Ronoeconomics, the economic framework that we need to adapt to have a future, consists of three parts, namely using robots, restoring the ecology and having a renewbales based economy. Each part is within reach today, and the main hinderance to developing our economy into this new one is the dependence of credit sources, banks, on the use of fossil fuels in economic processes.
Robot that plants trees..
To break through that dependence and be able to start operations that do not have this banking/fossil fuel entanglement we propose to create so called extraeconomic zones/organizations which are almost entirely like any other productive organization, factory or agricultural region, but that they don’t produce for the wider economy, they don’t use fossil fuels, and they don’t have any ties with the banking system for credit or anything else. The reason to make these aspects explicit for a starting subset of operations is because economic theory promotes the exploitation of any usefull resource one can get to, and we don’t want forrest biomass we create to fight climate change to be cut down and sold. We can ensure this doesn’t happen if we don’t have any debt or credit dependence on the wider banking system. Usually desirable economic resources are brought to the market by weakening the government/authority that owns it, usually by making this government/authority dependent on credit, this is the nr. one method of bank economic occupation.
Economics aims to maximize the utilization of fossil fuel, it is a fossil fuel marketing strategy
A Roboeconomic takeover strategy would consist of making sure the rate of adoption of renewables is maximized, that the production chain for renewable energy sources is made independent on fossil fuels as soon as possible. At the same time extraeconomic production chains, can be interwoven in the normal economy, sustaining only the people involved. This patchwork can grow and tie together eventually so no person has to depend on the fossil fuel economy anymore. At the same time large scale extraeconomic activity can start in regions that are not interesting economically but have great potential extraeconomically. By continuously focussing on local self sustaining ability based on renewables banks and fossil companies will lose cloud and can be controlled better to be shut down eventually.
Agricultural automation can equally be used to plant and manage organic biomass, plant trees, green regions with minimal human intervention
Extraeconomic zones can build biomass outside the grasp of the economic ‘lawnmower’, as long as it has some protection, for instance by being small, secret or in fact protected. For that reason remote regions are ideal for roboeconomic, extraeconomic activities. Oceans are another good candidate, also because there is so much to gain there in terms of human survival of current warming trends. Oceans have the added advantage that they provide water, nutrients, are easily moved around in and have little shade (for solar power generation). We have written about floating bamboo plantations, mixed with fish farms and other biomass generating ocean agriculture. Communities can thrive on our oceans, and we can even prevent storms and typhoons by farming in certain regions.
An example of how far we are with robotic ocean management, our ability to precisely control the coral reef environment in this case. The above COTSbot (Crown-Of-Thorns Starfish robot) is able to autonomously roam around the reef to find invasive species like the Crown of Thorns starfish, and kill them. One can say this is destructive but this en example of what can be achieved. The robot can identify the starfish itself and applies a (hopefully biodegradable) poison to them, thus protecting the coral which would otherwise be destroyed. There are other fish species that can invade reefs and create havoc there like the lionfish who have no natural enemies on many reefs.
A autonomous oceanic robot can do many things. Being electric it could charge on free flaoting solar arrays anywhere in our oceans. They could plant kelp forrests, they could weave floating mats of organic matter on the surface that then allow fish to thrive underneath. With some human assistance we could have enormous fish farms in the open sea fed by nutrients from the deep ocean (which contains all the necessary ingredients at about 200-400 meters). Hawaii has large algae farms which it feeds with cool nutrient rich deep ocean water. For more on this concept see our pieces on Bambooya.
It is essential for our survival that we restore the oceans and protect their ability to absorb CO2 and produce O2. In response to human degradation of oceanic life while the evolutionary stress on life in general is increasing, we would be wise to try to make any life thrive anywhere, so in case of the oceans, restore dead zones to ones teeming with fish life. This is possible because the necessary ingredients are there, including those needed for our roboeconomic intervention.