A Roboeconomic Response to Carbon Warming

The Roboeconomy is the economy that is technologically advanced but does not use fossil fuels. It doesn’t use nuclear energy either, it basically does not soil its own nest or externalize lethal factors. It uses solar, wind, geothermal, wave energy, fusion maybe. It is different from the fossil credit economy we are in today, because there is no way to centralize power by centralizing the distribution of credit and energy.

The banks and centralized energy producers are mutually dependent and create the illusion that money buys anything anywhere. Even though this is not true (the money only buys stuff where it can be supplied) cash has a lot of power as a result. You can still use USD almost anywhere, the bills will find their way, flow towards places where they can be used to buy stuff, because they are usually more valuable than the local currency (which will flow in the opposite direction). In the Roboeconomy there will be no global currency, at least not in the beginning.

The roboeconomy is characterized by having and using less currency of any kind, simply because one of the primary reasons money flows will be eliminated. Right now when you buy a product you have to pay for the fossil ‘content’ of it, for the fossil consumption of whoever was involved in the production. If today you don’t pay in a currency that buys fossil fuels you simply can’t get the product or service. When less energy needs to be bought by the producers the costs drop and they will also require less payment.

Picture a solar electric logistic system that has barely any maintenance and does its job nearly automatically. That will drop the cost of shipping, of supplying to manufactureres, and thus the overal cashflow and need for currency. It will also be competitive in the ‘market’ but it will not make banks happy, because banks see less money flow, less need for credit. Eventually all need for credit and currency will dry up, as every step in the logistics system becomes renewable energy autonomous and fully automated (including maintenance).

Todays response of our economic system to this threat of losing returning (fossil fuel credit) customers is to propose to use another fuel, hydrogen or natural gas in the interim. Smart people skip that step and go electric, and invest in solar and battery storage. Simply because then you are closest to done for the next millenia and you can focus on optimization of a system you know. Of course we will see many innovations, the more when banks get weaker and can’t coordinate the suppression of disruptive patents anymore. But view all your production costs as something that can be eliminated by the application of renewable energy sources and you are a Roboeconomist.

The way to view the climate situation is to think “This is a great opportunity to use the solar radiation that will be abundant to bring comfort instead of drought and heat”. You are not supported by the current economic system in that thought. You are supposed to ignore it, buy a bigger airconditioner, go on holiday, shop till you drop. This is all simply an attempt to keep selling fossil fuel based products and services. If you know better you look for the golden lining, and not in cities, not in places where the concentration of money is high and leading, but in the other places.

Take the coast of Mauritania, its desolate and dry, it has some salt mines, pretty stubborn people who don’t like infidels. If you can keep potential ideologist at bay you can start a new city on the coast, you will have no problem desalinating the water with high efficiency (ionic, freeze) desalination methods. No shortage of sun to cool your compound, which you preferably build under ground or recessed. Can be out of the sand of the deserts you find there, the sun can melt that sand into anything you want. Can you grow crops in a partially shaded space? Sure. Can you maintain systems semi autonomously? Of course. Global logistics is a for profit activity, not a necessity!

If I had more cloud I would start pulling on thin film solar production. It is not happening, and it seems this is because silicon solar just generates more cashflow. Lithium batteries keep dominating because they generate more cashflow, this is evident. Using the lightest possible battery for home storage is a waste of its utility in vehicles. Roboeconomists must put pressure on companies, banks, industry, polticians to produce things in the most energy efficient way. Reverse Osmosis desalination is nonsense if you want to utilize the available energy optimally. You are pressing water through a sive to get out the salts, while if you freeze the water the salts will be pushed out by the watercrystals themselves. Saves 60%+ of the energy, so you can desalinate 40%+ more.

The above may sound like a list of random technologies but the author of this has had~15 years to observe new innovations being sidelined both by lack of investment and ‘over’ investment and by time, because people grow old and run out of steam. This has all been to protect products that performed well for the banks and energy companies (generated energy cashflow) but sucked for future generations and most life on Earth. Take the SUV, unweidy, unsafe. Basically just a way to extract more fuel profit from rich people. Same principle as “Hey you need a fidget spinner”. Nobody needed them, they waste metal, energy, time. But they generated profit for banks and producers.

To respond like a roboeconomist start making the factors for wealth operational : Produce energy, increase skills or automate, make materials available for others or recycle them for yourself.