Suggestions for a reworking of the energy procurement and distribution systems for the United States

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Ever since my first father-in-law, a Connecticut resident and member of the American Stock Exchange, insisted to me that there could and would be infinitely sustained growth, that new tech would always make bonanzas of new jobs, etc. (this was in 1982), I have known that there was no thought being given to what to do under the current situation of automated manufacturing and a steadily diminishing NEED for a growth in physical infrastructure (though that is only under an oil-and-other-fossil-fuel powered, non-durable-consumer-goods-manufacturing paradigm).

However, the figures in the Club of Rome Report of 1970-- The Limits to Growth-- were my first clue, along with the theory of technological determinism-- if a technology can be innovated, it will be used-- first fully elaborated by Jacques Ellul in The Technological Society (1960). As Ellul presciently argued, the reason for automation is to approach maximum efficiency, by virtually eliminating the possibility of human error.

To reduce this to its end, greatest efficiency is reached with minimum human participation. Everyone should read Kurt Vonnegut's Player Piano, and see what happens when there is no work, and then people are stigmatized for not being able to find work.

Of course, I also must come back and hammer on the "supply" side a moment. If people stop making babies willynilly, then there can hardly be as may people thrown out of work because no one needs what they're making any more.

The consumerist economy is driven-- prodded, titillated, blandished, misled, deceptively advertized, all in the behalf of behavioral manipulation to buy, buy, buy, more more more!-- by WANTS, not NEEDS. If you've got a few days, I will describe for you how to back down from centrally and automatically produced non-needs and begin to use locally/regionally produced NEEDS.

What needs to be done is for us to gradually-- but not very gradually!-- reconfigure the energy infrastructure of the US so as to move from non-renewable-energy dependence to renewable-energy independence and flexibility of distribution.

Now, there will have to be some aspects of communalism involved. The local municipality-- the village-- must become the paradigm for coping with human/social/energy needs. As some people who understand post-industrial technocracy might say, maybe early retirements are part of the solution.

But on the other hand, people over 55 have plenty more to offer both in work and in culture. And they can be counted on for considered, consistent patriotism if their country should ask them to play a significant role in the reshaping of America's future.

Yesterday I declared all this to a conservative ideologue of my acquaintance, and he came back with, "Oh, from each according to their abilities to each according to their needs, eh, Bill?"

Now, I've read Karl Marx (don't know if you've read Marx), and I know that this phrase my friend WB pulled up comes from him. I think what my buddy were trying to do there, besides being snide (and around here in America I suppose that is fair game), was to redbait me, to imply that I was a communist (because, as you know, Americans have been thoroughly behaviorally modified to hate communists. "Communism-bad" was the most important meme of the 20th century).

If I was to be classified or characterized according to traditional ideological labels, I would undoubtedly be a socialist. I believe in limits to aggregate corporate growth and limits to personal wealth, while providing that people who are extraordinarily creative should be compensated extraordinarily, and that doesn't mean bank executives!

I believe that America has a national interest in providing health care for all its citizens, in the same way that almost every other "western" nation, and many "eastern" nations, do.

But what I really am is a world survivalist. Every single indicator of destabilizing world activity-- degree and rapidity of technological development, population, number of species extinctions-- that I can think of graphs as a hyperbola.

Species extinctions are increasing at a logarithmic rate, closely paralleling the rate of increase of world human population, since World War Two, and sharply turning up, chasing the ever receding Y-Axis of the present, in the last 20 years, or since the ubiquity of electronic technology.

This is unhealthy. This sort of graph is what the uncontrolled growth rate of CANCER looks like. We have to somehow truncate, or restore something like the linearity of, those graphs!

Almost everyone here stands aghast at my solution for overpopulation. But if the world refuses to take decisive action against overpopulation of species homo sapiens, whether through religious ignorance or ideological stubbornness, then the world must find a way to feed what will be no less than 11 billion, probably more like between 12 and 13 billion people, by the end of the century.

We have enough land available-- arable and semi-arable that could be made arable-- to GROW enough grain and other crops to feed most of the teeming masses that are born because the human race won't use birth control. But we have to stop growing so many animals. We need the land that animals graze on in order to grow grains and legumes, which are far more efficient as far as usable protein per kg, and kg of production per acre.

We need to get water to these crops. Well, farmers have been using windmills to bring water up from the water table so as to feed their animals for centuries. We now routinely build windmills with a peak output of .2 megawatts apiece. We need to use mill tech to draw up enough water to the surface to irrigate the vast new tracts of agricultural land that will be required if "the greatest nation on earth" is going to feed such an increased population, and thereby have a mandate for leadership.

We need a Marshall Plan of alternative-energy procurement and distribution. We must use the remaining non-renewable petrochemical resources to develop the energy infrastructure that must surely replace them.

England is putting up a windmill farm of 100 mills that will consistently power 200,000 homes. Well, folks, if we've got 300,000,000 people here, we also have miles upon miles of area to cover with windmills, and the latest photovoltaics and photosynthetics.

When you diminish, and supplant, the petrochemical/nuclear usage, that means less pressure to dispose of the waste products-- "the back end" that politicians are always forgetting about.

And if anyone needs a little jolt to understand the urgency of getting this done, well, Japan got another one yesterday, about 7.1 magnitude.

Authors Website: http://www.watermelonslim.com

Authors Bio:

My name is William Perkins Homans the third, but probably more people know me as the bluesman (and artist) Watermelon Slim.



I've been in the fight against war, fascism, injustice and inhumanity for 47 years. I was at MayDay, 1971, and at the moratorium March the week before. I was one of the leaders of the Great New Jersey Turnpike Stall on my birthday, April 25, 1971.



I bear the scar on my left shin from a neoNazi jackboot, when I was one of the Vietnam Veterans Against the War who bounced the NSWPP from Flamingo Park at the Republican National Convention of 1972. My father fought the Nazis in the North Atlantic and Anzio, and I met their spawn in Miami.



My formal education has been first-rate. I wouldn't trade my degrees for Harvard ones. I was raised in the finest private Catholic and Episcopal high schools.
I earned my BA in History and Journalism from the University of Oregon/Eugene. I was also captain of the U of O bowling team, 1984-1986. High game 299. Mentors: Dr. W. Gordon Rockett, Dr. Daniell Pope
1997-2000: Oklahoma State University. M.A., History, 2000, plus the school-teaching curriculum. Mentor: Dr. Ronald Petrin

I am a world survivalist. My politics transcends right and left, perforce. I watch for signs we may transcend in some yet-unknown fashion the vectors and indicators in my environmental and geopolitical analysis.
As Tiny Tim said, "God bless us, every one!"