powered aircraft. Eventually Oil will be used mostly for producing plastics etc but we don't really need it to power engines of any kind.
But the very presence of Cars, Trucks etc on the ground is a major environmental problem. Our roads are virtually owned by motor vehicles and parking is often a problem as well.
So as soon as possible, we must remove cars and trucks from the roads, and put them in the Air. Floating Airships are the future.
http://www.jimbernard.org/gpage25.html
If we wanted to we could have people traveling at say thirty feet or ten meters off the ground ABOVE the roads - in small to medium sized airships like the Blimps that you see floating around at times.This would free up the roads for pedestrians and bicycles etc. A welcome change.
Small, medium,and very large Airships are going to replace ground based automobiles, and the sooner the better. The small to medium sized
floating Airships, would land and park on roof tops, while the very big large aircraft sized Airships would land in designated areas. Importantly, Airships do not need airstrips on which to land. They just float to the ground anywhere.
Much safer than Jet Aircraft of course. By working towards all these social changes, we will have continued and better standards of living without the loss of any of the energy based benefits that we presently enjoy.
We will simply have to do things differently in the future.
Inevitably these kinds of changes will have to be initiated by governments,because private companies tend to not want to change much, they tend to care mostly about profits. Are big changes possible ?
Well, the introduction of computers has changed the world in only a few years. Whole industries have closed down because of computers and new technology.
For centuries Clock and Watchmakers were a major industry.Battery driven clocks and watches had a huge impact on that industry. Then there was the Typewriter industry. Not long ago there were millions of typewriters, but it is hard to find any these days.
The printing industry has been severely impacted by computers and home printers. Other industries have had similar fates.There would be many people effected by the changes suggested here, but if everyone was given a fair minimum income salary, while they are retrained in the next era of transport etc, then transitions are likely to be much easier to cope with.
Having a general idea of the likely future is helpful for politicians to use as guidelines when they are making major decisions.
One of the long term worries is the rising sea levels, which if not handled intelligently, will see the coast lines of many countries under water eventually. Typically the experts have no solutions for this problem.
Sea levels are rising by a quarter of an inch or half a centimetre each year. Over many years that adds up to significant rises.
But we should be able to offset that by pumping the same amount of Sea water inland to make inland seas (these existed thousands of years ago anyway like the areas around salt lake City in the US and similar dry salt areas in other countries.
By pumping large quantities of Sea water inland, we will encourage internal rainfall in the warmer countries, because the water will evaporate and come down nearby in purified rain / sea water (salt does not rise with the oxygen and hydrogen gases when evaporation takes place) and not only benefit agriculture and farmers, but also endangered species and birdlife which needs additional water resources.
Some people might assume that we would run out of areas to put this sea water, but you only need to think about what happens when we have big storms and flooding.
Towns can sometimes be flooded, but eventually the flood waters sink into the ground and join up with the underground water tables.
This would happen with sea water also, but as the sea water entered the ground wherever it was delivered by pumping, it would be filtered as it passed through layers of soil ( similar to what happens when we use kitchen water filters ) so while we would have a lot of new surface water in terms of lakes etc, much of the water would seep into the ground and be able to be accessed like bore water for farming purposes after it was filtered by passing through layers of soil.
If we keep pumping sea water inland then the coastal areas of most countries will not be effected by rising sea levels.
But there is another great benefit to pumping sea water inland.
The present war in Iraq is really about Oil.
Iraq has huge reserves of Oil and other countries like the US are running out of Oil.
The invasion of Iraq was largely to take control of that countries Oil, which is what has happened. The Bush administration has handed over the future development of Iraq's Oil to large international oil companies based in the US and Britain .
It was supposedly necessary to do this so that Iraqi oil revenues could help pay for the cost of the war. Yet if the US had not invaded Iraq, there would be no war to pay for - would there ? Whatever, the US and Britain now control the development of the huge Iraqi Oil reserves.
But with increasing world populations - more demands are being placed on scarce water resources and it is not out of the question that countries will go to War over access to fresh water in the future.
This is why it would be such a good idea to pump large quantities of sea water inland in many countries. Eventually this filtered sea water will give everyone as much water as they need. We are not going to run out of sea water any time soon. Sea water covers more than three quarters of the Earth's surface.
It is true that if we do not change our ways, we will have serious environmental problems, but if we plan ahead sensibly then everything will be as sweet as a Bun, as we sometimes say.
Recently Mr Al Gore produced a Movie which made many people aware of Global warming.
There was a lot of truth in what was said, but much of the answers may come from just switching back to less polluting fuels etc like Steam Power, Microwave power and even Nitogen as a fuel - which has not been seriously considered yet.
CO2 or Carbon Dioxide as it is otherwise called, will not be a problem once we learn to recycle it.
The Oxygen in CO2 has plenty of uses but the Carbon is good as well , good for plastics etc.
But more worrying to many of us than global warming is the increasing secret control of our natural resources and agriculture by huge agricultural companies like Monsanto, which want to get control of the worlds food supplies.
Also big pharmaceutical companies want to close down vitamin producers, health foods shops etc, so that only their drugs are available to the public.
Below is a quote relating to this matter and a video by a lady Doctor who is very impressive. She says US politicians have passed legislation which they were not aware - would encourage this undemocratic process.
"Essential oils, herbs, herbal remedies, homeopathic remedies, minerals, nutritional supplements, plant enzymes and vitamins are redefined in this proposal as "medicine." Very simply, medicine is under the jurisdiction of the FDA and, by law, only licensed medical doctors may prescribe "medicines." Anybody else who advises, advocates, counsels, distributes, markets, recommends or suggests anybody use "medicine" is practicing medicine without a license. This is a felony in the USA punishable by fines and incarceration.
Aromatherapy, auricular therapy, biofeedback, color therapy, homeopathy, hypnotism, naturopathy, neurotherapy, nutritional consulting, reflexology, sound therapy and wellness consulting are among the alternative health modalities being redefined as "Alternative Medicine." This subtle change of vocabulary from "alternative health care" to "alternative medicine" makes all of these industries subject to control by the FDA as medicine. Only medical doctors would be allowed to provide, prescribe and supervise the delivery of these services. Anybody else who provided any of these services would be practicing medicine without a license and subject to incarceration and fines."
