The Bright Future

I must start with a confession. I am not a fortune teller. I am merely a dreamer who is going to outline for you where the world needs to go in order to survive us. We can plan, we can wish, we can build and we can save but not one of us can control our own future. I heard this saying long ago and I am not sure who said it first or in what context, what I will tell you is that it is as true now as it will always be. "If you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans for the future." I first told you that I am not a fortune teller, the reason I said that is because in Dante's nine circles of hell, the fortune tellers were punished by having their heads sown on backwards. Seems appropriate punishment for someone who told everyone what they knew to be the future, when in reality they had no clue. The only people to ever tell any smidgen of the future were the true prophets. So, with this in mind, I give you my version of the future while trying not to offend my Lord God. One last note before I start, this is not a religious piece; it is a fanciful piece about the survival of humanity. Something that I wish for on one day and curse the next.

The largest crises looming ahead of us are two fold. They are intertwined like two fishing worms sliding around one another. They are the energy crisis and global climate change. I don't think that you can really separate these two issues as they are basically one and the same; or rather they are cause and effect. Currently our major sources of energy are hydrocarbons in the form of oil and coal. Oil is supposedly running out over the next fifty years. Amazing invention cars, God gave us cars and enough fuel for a hundred and fifty years, give or take a couple of decades. I had a chemistry professor in college who started his career during the first energy crises. His greatest story was how the oil companies were capable of making synthetic fuels by passing certain chemicals over specific metallic objects, the drawback was cost. Now that we have eighty to hundred dollar barrel oil, bet that isn't such a bad idea anymore.

Coal, the greatest producer of energy on our planet. Coal, king coal, with the newer more advanced coal fired plants; they tell us that they have reduced emissions by significant levels. What they failed to mention was the scale of the levels. Between 2004 and 2012, the United States, China and India have 850 coal fired power plants on the books for construction. Those 850 plants will add 2.7 billion (yes with a B) tons of CO2 (carbon dioxide) to our atmosphere. Not only that but fifty-eight other countries are planning an additional 350 coal fired power plants over the same time period. The amount of carbon dioxide from the first three countries alone will be five times the amount that the Kyoto Protocol had planned to reduce over the same time. One of the amazing finds of this article was that in 1998 the electric utilities of the U.S. reported emissions for the very first time to the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) how did that information ever slip through the cracks that they were not even required to report it? Those very reports noted that florines (florides) were the third largest waste emission from coal burning with hydrochloric acid leading the floride category at sixty-nine percent. Sulfuric acid at twenty-one percent of florides and hydrogen floride at eight percent and the remaining two percent being metals and others. Now you must realize that of all of these statistics quoted, none of them gives a complete total of all of the emissions from all of the plants. Therefore, coal is not only the largest supplier of energy, it is the biggest polluter.

Solar and wind power will never have the capacity to replace oil. Solar cells of the best manufacture can only convert 40% of the suns energy into electricity. The sun produces more power in one second than man has used in his entire history on earth. Until the conversion capacities reach way above current levels, solar will merely be a stop gap in the global need for energy. To put the conversion efficiency of solar in perspective, the 500 mega-watt SCE/SES (Southern California Edison / Sterling Energy System) covers 4500 acres. Of all of the radiation that falls on their solar power plant only 2.75% of the energy is converted into electricity. Wind energy faces similar if not the exact obstacles. There are few places on earth that fit the necessary requirements for efficient and consistent wind conversion into electrical energy. Wind power is no more practical than solar, that doesn't mean that some day they won't fulfill a powerful need and that they won't help in the long run, because they will. However, they will not replace hydrocarbons and that is the golden egg, isn't it?

Let's discuss nuclear power plants. Three Mile Island put an end to new nuclear power plant construction in the United States. For the amount of fuel versus the output of energy, nothing competes with nuclear power. The biggest problem that nuclear power has is perception. Movies such as the "China Syndrome" along with fantastic failures at power stations around the world helped make nuclear power the demon of the electrical world. Fear of having a nuclear power plant even close to where you live has and will continue to make new plant construction almost impossible for utility companies. Due to Frances continued use and refinement of the nuclear fusion process; nuclear power has become cheaper and safer. Since the price of crude oil has risen dramatically along with increases in the price of natural gas, the DOE (Department of Energy) has been flooded with applications for new nuclear power plants.

