Think globally…

I think there’s a point in the journey to rejecting your societies political and economic systems when you start to dream of what could be, if we approached social problems with logic freed from the constraints of a moribund economics system. What if there where no nations, no artificial lines in the sand that people would fight over and use as justification for not taking global decisions to solve global problems? What if all the worlds inhabitants could communicate and come to decisions equally, what could we do as a species?

We the people of earth face problems as a people, as a species, some we know will happen we’re just not sure exactly when. Like at some point the sun is going to expand and encompass the earth extinguishing all life, we know this will happen we’re just not sure when it will happen. Other problems, like climate change are working on much smaller time scales than when stars go super nova. Climate change is one of those global problems where it is clear our current system is insufficient. I was arguing about global warming back in the 80’s even back then we knew the problems and the solutions but forty years on and we have advanced so little.

Climate change is caused by the way we generate our power. The modern world runs on electricity. Virtual currencies eat up huge amounts of the stuff and everything from how we keep our food edible to how we heat our homes in the winter and how we transport ourselves and our products run on energy. The problem is we use fossil fuels to generate this electricity and this creates CO2 which when in the atmosphere heats up the Earth. So we have to start using alternatives. This is a global problem that requires a global solution.

So, what could we do if we weren’t constrained by capitalism and money, nations and countries? Well, its got to be a renewable energy source, thats clear. Here’s one solution we could try: Wind. We’ve harnessed the energy of the wind for generations, the countryside was spotted with windmills grinding the corn into flour for our daily bread. So if we are going to use wind we should ask, where is the windiest place on earth? And it just so happens that place would be Antarctica. In Antarctica the wind never stops blowing and it never drops below 55 miles per hour, it has been known to even reach speeds of 199 mph.

Antarctica also has another thing going for it, beyond a small group of scientists stationed there the continent is completely free of humans settlements. It’s empty. So, we cover the whole of Antarctica with wind turbines, but what we do is, and this is key, is we use the electricity it generates to split water into hydrogen and oxygen.

Now it doesn’t matter what source is used in generating electricity it is the same in every method, something is used to heat up water, this could be burning gas or submerging nuclear rods but the purpose is the same, heat water until it gives off steam which rises and turns a turbine which generates electricity. We take the hydrogen we’ve created to where the electricity is needed, we take it to the power plant, burn the hydrogen to heat the water and generate electricity that way. Incidentally, when you burn something you oxidise it, thats is an atom of oxygen is captured. Burning hydrogen (H2) adds one oxygen (H2O), water. The by product of burning hydrogen is water.

This isn’t hard. This doesn’t require a PHD to figure out. To me its obvious. Because i look beyond the limits of capitalism and see how we could apply ourselves in a global way. As the earth warms and still we have no plan in place to tackle it, still we accept “it would cost too much money” as a reason to not do something. We face global problems that require global solutions, this world of artificial lines in sand and an acceptance that we have no global governance to help steer the ship is what leeds to nothing being done. We have to see ourselves for what we are a global people, one world, one people. Capitalism cannot be allowed to justify carrying on as before. Change is needed now more than ever people. The future is up to us.

Ferdi