Free Energy Now

Free Energy Now, the Ultimate Human Right

Written by John Pontious

     Humans have evolved on this planet and have surpassed the natural world.  We are responsible for filling every corner of the land. Our very existence depends upon the continual farming and recovering of energy in every form.  Humanity’s energy demand on the planet will inevitably pass (or has passed) the planets renew ability.   For our species to continue to exist, as we are, is impossible.  It has been shown that if all human activity stopped tomorrow, the full effects of the changes we have set in motion by our methods of energy use would continue far into the future.  Obviously, humanity will not stop tomorrow and our outlook seems uncertain.

      Fierce storms, rising oceans, rising temperatures, shifting seasons, and more frequent extinctions and mass death are happening throughout the world.  Some scientists see not a gradual change but “tipping points”, when great events can happen much faster than were predicted.  An example of this would be the complete melting of the polar ice caps in years instead of centuries, a looming global catastrophe of unimaginable proportions.

     We are not blind to this scenario, but it seems imperative that a great threat should be taken as a great opportunity and challenge.  Our energy use must be examined along with an examination of our culture and world society.  The imbalance of wealth and security in the world has allowed a great threat to grow.  Capitalism unrestrained has no regard for its worldwide impacts on the atmosphere, land or oceans, and benefits so few compared to the huge masses of humanity that suffer and work in poverty.  Our way of life and definition of success must change today.  Energy and the possession of natural resources that we know are detrimental to life, such as oil, coal, gas, and uranium all pollute the earth, warm the atmosphere, and have nearly sealed our fate.

     The time has come in our evolution to broaden our hearts and our minds.

     The time has come to loosen our blinders and see every human being as equal to every other human being, and to assure all human rights to everyone, including the right to use energy responsibly and freely.  After all, the measure of our success as a species is the poorest of the poor. We must measure our success by the way we treat each other on personal and international levels, and know that we are only as advanced as our poorest, most wretched citizens.  We have the ability, the potential, and the responsibility to provide for ourselves, preserve our planet, and insure all human rights.

      The time has come to face our responsibilities and defects of character.  Let no one profit from energy and energy will be free.

     Imagine a world that runs only on clean electric energy, and whose only fuel is free hydrogen, the most abundant element in the universe.

     Hydrogen is freed from its oxygen atom in a process called electrolysis.  Electrolysis uses electrical energy to free and capture the hydrogen in water, which is then ready to add to a fuel cell and begin to produce electricity.  The only by-products from fuel cells are pure water and heat.  NASA has long used fuel cells to power its spacecraft and provide drinking water for astronauts.  Fuel cells can run homes, cars, trucks, factories, aircraft, and cities.

     Hydrogen is a gift and a challenge.  The challenge is to make hydrogen free, and the gift is pure water and energy. 

     The species must rise to this challenge, above village, town, city, state, and nations.  Let no single human or group of humans hold hostage our future.  Remove the temptation of profit from energy.  Only in this way can we be free and survive!

      A new clean day will come when our world is powered by hydrogen fuel cells.  Our homes, vehicles, and businesses will not add carbon to the atmosphere or land.  Hydrogen will be dispensed freely for all of our energy needs.  As we struggle to make this vision a reality, war and poverty will be left behind.  Future generations will puzzle over our blind ability to kill for energy producing substances under the guise of war or justice.

     Every human being will be provided for by making hydrogen free.

The Plan

     A worldwide effort must be undertaken to use the fantastic energy of our sun to produce the electricity necessary for hydrogen production.  We must encircle the earth with solar photovoltaic power stations that will collect and transmit power via microwave to stations located on the earth’s oceans.  There, the concentrated beams will be received as electricity and provide the power for producing hydrogen on a massive scale.  The hydrogen will be bottled and shipped to the land, perhaps in converted oil tankers.     People will use this free hydrogen to fuel their homes, vehicles, and businesses, eliminating the need for a power grid.

     This new energy source must be given freely to the world by the world.  No single nation has the ability to do this.  Only a worldwide effort and a one world view can bring about a free hydrogen future.  A new age of man, harvesting our energy responsibly, and providing for every single citizen of the planet must begin now!

     The alternative is nothing less than the eventual collapse of humankind.