The obstacles that nuclear is sure to face is NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard) where every home owner even close to one of these new plants is sure to initiate a lawsuit to keep the utilities from building close to them. Not only that, but there is the issue of waste disposal. The DOE (Department of Energy) has been working on the Yucca Mountain waste storage area for over twenty years and still they do not have approval to use the system from the EPA. Currently nuclear waste is stored in fifty five gallon drums on pallets all over the U.S. Until the Yucca Mountain storage area is approved, the issue of waste will continue to haunt the nuclear utilities.

Then there are bio-fuels, including but not limited to ethanol, methanol and bio-diesel. Bio-diesel is probably the most economically useful of them all because it is a recycled product that has already served a purpose. Ethanol and methanol however only have about two-thirds the energy of gasoline per gallon. When you factor in the difference in energy output and the fact that it costs more to produce than it is worth, it is easy to see that neither one is the answer to our energy needs. The only reason that either of these fuels is used these days is because they are subsidized by our government. If you look at the GAO's (Government Accounting Office) figures and statistics, you will find that ADM (Archer Daniels Midland) is the largest receiver of government subsidies in the WORLD. Those subsidies are directly related to the production of ethanol. The cost of the fuel that it takes to plant, reap, transport, distill and distribute ethanol is more than the energy produced by the ethanol. It is a cost negative system that only survives and thrives due to subsidies. There will never be a way to make it efficient without those subsidies. I guarantee you that if you took away those dollars from the government; ADM would quit the production of bio-fuels tomorrow. All of the new ethanol plants that are being built are looking to the government to make it profitable. Period.

The Earth itself is the answer to our energy problem. Currently governments and utilities are experimenting with tidal generators. These generators are producing energy at zero cost per kilowatt. Their only cost is in the actual manufacture of the systems and the maintenance thereafter. However, there are not enough tidal areas to produce all of our energy needs. There is an answer though. What I propose is a system of "tanks" much like submarines that are tethered to three towers each. These tanks would have a direct cable to a turbine that would turn the generators as they sank and again as they surface. When the tanks are on the surface, they will be filled with salt water causing them to sink, turning the turbines as they go. Once they reach the bottom, the salt water will be pumped out of them and they will rise to the surface, continuing to turn the turbines. These could be placed anywhere that the ocean is deep enough. There are places where the trip to the bottom and back would take as long as four hours. However, the construction of these massive "tanks" and the maintenance needed to keep them running would be expensive; it could be the answer that we are looking for.

Actually, when it comes to our energy needs, the answer is not only supply, but it also lies in conservation. Supply can be met using all of our available resources combined with new and innovative solutions. If we ever get to the point that we can save large amounts of energy in some type of super-battery, some of our limited resources can be magnified. On the conservation side, right now every home uses a certain amount of resources to function. If we can get the federal government to change its policy we could use our limited resources for the good of all instead of the few. What do I mean by this? Well, imagine if you will a building a mile tall, a mile wide and a mile long. This building would be a great sphere where hundreds of thousands of people could live, work and play. If we could get to the point where we limited urban sprawl and condensed our living areas, we could use the power of our combined resources to limit our individual consumption.

Two hundred thousand people living in the same space. The energy that would be used to heat and cool thousands of individual homes could be reduced by as much as sixty to seventy-five percent. The great foundations needed for such a structure could be used as manufacturing space. Lower entrance levels could be used for retail and service area. The greatest thing about this is that no one living there would have a need for a car. However, cars would be available to those living there to use when they had the desire to travel. No one individual would own them, they wouldn't even have to rent them, and they would be for the use of everyone with the only cost being for fuel when in use. Sounds like communism you say? No, there is a balance to all things; we currently exist to serve our own selfish needs. What I am saying is that we could do both. Serve others and ourselves.

If we built huge cities such as these and reduced individual land ownership to only those who are determined to live outside the new society. Those people would be required to pay for land use fees where those living inside the society would own all the rest of the land and have access to any area they desired.

