Greetings!!
Upon reading
Critical Path I have been very influenced by the work of
Buckminster Fuller, a man who's vision over the past 100 years has probed clearly into the coming problems of today. His dedication to humanity has offered solutions to many of the large-scale problems facing our future. In this post I'm going to quote some reading from Critical Path, and talk about the
Global Energy Grid as proposed in
1938 by Fuller.
Bucky was a resourceful renaissance-scientist who's research has calculated things like the total amount of copper metal in the earth yet to be mined and already-extracted copper which will eventually be recycled into different tools. He knew how long the recycle periods for copper were (22years) and also created a global inventory of all the earth's metals and resources. His understanding of large scale production and consumption are still unparalleled by any other.
One of the data sets he compared were the graphical curves showing growth of population (overpopulation too) VS inanimate electricity consumption. He found
"that
the birthrates decrease at exactly the same rate thatthe per capita consumption of inanimate electrical energy increases."This means that
overpopulation is directly linked with energy consumption in a community, and that a fair distribution of energy to the globe's population will result in a balanced population worldwide!
Bucky also created a plan for distributing electrical energy at the time of this discovery,
a Global Energy Grid. This is basically an
international power grid that spans the borders of each continent strategically passing along major populace areas, and linking those country's power ebbs and flows. The link between countries power doesn't change production of power right away, but it does distribute it much more efficiently. Each country contributes to the grid, and in return
each country no longer holds the burden of supplying their entire population's energy alone.Our system today, with each country powering themselves autonomously, the
efficiency is very low because
consumption happens at peak times based on time of
day. On this Global Energy Grid the power would be used at its peak times in North America when needed, and Russia would be supplying power when their population doesn't need it. Then later on when North Americans are asleep in bed, Russia's power supply is at a peak, and they use the power that North American's aren't using then.
Fuller admitted that p
olitically this would be a difficult task, especially in the
Bering Strait (the part of the Pacific Ocean between Alaska and Russia). But he insisted that the superconductive electrical
linking of these two continents would instantly integrate Europe, Asia, Africa with North America and South America in a never-before possible
international energy sustainability initiative which profits all parties involved.
Bucky firmly believed that the Global Energy Grid will
balance population growth, increase power efficiency,
stop power-peaks which lead to blackouts, and
peacefully unite the world economically and politically. It would literally change the face of inequality over-night.
The other beautiful part of this design is that the technology already exists,
"Such intercontinental
network integration would overnight double the already-installed and in-use, electric power generating capacity of our Planet."The organization continuing Buckminster Fuller's work related to energy is called
GENI (Global Energy Network Institute), they have picked up from this knowledge and began projects about sustainable energy, the Global Energy Grid, and many other excellent movements. Below is their website,
their president's name is Peter Meisen.http://www.geni.org Buckminster Fuller on the Global Energy Grid
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