Free Energy Now, the Ultimate Human Right

A Worldwide Declaration of Human Survival

     A Worldwide Declaration of Human Survival, if universally accepted, could be a document that declares certain activities be carried out for the elimination of carbon-based energy to insure the survival of the planet, and would need the power to carry out its mission.  It would have to be constructed in such a way as to remain independent of all world governments.  At first, its primary mission would be to produce and guarantee free and clean hydrogen to the world in order to stabilize climate change as rapidly as possible, perhaps within ten to twelve years after ratification.  This body would also be responsible for distributing hydrogen fairly and justly as we begin the change over to a pure hydrogen world.  This document should contain guarantees of all human rights, including the right to free energy as the world becomes able to provide it. Eventually, its mandate could be expanded to include colonization of the moon, near space, and Mars, thus greatly improving the chance for long range survival of the species.

How to Cool the Earth

     The sad fact is that it is already too late to “cool” the earth down to pre-industrial revolution times.  If all of the carbon that we emit daily could be stopped today, the earth would continue to warm by as much as 3-5 degrees Fahrenheit for the next fifty to one hundred years, depending on which computer model is correct. There have been some schemes suggested and even tried, such as seeding a small portion of an ocean with iron oxide, building a giant orbiting shield to shade the earth, etc.  All scientific disciplines should continue to investigate possibilities, but as yet the best answer is to stop emitting carbon as soon as humanly possible. 

     Like lemmings, we discuss the possibility of our survival after we have jumped off the cliff and as we near the ground.

Human Rights

     Human rights must be intimately tied to free energy.  Free energy for the world cannot work without the basic understanding that humans are born with inalienable rights, including the right to free energy in all its forms. Universal human rights should include the right to exist, and the energy required to sustain human life.  Food, pure water and clean air are all essential for life.  It cannot be stressed enough how important it is to marry these two ideas:  Free clean energy for life and the human rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.  If all countries, religions, and other organizations would embrace these simple concepts the world would enter a new age of reason and discovery.

     It is not life that is unfair, rather it is the human beings who are willing to be unfair in life that make it appear to some that life or society as a whole is unfair.  The ability to see and exploit an advantage enables business and competition to exist, but in many ways is wasteful.  In a world that believed every human life had a right to exist, it must then logically follow that the right to exist must include a commitment by society to provide free for itself the ABILITY to exist, and this right must supercede all other considerations for humanity.

 (Lack of) Societal Evolution

     The idea that we are currently moving away from world unity instead of toward world unity makes me ashamed and guilty.  I’m guilty of being a part and party to a movement to secure dwindling energy at the barrel of a gun.  I’m guilty of enjoying the final fruits of the richest and most hedonistic societies in the history of humankind.  I’m guilty of watching energy in most of its present forms kill, poison, starve, elevate, accumulate, pool around the few, doom the many, and kill again.

      Our empathy for the lives that deserve equality and human compassion, and our desire to see a world able to use its intellect and powers to offer its collective wisdom to its people led us to a simple idea:  Declare energy, in all its forms, a necessary and free human right.  For life to exist, and to continue to exist, energy is everything.  In today’s world, energy in the form of oil is the blood of capitalism.   Energy and the control of energy in its present forms allow incredible inequalities to exist and, in the guise of “maintaining our way (standard) of life” arguments, bends and distorts our expectations.  We are all spoiled.  If every human life is equally as valuable as the next, and if we truly believe this, then we must all be inherently defective in some societal way. Access to and control of energy always corrupts any organization or government because control equals power and wealth.  This wealth becomes concentrated in the hands of the few, and leads to gross inequalities and a society distorted by greed and geared for the luxury of the power holders.  Capitalism has no regard for its toll on the environment or the workers who make this very system possible.

          I truly believe in, and continue to believe in humanity.  I grew up with the constant possibility of nuclear annihilation, but when the Soviet Empire collapsed and the threat was greatly reduced, I thought that the world was growing towards, or at least taking steps toward a more unified and enlightened age.   A great sense of relief was felt by most of the world, particularly in North America and Russia.  The Berlin wall came down and was a worldwide event.  The Tiananmen Square movement in China seemed to mark progression against totalitarianism and toward some forms of new freedom for 1/6^th of humanity.  I am naïve.

     Change of any measure, and in general, is hard for humans to master.  Whether on a personal or cultural scale, change causes the pain that is the cost of evolution.   I realize now that it takes generations to accomplish a noticeable change (or growth) in societies.  Great emotional wounds and hatred gathered from war and strife are handed down to the next generation in an atmosphere of poverty and uncertainty.