Those choosing to live in our new cities would have no rent, no mortgage, no car payments, and no insurance fees. The only cost of living there would be to work, live and play there. Simple. So, I am sure that you are asking yourself, "where is the future in all of this?" Well, I am getting there. To address the issue of global warming I would suggest building a continent. An entire ocean bound "land mass" for the purpose of growing innovative crops, supplying and maintaining the "energy tank system" and for managing the capillary system. I have tentatively named this "land mass" Pangaea after the great continent that existed before they broke up into our current continents.

The "capillary system," what is that? Well, it would consist of huge piping system to supplement the thermohaline currents such as the Gulf Stream. However the best part of this system would be its ability to "flood" the Caribbean with cool water in the summer to weaken hurricanes that threatened the continent or the mainland. Of course you would only do that sort of thing ahead of an existing system, not as any continuous system as it could harm the oceans ability to sustain life. In the winter, it could be used to "rebuild" the ice caps. By spraying water high into the atmosphere above the polls, we could steadily rebuild the melting glaciers and the great ice sheets. The system could also be used to "heat" Europe and North America once the Gulf Stream shuts down (scientists believe that the melting ice sheets will cause the Gulf Stream to shut down as "fresh" water doesn't sink and rise as well as salt water.) We might even keep the system from shutting down. The third purpose for "Pangaea" would be as a global crossroads for the new "mass transport system." Then to make "Pangaea" really useful, we could "mine" the methane from the bottom of the sea, install desalination plants to supply fresh water to areas without it. It could also be used to restock our depleted supply of seafood. The uses for such an area are limitless.

The "mass transport" system would consist of huge sixty foot diameter "pipes" which will be lined with a magnetic surface keeping the "cars" neatly suspended from the surface. Using an alternating "on/off" cycle in the magnetic surface, we could propel huge amounts of "product" from one area to another. These "tubes or pipes" would go from city to city, from country to country and from continent to continent. The cargo system would work much like modern maglev trains currently in use in Japan and Germany. This would help reduce emissions from the trucks, trains and cargo ships currently in use. The system could also piggyback power lines and water lines from "Pangaea" to the rest of the world. Imagine if you will one cargo container replacing forty tractor trailers. This system alone could reduce fuel consumption by forty percent.

So far we have energy, housing and transportation covered. What we haven't discussed is healthcare. This one is simple, we adopt the best parts of the Canadian, French and British socialized health care. We in America have decided that everything and I mean EVERYTHING is subject to the bottom line. At what point did we decide that life has a price? The moment we allowed some pencil pusher in a cubicle to decide whether we live or die, we lost all of our freedoms. It wasn't that long ago that I watched Michael Moore's documentary "Sicko" normally I would disagree with anything that he had to say. Not only that, but normally I wouldn't even watch a movie made by him. However, being a COMPASIONATE conservative, the man is right. We in America deserve to have the best care available no matter what means we have or not. So the following ideas are based on this.

First we should socialize medicine, same as Canada, Britain, France and even Cuba. I was surprised that a nation as poor and as suppressed as Cuba could have better healthcare than most Americans. We should hang our heads with shame. To broaden that idea, I think that no man anywhere on Earth should have to pay for water. So, all water will be free to residential homes. All electricity will be free to residential homes. All local phone service will be free to residential homes. All college tuition will be free to those who can sustain the grades to be there. If you fail, you will be given the chance to redeem yourself, however, if you consistently prove that you will not take it seriously, then you will be required to pay or leave.

Now this is a future. On to international policy. To improve relations in the Middle East, we will provide the Palestinians with the resources to build a great city, based on our new cities. This will give them jobs, housing and a sense of pride associated with having a "homeland." America will pull back and allow the rest of the world to live as it likes. The reason we are hated around the world is that they all know the truth that has been hid from its own citizens. America has never hesitated to protect its interests. This may sound a simple thing, but it has overthrown democratic governments just to keep the profit in bananas. (True story, read your history) In my opinion, it would have been better to pay more for bananas than to subvert an existing government. This same scenario has played itself out on the world stage over and over. The only way that we are going to be a great nation again is to build our way to greatness. So, we build great new cities, we build a great new transportation system.

