By Alina Zavhorodnii @Adobe Stock
Keep Up the Fight
It is not a huge stretch, promotes Edward Ring in American Greatness, to move from not only believing that civilization isn’t already doomed to also believing we can develop and manage new technology in ways that will benefit humanity.
Fables based on “Climate Crisis”
The establishment narrative in the United States starts with (and some would say ends with) the pathologically negative “Climate Crisis” Edward Ring explains why we all can take exception with this narrative.
The world is not in the midst of a climate crisis. There is nothing happening with climate and weather in the world that cannot be addressed through normal investments and adaptation. America is the most inclusive, welcoming nation in the history of civilization. Capitalism, when competition is preserved and monopolies are contained, is the most uplifting economic model ever conceived. Despite the tragic reality of ongoing conflict and hardship around the world, overall there has never been less poverty, disease and war than today.
Climate Crisis is the fundamental premise upon which American elites are systemically implementing a technology-driven police state. Critical decisions are being made right now through he perpetual monitoring and rationing of all activity, from food, water, transportation, homes and businesses.
For example, continues Mr. Ring, how renewable energy is sourced and delivered can vary greatly depending on whether it is centralized or decentralized.
In California, the state legislature has recently reduced financial incentives for residential rooftop photovoltaics. But that action does not eliminate subsidies; it only means that California’s beleaguered taxpayers and ratepayers will transfer even more billions to giant centralized wind farms and utility-scale photovoltaic installations. Nor is this about practicality. Decentralized photovoltaic systems generate power where it is consumed, reducing the need for massive investment in new high-voltage transmission lines to deliver electricity from remote renewable energy generation sites onto the grid.
Vehicle-to-Grid Technology
California’s state legislature has forced taxpayers and ratepayers to subsidize utility scale battery farms to buffer and store intermittent power generated from solar and wind farms.
But by adding vehicle-to-grid technology to California’s privately owned EVs, if only 10 percent of California’s automobiles were EVs (a realistic niche), they would be capable of storing over 30 gigawatt-hours of electricity per day. They could be driven to work, charged from the grid during the day when surplus solar power is currently wasted, then plugged in at night to collect surplus wind energy and power residences without relying on grid electricity.
Edward Ring is not suggesting that renewables replace coal, gas, oil, nuclear, or hydroelectric power. They cannot and should not. If renewables are to remain a portion of our energy sources, how they are implemented matters much.
The choice to decentralize solar, wind, and battery assets into the hands of millions of private small property owners can potentially save billions in subsidies while also distributing ownership.
Indoor Agriculture and Food Production
There are innovations that will not, when presented, cause a gaging reflex. Unlike protein based on bug tissue or “cultivated meat,” for example, indoor agriculture has universal appeal. By growing in a controlled environment, producers can avoid herbicides/pesticides.
High-value crops, including tomatoes and most other vegetables, can be grown indoors, creating what may be an opportunity for small, decentralized indoor farmers to compete with agribusiness.
Mr. Ring doesn’t try to predict from where the next innovations will come. Nor does he trying to foretell which strategies need to be aborted because they are awful and which ones to promote because they are awesome.
This is why, for example, mandating a massive transition to EVs and “net-zero” risks draining hundreds of billions out of the economy, on the backs of working families, when in a few years a solid-state battery or a breakthrough in solar concentrator technology will render these massive investments in today’s EV and photovoltaic technology completely obsolete. California’s current policies, ironically, betray a lack of faith in the power of innovation.
Choosing to Be Better
Mr. Ring notes how human progress has always fitfully advanced, with setbacks along the way that at times lasted for centuries.
That doesn’t have to be our fate in this era. We may cure disease, eliminate hunger and poverty, negotiate peace, explore space, extend life, deliver inexhaustible energy and abundant water, nurture wilderness and wildlife, and preserve a decentralized economy where wealth and ownership are broadly distributed among a population in which the vast majority of people enjoy middle-class lifestyles. Things may actually just get better and better. It is possible. It is a choice.
We must find this vision, embrace it, negotiate its particulars, and fight for it. Or it will be defined for us by people who have demonstrated no wish to share the wondrous products of innovation that are just around the corner.
