“If we wish to diminish the love of money which, we are told, is the root of all evil, the first step must be the creation of a system in which everyone has enough and no one has too much” Bertrand Russell.
A question I have asked before: Do you really care how the electric current arrives at your home, as long as it does? When I hear many people (the anti-environmental kind usually) whining about renewable energy and environmental legislation it is nearly always about the economic cost and freedom to do whatever they want in pursuit of economic benefit. As long as the primary measures of success, as given with my Item 3 discussions, is about increasing monetary profit, we are not going to get a sustainable future. Indeed, without the change in worldview that I propose throughout this blog, it really is a dark and gloomy future for humanity with continued war and violence perpetuated by a corrupt global hierarchy against the rest of humanity and the natural world. Until we, the rest of the people (the 99%) say NO MORE and take our own future into our own hands, true sustainability will be but a pipe dream. I am sorry of that sounds so absolute, but from what I see going on all around the world, we at that critical juncture – its decision time. A positive and sustainable future or a descent into a new dark age of global neo-feudalism.
This came about because of a discussion I had recently about the Armageddon, so popularized by religious advocates and curiously, the mass media and movies. Is it war between good and evil? All depends on how you view it. As long-time readers of my blog will know, I am not a big proponent of the war metaphor so prevalent in our global society. I think at this time we are in the middle of this long expected ‘Armageddon’ per se. From my perspective think about it more as a battle between what is ‘right’ and what is ‘not right.’ I think we have learned from millennia of ‘what is not right’ behaviors that war and violence of any kind, whether that be human against human or human against nature is ‘not right’ and has never served us. It was an interesting spiritual lesson to try and be separate, but now is the time to get back to living a way that expresses ‘what is right.’ We get impulsed into every war with all manner of propaganda, and what is the best outcome we think we see – ‘our side won,’ and always at the expense of untold suffering and destruction. Who actually wins? The hierarchies that started it all and fund all sides of a conflict. War is a big profit-making and power control scheme – plain and simple.
After that little bit of preaching, let’s ponder a sustainable future where we live in a way that expresses what is ‘right and just.’ Imagine ignoring the hierarchies we so deplore, and start acting in our own best interests. Imagine a real community with many communal and independent homes, thriving local businesses and a number of larger businesses that run on the B-corporation model in manufacturing of local goods. As usual with any group of people, there are a lot of opinions and a lot of disagreements, but everyone works together to find solutions that help everyone thrive in a spirit of cooperation and relative harmony. There are extensive discussions and a free sharing of knowledge of what works and doesn’t work in any particular area. Imagine that human diversity and bio diversity are seen as strengths, and fostering a loving-caring environment is central because everyone can express themselves freely within acceptable guidelines to achieve their highest and actualized individual potential – e.g., you want to be a dictator? That would not be acceptable. Community living – socio-psychopaths need not apply – they can go away and be emperor of their own little cave.
Each building in the community has a mixed portfolio of energy generation, which is shared to power the whole community. Until we get quantum energy systems, we need imperfect renewable energy that works a lot like photosynthesis – they all in some way ultimately harness the power of the sun. Photosynthesis is natures wonderful energy generation, energy storage, and energy transfer system. We can generate and use energy quite well but storage is still problematic – any way that you can use excess generated energy to store kinetic energy as potential energy is the next mini-revolution. Solar energy is obviously direct energy. Wind is driven by thermal variations of the sun on the planet. Hydro-energy is driven by the sun effect on the water cycle of condensation, precipitation, and trans evaporation. Geothermal is solar warming of the surface crust, and perpetuation of deep geothermal planetary processes. Ocean current and wave energy is a direct effect of gravitational energy from the sun and the moon. Radio nuclide sources such as Uranium and Thorium salt have their origins in the core of stars.
Geothermal energy as found in places like Iceland comes directly from deep geothermal magma pockets heating water to steam to power a turbine. But anywhere on the planet, simply tapping into the heat differential between the surface and within 200ft (61m) using a heat pump gives indoor heating and cooling. They do not generate heat, but use a refrigerant in an electrically driven device that extracts heat from a low-temperature source and delivers it to a higher-temperature space, effectively redistributing thermal energy. As with all renewables, the ecological downside is the need to mine minerals and manufacture the technology to capture the energy and then the disposal after the limited lifetime comes to an end. One would expect the recovery technology will only improve to minimize the need for excessive mining.
The other downside of most renewable energy options is that they often are most efficient when we don’t need them as much, thus generating energy that will be wasted. So, energy storage technology is part of this mini-revolution. In storage technology you are literally diverting generated energy that would have to be ignored or zapped into the air and utilizing that energy from a kinetic form to a ‘stored’ potential form. We have long had batteries, but they include rare and even toxic metals as part of their technology. I’m sure that battery technology will only improve, but their mineral-toxicity restrictions are probably always going to be a limitation. I mentioned in a prior post about hydrogen storage. Use the extra electricity to electrolyze water to store hydrogen in one of many ways so that it can be used to power a hydrogen cell or a hydrogen engine in mobile fleets of vehicles – the waste being water that could be captured, filtered for other unwanted oxidative components, and reused. The second law of thermodynamics is inherent in almost everything in a finite system. The key is to find ways to use excess and unused energy to power some electrical system to create a storage form for future use.
Hydro pump storage schemes I covered already. Anything that can act as a storage device works. A newer one that I read about recently is the ‘Gravity Tower Storage.’ It works by doing something really simple, incredibly cost effective, and with almost no maintenance — lifting and dropping heavy blocks. The tower uses electric motors to hoist massive 35-ton concrete blocks to the top of the structure. When power is needed the blocks are gently lowered, and their gravitational potential energy is converted back into electricity using regenerative winches. No batteries to degrade, no toxic chemistry, toxic materials, or fire risk – simply lift, hold, drop, and speedily with no ecological problems. It can easily be modularized by any local system anywhere. Developed by Energy Vault in Germany, each module can store up to 20 megawatt-hours per cycle. This is a technology that Leonardo Da Vinci would readily recognize.
Of course, if we are thinking of 8 billion+ people worldwide, then we will have to rethink how we actually use energy. It should go without saying, but energy conservation will also have to be a part of the mindset transformation. The days of jumping into your car and going anywhere, whenever you want, will have to be seriously reconsidered. So future transportation systems will have to be revisited along with the rapid transition away from fossil fuels as anything but a valuable resource for most of our modern worlds materials – that would also curb the atmospheric carbon issue with all of it toxic pollution problems.
To Be Continued ……………………..
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