War, pestilence, hunger and sorrow. Those are the four horseman of the apocalypse, the only way to stop them is to grow and stop the hate among nations. We have the tools, we have the will. What we don't have is the power. In America, we have allowed a few to rule us all. The greatest of all things in my future is this. One man, one vote. A truly democratic nation would work that way. So, no more electoral college, no more Senators or House members voting for the lobbyists. The constitution would remain the same, but when you elected a Senator or any other member of government. They would be required to vote how the people wanted. Say for example there was a bill to build a wall between America and Mexico. You would go to your closest computer; log on to vote.com and after you installed your voter card/I.D. you would vote on that bill. The results would be tallied and your Senator would be required to vote the same way. Why even have a Senator? To bring your ideas and my ideas to the floor and initiate a vote to begin with.

Voter fraud? All voting machines would be required to produce two receipts so that you would have one and the voting commission would have one. No vote would be final until they were hand counted and confirmed against the computed tallies. Finally we would have a truly democratic nation. If a Senator etc did not vote the way of the people, he would be subject to immediate impeachment. Once a bill passed both houses with the people's approval, it would be LAW. No veto against the people. The president would exist merely to enforce the law and to be the commander in chief. No war would be initiated unless it was the will of the people, that goes for "police" actions which allow the president to attack any country for ninety days without congressional approval. No more of that crap.

Imports and exports flow freely into our country without regard to whether or not they were made with slave labor. Seeing as how we will no longer police the world, it will not be within our rights to tell another nation how to treat its citizens. However, we can require all imports to be made with labor that is paid the equivalent wage that an American would make. Not only that, we would require any company doing business in America to either make forty percent of its product here or have one hundred percent of the product made here and assembled elsewhere. Level the playing field so to speak, you want to do business in America, then you must DO business in America. Of course we could have some exemptions for items such as bananas or industrial items that cannot be produced in that manner. However, any company not DOING business in America would be required to pay a JOB import tax to help support the unemployed.

Now that I have turned the world upside down, I want your suggestions. If you have a GOOD idea for the (future of the world and specifically America) to be included in my next paper, I want to hear it. E-mail me at drenchzgrinch@yahoo.com and tell me what we should be doing. In the subject line of your e-mail put "future of man" so that I will know not to delete it. I am sure that some of you will see me as a socialist or a communist or even as an ass. I assure you that I am neither a Democratic socialist, nor a Republican liberal. I am a man who thinks that all Americans deserve to be free from excessive debt. If they are intent on saving one ounce of our capitalist system, then they are going to have to compromise at some point. Americans are tired of shouldering the debt of the entire world. We owe everyone simply because we are too weak to stand up to those who oppress us. We have the means, the cash, the will, but I am not sure that we will ever get the power. In "Sicko" there was a quote from a Brit that said that there are two ways to oppress the people. One you keep them in debt and subservient and two you keep them scared. They have managed to do both to us.

I think it was the Rolling Stones who said the revolution would be televised. The thing is, the media is the biggest reason that Americans have not revolted. Think of it like this, the poorest of the poor still eat well due to the food stamp program; some of them even get checks which allow them to pay their cable bill. As long as the poor are entertained and fed, they will never baulk at a system that takes care of them. As long as the Middle Class is in debt and working for insurance, they will never cause trouble. As for the Upper Class, why would they want to change anything? What they don't realize is that it is in their best interests to baulk at such a system. They could have a good job making good money and have many more benefits if they would get up and march in the streets. How long are we going to allow a few extremely rich people to control us? Consumption is our captor. Desire our gatekeeper. Greed our warden and debt is our master. As long as we allow the system to remain broken, then broke we will be. Stand up, scream, rant and rave, vote and vote again. Our elections are now determined by less than forty percent of all Americans.

Those individuals vote for change. No one ever votes to keep things the same. If they did, there would be no point in voting. Write your congressman and tell him, no more lobbyists, and no more special interests. Tell him we want free healthcare, tell him we want free education, tell him we want the right to vote and we want our vote to count. People, everyone who reads this has a responsibility to make the world a better place. You may not agree with a new transportation system, you may not agree with anything I have purposed, however, if you don't agree with one man one vote, then you my friend are a communist. This is how our nation must work. Or it won't work. One man, one vote. Pass it along. P.S. When you vote, remember that I am starting a write in campaign, write in Leonard R. Goodwin II for president. If I ever get the chance, you WILL have a better world....