The Iraq War, an Energy Event

       An example of the desperation and greed over energy is the ongoing war declared on Iraq by the U.S., and its ensuing occupation.  This decision defeated democracy.  America has always trumpeted its constitution and freedoms to the world, and actively works to democratize the world, which I believe is laudable.  Many reasons were given by the Bush Administration for the need for this war, the most persistent of which could be summed up: America must secure energy (oil) resources wherever possible to insure our “way of life”.  This reason, upon close analysis, is appalling!  The “American Way of Life” accepted by most Americans is not truly democratic or equal.  I believe the “American Way of Life” in the 21^st century is destructive to the biosphere, oblivious to equality, uninterested in enlightenment, and above all resistant to change. The “American Way of Life” seems to have very little to do with the constitutional definitions of the equality inherent within the theory of democracy. The pillars that hold the very ideas of freedom and democracy consist of one truth: Equality.  The authors of the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights conceived a world free and equal, and allowed these principals to be modified and changed over time without eroding their central premises.  The U.S. in 2010, in my mind, bears little resemblance to the noble and equality-based ideas of enlightened men of the 18^th century.  America endured a civil war over these principals, and the ongoing stability of the principal “All Men and Women are Created Equal” is proof that these life affirming principals of the Constitution and Bill of Rights are valid.

     We are all individually and collectively hypocrites, but the knowledge of this hypocrisy seems to slowly drive our societal evolution toward a more utopian society, at times seeming to slip back.

     The America today is essentially capitalism.  Capitalism unrestrained or monitored is like a slow but deadly cancer.  It has invaded democracy and, like a cancer, diseased American Society and the values implicit in the principals of democracy.   

         Paying for Free Energy

     The cost of this, the most ambitious and spectacular human endeavor ever undertaken, will consist of two parts.  The first cost will be the capitol cost of research and development, testing, infrastructure construction, and deployment.  Because the sun is essentially the free fuel for these power plants, the capitol costs could be up to 90% of overall costs during the lifetime of each plant.  This will be by far the largest cost of the system, including the new vehicles needed for deployment and the work force and accompanying back-up systems needed for space travel. 

     The second cost will be the ongoing production, maintenance, and upgrade that will be needed as technology improves and to insure an uninterrupted and constant flow of energy to earth.

     The actual final cost of these steps is not known.

     With a target date of ten years to deployment, new methods of space construction, amazing amounts of research and development, and multiple earth and space-based industry will have to be developed.  The best minds on earth will be co-opted to work on this multifaceted, urgent project.  These power stations must be 22,000 miles in space to remain over their receivers on earth.  Currently, no vehicle exists that can work at that distance.  Inflated solar collectors are even now under development that will span several square miles each, and hundreds will be needed to meet the earth’s entire electric requirements.  Wind farms on earth will produce hydrogen instead of powering a grid, eventually producing 30% of the hydrogen needed worldwide. 

     The funding of this project must come, not only from every country in the form of a percentage of their gross national product, but also from the elimination of militaries around the world.  We must beat our swords into plowshares to survive.  Poor countries must also contribute in some way and be full partners in this endeavor. 

     Many will object to this method and idea, but the real cost of doing little or nothing, with no target date, may cost us the planet and life itself!    

Just the Beginning

     Free solar energy gathered in space, beamed to earth as electricity, and converted to hydrogen, a benign and portable energy fuel, must be considered as a solution to the world’s problems of energy use and climate change.  This hydrogen must be produced and distributed freely to the citizens of the world with concrete guarantees from the recipients that they will observe universal human rights.

     Free hydrogen will undoubtedly create a massive new market for fuel cells in all varieties and sizes.  Untold new technology will spring up to take the place of the old systems being recycled or converted.  The world may see a time of prosperity after the project is operating and replacing all coal, oil, uranium, gas, and wood used on earth with free hydrogen for fuel cells.  Eventually, the means of using free energy such as fuel cells, food, and pure water will be free.  If the world can start by stabilizing climate change and provide the means to do this by distributing free hydrogen, then there is hope that all other forms of energy such as food will also be free in the near future.

Beauty and Use

     The sun has made life possible for us, and the sun will be used by earth in a new way, to provide our energy needs from space as we grow as a society.  

     On the farm in Kansas, doing the hard work, my father taught us the idea of beauty and use.  I believe he would agree that using what nature has already provided for us freely is a beautiful and useful gift.  We have been given the time to develop intelligence and technology, and now must use all our gifts in concert for the survival of humankind.  We must show that humanity exists in this environment, and move to the next level of discovering the beauty and use of the universe.

     Let not a single country, state, organization, or religion stand in the way of pursuing this solution for our common welfare and survival.

     Let not a single terror, or threat, or fear of failure stand in the way of a more advanced, more humane, and more human planet.  Billions of people throughout the world cry out for peace, justice, equality, and life.  Freeing energy from the shackles of the few will insure a more equal and just world. 

