from Michael Richards

A Visionary Essay

"The Earth provides plenty for every man's Need.
The Earth cannot provide enough for man's Greed." -Mahatma Gandhi

In our present time of an impending energy and food crisis, there are groups all around the world that are discussing a "peak oil" dark age and mass global die off. We must prove that such fear based thinking is not right! Such talk only provides the "justification" for totalitarian states to engage in a deadly and disastrous global "triage", through mass starvation and genocide. The real "moral majority" of the human race must stand up and say "Hell No!"...

Let's work together to build sustainable operating systems. We can build efficient systems that will meet the needs for our entire species to survive and thrive.

It's time to build a Global Intelligence Force to mobilize for urgent action.

I issue a challenge;

Let's gather the team of Global Change Agents...

Its time for a Great Global Mobilization for Humanity to Organize, Survive and Thrive.

Throughout the first phase of the history our species, we have operated with the assumption that there has never been enough to go around for everyone. Throughout all of recorded human history we have existed within a system based on scarcity. The perceived problem was: who gets what? Who survives and who dies? Every society has had a different system for deciding that unfair question. Survival has been decided through violence by tribal battles or global war during the entire Human Story! I demand a New Story.

We need to redefine the human problem; Rather than deciding how to cut up the scarcity pie, we need to bake a much bigger prosperity pie. To quote my Visionary brother, O.T., such a pie will be "LUSCIOUS!"

How can we create the intelligent systems where everyone gets what they need? By redefining the problem, we can create a new solution; we can now use our collective intelligence to devise a new engineering equation.

Humanity now has enough knowledge to be able to invent our way into a future of plenty. We simply have not been aware of the fact that we now have the possibility of prosperity for all. This will bring global peace.

According to engineers, the world's industrial system is now operating at only about four percent efficiency, but scientists have calculated that this can easily be improved to an average of twelve percent. In other words, all we have to do is start using already existing technology and stop being so damn wasteful!

We waste 90% of all energy; We use 50% of all gasoline within 3 miles of our own homes as we drive in circles in poorly designed communities to work, shop, learn and recreate. We have designed our towns and cities around the car, rather than around the people! We can design and build efficient communities where we walk and bike to all of these daily activities, and minimize long range transport for real necessity. Our present homes and buildings burn 40% of all energy! We can build efficient zero net energy use buildings. Such technology is already available and in use in places such as Abundance EcoVillage in Iowa. We can put the 90% of our energy that is wasted into action to produce enough for everyone.

Since engineers have calculated that the world's industrial systems for production of food, goods, transportation and services are now operating at only about four percent efficiency. This can be easily increased to an average of twelve percent efficiency.

Four billion people are already "making it" now with our present inefficient systems. Two billion are either not making it or living at very high risk.

3 x 4 billion =12 billion people that can "make it and thrive" with a threefold increase in efficiency.

The only missing ingredient is the "will to act".

Engineering efficiency could probably be raised much higher. It is better to understate than overstate a goal.

We need to ask how we can we raise engineering efficiency in our human operating systems and then create a concrete plan of action. How can we produce more energy, stop wasting energy, use less materials, & use less human time and labor to provide for our basic needs?

Since energy drives all human activity, we need to produce plenty of renewable energy. With plenty of energy, we can then produce plenty of food, decent inexpensive housing for every family, preventive health care, effective medical care, reality based education, efficient transportation and global communication systems.

We have the technology. We are only missing leadership. Our present global leaders are asleep at the wheel, heading down the wrong road.

If you "get this message" then you are part of the global leadership team for the new paradigm of prosperity. If not us, then who? If not now, then when?

Presently available technology provides for at least a dozen modes of renewable sources of energy.

We also now have the know-how to connect together all the world's electrical generating plants onto an efficient and integrated global grid. That one global project would almost double the amount of energy available in the world. Right now most generating plants run at about half capacity & use the other half for peak demand only. By interconnecting these systems every plant can swap power (especially between the light & dark sides of the earth) and therefore be run at almost peak capacity most of the time--without building any new generating plants.

The fact is, if we eliminate the 90% of human energy that is wasted, we also eliminate the threat of global climate change.

Einstein stated that we can never solve problems with the same type of thinking that created the problem.

In this essay, I am demonstrating a bold and innovative new way of thinking and acting.

The only energy shortage has been the shortage of intelligence and action applied to the problem.

We will need to phase in a diverse array of renewable energy as fossil fuels run out. There are plenty of alternatives to choose from: solar, wind, hydroelectric, biomass, biofuel, geothermal, tides, photovoltaic, hydrogen, etc. We get the most "bang for the buck" by eliminating the 90% waste of energy in our present operating systems. I am working to build Sustainable Operating Systems. I invite you to join this team.

We can have plenty of energy if we want it. There is no energy shortage! We live in a universe that is nothing but energy. There is just a shortage of awareness of what is now possible to our beautiful human species. The crisis is a crisis of ignorance and inaction!

