Thanks to Marquerite Hampton for recommending the following author. … Good sense is where you find it.
Jim Bell
We live on spaceship earth. We are its astronauts.
Like any well-designed spaceship, ours has a life support system. Our planet’s life support system is a solar powered recycling system. In this system the suns provides the energy to recycle and renew the air we breathe, the water we drink, the food we eat and everything we want or care about.
Our planet’s life support system is fundamental to everything we are and will ever be. It is the foundation of all history, culture, art, science, religion, and even the very process of consciousness becoming.
If the human family doesn’t develop life support sustaining ways to live and make livings soon, our planet’s life support system will collapse with much suffering and regret along the way.
I believe we can completely avoid this calamity. I believe we can create economies and ways of life that are fair, just, respectful, humane, prosperous, and completely life support sustaining.
All that’s required is that enough of us work together to make it happen. When good people come together, the only limit is our imagination and consciousness. And ultimately there is no limit to that.
I committed to taking a leadership role in this effort. I invite you to join me. We will all feel better and our children and future generations will thank us.
Given our time and place in history, there is no knowledge more valuable or challenge greater than knowing how our planet’s life support system works and how to use that knowledge to create a win-win life support sustaining economy and future.
We, and especially our youth, face the greatest challenge ever faced by human kind. The challenge to develop ways for 8 to 10 billion people to live and make livings on our planet that are fair for everyone now and for future generations; and which protect the beauty, majesty and productive potential of our planet’s life support system.
My plan is to start where I live, in the San Diego/Tijuana region. The foundation of my plan is to create a solid economic base here by becoming as energy, water and food self-sufficient as possible, as soon as possible.
Whatever winds of the world blow our way, the more control we have over the supply of these essentials, the greater control we will have over our future wellbeing.
Plus, becoming self-sufficient in energy, water and food will add 20 billion new dollars to our economy each year.
How? By returning the dollars we now export to pay for the energy, water and food we import.
Economists tell us the multiplier effect of adding $20 billion to our regional economy each year would increase annual local economic activity by $40 to $80 billion, increasing local economic activity by 30 to 60 percent.
Plus, as we develop a sustainable economy in our own region, we will be taking the world lead in the development of an emerging global industry to help regions and countries around the world create their own sustainable economies.
My research strongly indicates that global warming is happening and that using fossil fuels adds to it. At last count, close to 100 percent of the world’s climate specialists have concluded that global warming is a fact and that human activities are a major contributing factor. The insurance industry has published estimates for the worldwide cost of global warming in the near term as high as $300 billion a year.
Nevertheless, the history of reliable temperature measurements and other indicators is far too short to provide scientific proof that human activity is contributing to global warming. Plus, we know that our planet has gone through numerous warming periods and ice ages in the past when the human contribution of greenhouse gas was negligible.
Even though we don’t yet have scientific proof that human activity is contributing to global warming, given what we do know, it’s only prudent that we do as much as possible as soon as possible to eliminate human contributions to greenhouse gas.
Especially considering there is plenty of renewable energy to meet our needs with out adding any greenhouse gas to our atmosphere at all.
In the San Diego/Tijuana region (where I live), 20 percent coverage of our buildings and parking lots with solar (PV) cells coupled with efficiency improvements would generate enough electricity to replace all forms of energy (electricity, natural gas, gasoline and diesel) currently used in the region.
This means the San Diego/Tijuana region can be completely energy self-sufficient with energy efficiency improvements and renewable energy development. Once energy self-sufficiency is achieved, no energy use related greenhouse gas would be emitted. Even on the way to self-sufficiency, the more energy self-sufficient we become, the less energy use related greenhouse gas we will emit.
With efficiency improvements, even Northern Cities like Seattle can achieve energy self-sufficiency with 40 percent coverage of its roofs and parking lots with solar cells.
Hey, the world’s a crazy place. The human creature is endowed with infinite cleverness and almost zip wisdom.
Genetic engineering is the latest example of this. But unlike past manifestations of our cleverness, genetic engineering represents the first time in history where human decisions have the potential to change life on our planet forever.
I see a pattern here.
The pesticides and toxic waste we’ve created and continue to release into our life support system will take tens and potentially hundreds of generations to be rendered harmless to human and other life.
With nuclear power, we’ve created and continue to release radioactive materials into our life support system that will take thousands if not hundreds of thousands of generations to become safe for unprotected human exposure.
Now comes genetic engineering with potentially infinite consequences.
Given our track record up to now, I don’t believe that the human family is yet conscious enough to be trusted with making potentially forever decisions.
