Earth: the Sequel
March 10, 2009
See a glimpse of the Clean Energy of the future.
Discovery Channel, March 11 2 10:00pm.
““Krupp and Horn have turned the doom and gloom of global warming on its head. Earth: The Sequel makes it crystal clear that we can build a low-carbon economy while unleashing American entrepreneurs to save the planet, putting optimism back into the environmental story.”
- Michael Bloomberg, Mayor of New York City
October 29, 2009 at 12:35 am
While it’s encouraging to see new green businesses arising in this time of environmental turmoil, there is something alarming about the fact that private companies are capitalizing on environmental problems.
The green solutions to our energy demands have existed for decades, if not centuries. For example, parabolic solar reflectors, hydro-electric power, geothermal energy, wind power, and biofuels (eg draft power) were are all highly sustainable, low-tech solutions to energy problems that should have been proliferated years ago. The federal government did very little subsidize such alternative energy, in fact it gave most of its energy subsidies to nuclear power.
One solution to the energy problem is having domestic on-site energy production, such as solar, hydro, or wind power, but the government and private companies don’t want households to live “off the grid” because that would mean that they have energy independence. The very idea of self-sufficiency and energy independence is a threat to capitalism and the federal government. That is why the Discovery channel and Mayor Bloomberg are trumpeting these green entrepreneurs as the saviors of the planet. Any new technology, sustainable or not, will only succeed if it can work with the economic system. It doesn’t matter if the technology and its application is good for society.
Yet now that we clearly have a environmental catastrophe on our hands we want to retrofit the old energy system with a new system that will be sustainable and meet our society’s demands. We expect to do this after over 50 years of unsustainable development has created a fossil fuel-addicted network of suburbs, shopping malls, towns, and cities. In order to effectively solve the energy issue we need to restructure our entire society from the ground up.
This means the abolition of suburbs, the proliferation of mass transit, reduction of housing space, and massive relocation of the population. That is the only way to create a more energy-efficient society in the face of dwindling resources. The other alternative is to seize resources with military force, but our current arrangement won’t last very long.
The solution is for people to either live in cities and towns with high population densities to enable efficient commuting and energy distribution, and the people living in rural areas need to be largely involved in agriculture, forestry, fishing, or otherwise coexisting with the natural landscape in order to supply cities and towns. This is how people lived before fossil fuels, and it is how we must go forth when fossil fuels are gone.
The days of the one-hour commute are numbered. It doesn’t matter how much you support green industries or buy organic food, if you’re living the dream of a big yard and a white picket fence, it’s time to wake up.