We presently produce more than enough food for everyone, but much of it decays from mishandling and is simply wasted because we do not store, preserve, and transport and distribute it intelligently. By increasing our systems efficiency from the present rate of 4% to the readily attainable level of 12% systems efficiency, we can produce 3 times the amount of food. Our only real starvation is that we are starving for real leadership to activate this urgent process. I stand forward. I am ready to lead this revolution in awareness.

As we solve our food and energy problems, we must also create novel systems to provide safe, inexpensive housing for everyone. We can shelter people in mass-produced, self-contained, surplus-energy-producing homes which can be delivered anywhere for a tenth the cost of conventional houses. Visionary engineer Buckminster Fuller created geodesic systems for such low cost housing decades ago, but our present corporate builders have been more interested in building a sick system of grossly inefficient $500,000 Mc Mansions! That obsolete system is now collapsing in every city in America. It is time for the re-builders to stand forward.

This is the age of entrepreneurship. Write your own business plan to meet these needs and get to to work. It is up to you to produce enough energy, food, shelter, goods and services to meet all human needs.

It is time to simply declare our present "leaders" as IRRELEVANT and get busy.

Whose permission are you waiting for? Get off your ass and get into action. We have a world to save and the clock is ticking away. Either start a creative enterprise, or join into a creative enterprise, but get off of the dead end corporate train today. The global corporatacracy is now a dismal trainwreck.

The dictionary definition of fascism is "the merger of state and corporate interests". Unchain yourself and declare your personal emancipation today. You are a free and sovereign person. Remember that fact.

Visionary engineer Buckminster Fuller demonstrated that the geodesic sphere is the lightest, strongest, and cheapest way of enclosing space ever invented in human history. Domes can house individual families. They will also cover whole cities. Domed cities would use about 1/90th the energy of uncovered cities, and have perfect climates all year round, no matter what the geographical climate. The future is here now. Seize this moment.

So how do you want to get around in our beautiful new world?

As noted above, we can eliminate 50% of all vehicle use by living in efficient communities.

We can then develop personal/modular transportation pods which could move about on roads or on high speed electric rail. These can be hitched together in groups, be loaded onto trucks, trains, ferry boats, ships, or put into huge transport airplanes for transport anywhere. (We'll need to do something with those huge military transport aircraft that have no use, now that war is totally obsolete.) This entire global human transport system will be scheduled and integrated by computer to achieve maximum efficiency.

Our present wireless, satellite relayed, two-way communication systems make it possible for great numbers of people to work at home. Information based industry work teams can live wherever they choose in the world and work in virtual office systems. Physical goods and food can be produced and processed most efficiently in well organized local, decentralized "appropriate scale" technology. It does not make sense to ship goods and food thousands of miles. Such transport of goods is another huge waste of energy.

Education from early childhood to life long adult learning can return to the home and neighborhood with the application of interactive internet access plugged into to all the information banks of the entire world. GOOGLE is already scanning every book on earth for immediate and equal access to the entire human community. Everyone on earth can now have instant access to the best and latest information presented by the best teachers of every area of knowledge in the world. Knowledge is the basis of prosperity for all.

The vast increase in wealth and decrease in waste (time, energy, materials) that we can achieve through this three fold increase in systems efficiency will make it possible to have a minimum level of guaranteed annual income for every man, woman and child on earth. This basic level of income can gradually increase over time . We will first survive and then thrive. People will have to "work" less and less as we build more and more efficient systems. We will all have more and more time to create, engage in art and literature and build the real value of the human race. We can live in a "low consumption/high value society". Our high value will come in the form of cultural, intellectual, community, family and spiritual values.

The fear of not having basic necessities of life will be diminished and eventually eliminated. This will decrease stress-base illnesses, crime and war. When people have adequate food, energy, shelter, etc they are bound to be healthier. The easiest way to control disease is to eliminate its root causes, such as malnutrition, bad water, exposure and poor sanitation.

By designing efficient systems that meet the needs of all, human beings will no longer have any reason to fight each other over limited resources. The causal reason for war will be gone. We will know that war is now obsolete. The oldest dreams of mankind; peace, prosperity will have come true.

Wake up from the nightmare that we call "Consumer Society" and step into the real dream called Life.

We will accomplish this set of objectives by the use of "whole systems design science". With this whole systems approach, we will create the Sustainable Operating System for the entire planet earth.

For the first time in human history, you have the opportunity, privilege, and responsibility to work with us to make this possible dream our accomplished reality All of humanity has struggled, dreamed, hoped, worked, and prayed for this defining moment in our long history. Wake up. Stand up. Get to work!

"Let us provide ordinary people with the means of doing profitable and intrinsically significant work. Our goal is to help men and women achieve independence from external economic control, so that they may become their own employers, or members of a self-governing, cooperative group working for subsistence within a local market. This differently oriented technological progress would result in a progressive decentralization of population, ownership of land and means of production and political and economic power. This new economic structure would result in a more humanly satisfying life for more people, a greater measure of genuine democracy." -Aldous Huxley
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Michael Richards, inventor-innovator, author of SUSTAINABLE OPERATING SYSTEMS/The Post Petrol Paradigm (available at www.amazon.com)