Especially considering some people are:
- So insane for money and power that they are capable of doing anything to impose their agenda on the world.
- So sure they are doing God’s will that they will do anything to impose their religious agenda on others.
- So sure that their ideology is correct that they will do whatever they deem necessary to impose their worldview on the rest of us.
And even when our motives are pure, intelligent, democratic and totally dedicated to improving the common good, who among us has the wisdom to fully comprehend the ultimate consequences of releasing self-replicating organisms of human creation into our common environment, however noble our motives.
I’m not saying that we should abandon our quest for knowledge in this or any other area.
I’m insisting that for the sake of our youth and future generations, that wisdom and its partner humility should be foremost in our minds and hearts before we choose to unleash whatever our cleverness makes possible.
The human family has lived at least 100,000 generations, each generation being 33 years (enough time for a human to reproduce and raise their child to adulthood). Our job is to ensure that we leave the next 100,000 generations with a healthy, happy, functional world.
If everyone living on our planet agreed to be the biological parent of no more than 2 children during their life, over time, world population would gradually decline. This is because some people would choose to have only one child or no children and some people would be infertile.
The more immediate population issue is negative impact per capita. A compelling argument can be made that the amount of negative impact per capita of the average U.S citizen is 100 times greater than that of an average person living in the developing world. The “average U.S. Citizen consumes 50 times more steel, 56 times more energy, 170 times more synthetic rubber and newsprint, 250 times more motor fuel, and 300 times more plastic than the average citizen of India.”1
Even if we assume that the negative impact per U.S. citizen is only 20 times greater than the average developing world citizen, the U.S. population alone has twice the negative impact of all the people living in developing world countries combined
It’s not that living the good life is wrong, it’s the methods we are now using to obtain it that are the problem. If we use sustainable methods to live the good life, there won’t be a problem. Plus, we already have all the technologies needed to create the good life around the world with many promising technologies and strategies in development.
Using hydrogen gas to store intermittent renewable energy supplies sounds so wonderful. We install renewable energy capturing devices like solar cells and windmills, then use the electricity they produce that we don’t use directly to separate water into O2 and H2. Then we use fuel cells to efficiently convert the stored hydrogen into energy to power our cars, buses and trucks and to produce electricity when the sun isn’t shinning and the wind’s not blowing. Plus, at the end of the process, we end up with the water we started with.
Like I said it sounds wonderful, but plans to use hydrogen to store solar generated electricity, may be fatally flawed.
This flaw is the loss of hydrogen to space that will result when hydrogen is released into the general atmosphere through leaky pipes and storage containers and through incomplete combustion. I’ve talked with several experts in this field, and they tell me that hydrogen gas and helium too, will float out into space if released into the atmosphere because the earth’s gravity is not strong enough to hold them.
If this is true, any free hydrogen gas that leaks out of storage, distribution pipes, or is not burned completely during combustion, will leave our planet. If this hydrogen is derived from water, its loss means a loss of planetary water.
Does this mean a gradually drying planet? No one knows because we haven’t done the research.
How much these losses would be per year needs to be calculated, but the loss of natural gas, from wellhead to end user is currently 5 to 10 percent.
Presumably hydrogen losses would be higher since hydrogen is harder to contain than natural gas. One hydrogen energy storage proponent acknowledged the loss of hydrogen would mean a loss of water but said it would be small compared to all the water on our planet.
But even if the loss of hydrogen and therefore water is relatively small, its loss may have effects much more profound than appear on the surface.
Even though all greenhouse gases, human released or natural, make up less than make up 1/20th of one percent (.05 percent) of our atmosphere, its increase from .03 to .04 percent since the beginning of the industrial revolution is having a profound affect on our planet’s climate, ocean currents, glaciers, and the distribution and even survival of tens-of-thousands of life forms.
Who is in a position to say that the loss of a small amount of planetary water will not have an even more devastating effect on planetary systems?
Especially considering we don’t need take the risk since there are many other ways to store intermittent renewable energy with out losing planetary water. Pump storage, compressed air, flywheels, chemical (battery) storage, and biomass are just some of the options.
To tell the truth, I wish that hydrogen was the answer because it would give us a simply answer to storing intermittent solar generated electricity, but unless it can be used in ways where no planetary water is lost, other methods for storing renewable energy should be used.
There’s also the issue of increasing the amount of oxygen in the atmosphere. Unlike hydrogen, oxygen is heavy enough to be held by the earth’s gravity. Will the oxygen separated from its lost hydrogen partners increase the percentage of oxygen in our atmosphere?
