Climate action is not protesting alone, it is also actually devising and building solutions. We believe we need to approach it as a non economic activity, in the sense that it needs to be self funding, untied to the carboncredit economy run by the international banking system. We wrote about the need for a ‘second economy’ here. In short, there is no time nor any practical sense in trying to allow climate solutions to emerge from the carbon driven world economy. The banking system is the main obstacle as it depends on centralized energy sources, beyond that their desire to leverage activity and control the moneysupply are serious hindrances to any initiative that clearly doesn’t try to follow their lead.
The second economy has different rules:
- A specific goal to reduce CO2, increase life, reduce ocean degradation
- Free use of patents
- Standard income for participants (no salaries)
- Only use of renewable energy sources
- Own food infrastructure
- Military protection, free use of territory (mostly economical unviable)
- No interaction with the first economy (after initial phase)
- Able to give, not sell, anything to support the first economy
To be able to talk about a second economy we need to have a way to do stuff in it. Renewables essentialy provide that way, sythetic methanol, methane, ammonia, electricity, wind mechanical power, solar can all drive biological and chemical processes that will restore the basis for life on earth. There is already a huge industry that knows about cleanup, there is no need to suffer nature’s responses passively, the only reason we do is that ususally there is no money in diseasters, and we only move for money.
The trick is to find a way to do things without needing carbon, without needing resources from the world market. That could mean organically, but that denies our progress of technology. Solar means that even in the hottest driest region we could in principle do whatever we want, we got power. We wrote about the game changer in this environment, which is recognizing silica, sand as a nice a versatile building material in the form of glass. Solar thermal energy can easily melt sand into glass. One would like additives but the principle of cast glass, like cast iron, as a basic material to start with is an amazing step forward.
Glass can be used in many ways:
- Pipes
- Road surfaces
- Walls
- Wheels
- Canals
- Ships (glass fiber)
- Engines
- Chemical processing
- Wave devises
- Mirrors
- Desalination installations
The scale on which one can build glass elements in the Sahara desert is immense. The amount of vessels to sail the oceans to protect it is infininite. The surface area one can cover with floating glass albedo panes is big enough to cool the earth. Want albedo? How about salt? Want to keep things clean of ocean dirtyness? There’s a glass microstructure for that.
Another nice feature of glass is that it does not require logistics, the sand is already there. Beyond glass there are other sintered materials that can be amazingly usefull, even superconductors and materials harder than diamond. How about synthesizing nitroglycerin with renewable sources and blasting a 500 meter wide seawater canal into the African desert. You don’t need to pump water through black pipes, with the right design it will jet through as solar steam.
A solar thermal silicon refinery in North Africa could provide the world with solar grade silicon for free.
It is clear that the first economy is bound by lack of vision beyond the well providing carbon driven production cycle. The game is different once your goal is not profit but effect, once the resources are yours in abundance. Once you tap into the sun, wind and waves for real and find ways to avoid carbon dependence (eg first economy interference) in the essential aspects of your projects.
As there should be a second economic protectorate, akin to a shadow government, banking system, with a specific climate related purpose, there should be an initiative to explore and execute the plans that are possible today. It is about survival of the human species (and most other life including plants), we don’t lack the means to enforce order in regions if we must. We do have to start research into the carbon economy free production of means of climate change mitigation and combat.
We want to do this, we Greencheck.nl and Climatebabes.com, we need budget. Become a member of the second economy and support us. At least help spread the vision and help explore the technologies involved. May thinktanks should be thinking along these lines, the Pentagon evidently does, the German army has published about the strong vulnerabilty of the first economy to minor disruptions of carbon fuel supply (although the country produces 45% of electricity from renewables at times).
The nice thing is it doesn’t even need to be publicized. It is about finding a way to act that is not ornamental, not tied up by financial constraints, but free to work on creating a balancing force to the first economy, a force for life and ecorestauration. How much more desperate and degraded do we want our starting point to be?