If so, fires will be easier to start and harder to put out, metal will oxidize faster and perhaps more serious, the oxidation of the organic materials in soil will speed up.
As before, nobody knows because the research hasn’t been done. To me, the rush to use hydrogen gas to store renewable energy sounds like the rush to nuclear power. Remember “too cheap to meter”? True, breaking the H2O bond to separate hydrogen and oxygen doesn’t create radioactive waste, but the loss of planetary water and increased oxygen in our atmosphere may have a profoundly negative affect on human well being and life support system health in the long run.
Shouldn’t we at least do the science to find out if the concerns I’ve raised are valid or not? In the course of human history, we’ve jumped on bandwagon after bandwagon for the new best thing to solve a problem. Then, later, to find out we’ve caused an even bigger problem than the one we set out to solve.
In this case, the problem is storing intermittent solar energy. We have many options, hydrogen is just one potential option.
Let’s not let our legitimate quest to free ourselves from our dependence on fossil fuels and nuclear power override our due diligence in charting an energy future that is truly life support sustaining.
If we use it intelligently, water is infinitely renewable. If we use it unwisely, we can lose the amount usable to us.
Every human being is a miracle. Through all the twists and turns of existence, the chance that anyone of us would be living today approaches infinity. Even if we only consider the one sexual union between our mother and father that resulted in our conception, our chance of existing is one trillion to one. (Your mother contributed one of 500 eggs and your father contributed some 200 million sperm. (Five hundred x 200 million = one trillion.)
If we multiply the one trillion by the number of times our parents had sex before and after our conception.
Then multiply that total again by the string of individuals who had to reproduce an offspring that reproduced in turn, and so on, for over 100,000 generations that ultimately led to our own individual existence. Like I said, the chance that any one of us would exist today approaches infinity.
What does this mean?
It means we should respect ourselves and each other for the miracles we are. We should respect all life and our planet’s life support system as the miracles they are. We should work to become more conscious to better apply our talents and planetary resources to ensure that our children and future generations have a healthy, happy prosperous world in which to grow up.
We should honor our ancestors for if it were not for them, we would not exist. We should honor our descendants for if not for us, they will never get a chance to exist.
Discrimination of any kind is a wound to everyone. When our young say, “Don’t dis me,” they are talking about the importance of being respected and respecting each other just for being alive. Just for being our selves. Just for being the miracles we are.
Respect is about honoring each person’s right to pursue life, liberty, and happiness as they see fit as long as they don’t hurt or cheat others in the process. This right is the heart of democracy, the U.S. Constitution, the protection of individual freedom, and the heart of everything that is good in the human family.
The peace we seek can be found by using our minds and following our hearts. It’s not exclusive to any culture, belief, ideology, skin color, social or economic class. It can only be found in our heart.
Consciousness is happening on every level of existence. But once it progresses to a certain level, the conscious life form can choose to actively pursue becoming more conscious. This is where I’m at in my own life, ever trying to develop a deeper understand the reality I inhabit and trying to better grasp what’s beyond my current understanding of what’s going on and helping others to do the same. I believe that the more conscious humanity becomes, the easier it will be to create a safe, happy, less stressful, and more environmentally and economically secure world for our self and future generations.
What is consciousness?
Consciousness is the realization that hurting others in any way to get our way leads away from the peace and fulfillment we want.
Consciousness is part of the process of the universe and beyond knowing itself.
Consciousness is the process of becoming more helpful and less hurtful in our dealings with others and the world of life we are part of and dependent on.
Consciousness is using our minds and following our hearts. It’s realizing that everyone begins life as an innocent baby. That when we come to life, all we bring is our genes. As we live, we have our experiences. Whatever our genes and experiences amount to, when we become conscious enough, we can chose to become more conscious and on and on.
The more conscious we become, the less confused we are. The less confused we are, the more conscious we become.
Consciousness is about getting in the driver’s seat of our own life but driving carefully so as not to cause harm to ourself and others as we learn how to drive.
Consciousness is about getting connected to young people and future generations. We are now but the future is all there is. Even in our individual lives, the future is all we have.
Consciousness is doing good or at least not causing harm simply because it’s the right thing to do.
Consciousness is realizing that if we treat others with respect, they will generally return the favor.
We stand between the mirrors of all that has ever been and all that will ever be and we have free will. What a gift, what an honor, what a responsibility, the creator of all that is has bestowed upon us.
(1) Miller, G. Tyler. Environmental Science, an Introduction. 2nd Edition, Wadsworth Publishing Co., Belmont, California, (1988): pp. 7-8.