     This is our chance to fundamentally change our society and embrace the life that we have been given to live on this fragile world.  This is our only option, to find a way to occupy this planet without killing it.

Why Write This

     The first world crisis that I remember as a child of 4 or 5 was the threat of nuclear annihilation.  I believe now that growing up with that possibility and fear affected a large part of my generation.

      The other great world crisis that I remember hearing about at that age was the “population explosion”.  I knew by age six that the world’s population was then several billion, and that sympathetic people everywhere wondered how humanity would feed the coming billions.

      I was a sensitive child, and was raised among the Navajo on my father’s remote Episcopal Mission.  I was an acolyte for my dad, an Episcopal priest, and he always encouraged my curiosity and abilities.  He knew I wanted to contribute to humanity, much as he contributed to the Navajo in S.E. Utah.  I loved science and space, and my family encouraged my dream of becoming an astronaut.  Even then, as a child watching men walk on the moon, I believed that our destiny and survival depended on spreading beyond our fragile planet.  I remember scientists beginning to realize the impact human activities were having on the entire planet. 

     As a sophomore in high school in Parsons, Kansas, I enrolled in debate. That year the topic was global warming.   In debate I had to be able to argue both sides of the question-is global warming real?  It reminded me of the warnings of the 60,s of the population explosion that by 1978 seemed forgotten.  During my research gathering for debate, it became obvious to me that humanity was to blame for increasing the natural pace of change throughout the world.

     In my early teens I sustained an accidental gunshot wound through the chest while hunting for rabbits on my grandfather’s farm in Kansas.  I was trying for an appointment to the Air Force Academy, which would help me pursue my dream of space travel through becoming a pilot.  During my slow recuperation, though, I began to have doubts about a life in the military.  I had always had an artistic side, and have written songs and melodies all my life.  Some of the songs I wrote reflected my uneasy feeling that I should do something to help.  For a song I wrote called “Shifting Nature” my friend and videographer Chuck Merchant captured a world in collapse. 

     Eventually my wife Julianna and our two sons settled in my great grandfather’s house on the family farm in Kansas.  I was intrigued by the idea of living “off the grid”, and began to investigate wind power as a way to generate electricity.  After just a few days online, I realized that the farm had the potential to host a utility scale wind farm that could bring in some income and produce much energy from a ready resource that did not pollute the earth or emit greenhouse gasses. 

     Wind power is exciting, and in 2005 I wrote an idea called “Oil Free Electric World” in which, through interconnections and full utilization of some of the worlds kinetic energy, including wind, geothermal, hydroelectric, and solar, electrical energy would collect and flow around the planet as day chases night, greatly reducing the need to burn fossil fuels.  This idea could work but is really only a half-step solution to our energy problems, and does not address problems of worldwide connections and the energy used for transportation.

     I would like to conclude this essay with this fact: Energy allowed us to evolve into the planets most successful animal.  Our use of energy now threatens to reduce our societies to rubble.  Now is the time to think in terms of One World, One People, and only with this worldwide view can we continue to exist.

                                                           The War

     The Last and Greatest War is at hand!  The Last and Greatest War is invisible.  The battles have been raging for ten thousand years and more, unseen and unstoppable.  As humanity multiplies, the war grows and becomes more visible.  The bullets and bombs in this war are words and ideas.  The casualties are minds.

     The enemy is known by many names, the most common of which are apathy, envy, hate, and greed.  The enemy faces the forces of empathy, selflessness, love, and sacrafice.  Ideas and beliefs are the weapons used, and are far more lethal then anything man has invented for destruction or control. 

     We are all born free, but only for a moment.  The war invades us almost instantly, and remains with us throughout our lives.  Many people are unaware of the war, and this is the enemy’s greatest weapon.  People throughout history have glimpsed the war, fought bravely, and have given their lives to make the war known to others.

     The war is on tv, cellphones, advertisements, music, all media, and in the very air that we breathe! 

     The war is becomming apparent and visible to more and more people, a sign that it will reach a conclusion soon.  If the war becomes fully visible to all people, then the war will be over, and humanity will have lost.  Apathy, envy, hate, and greed will have kept us blind past the point of no return, and the oceans will boil. 

The song “Shifting Nature”, by John and Mark Pontious 1987

 

We shift the balance of nature, the coming changes, our own

Can we repair costly damage? Can we but find the worlds salvation?

The time is coming. Our children live in a wasteland

Our hunger for power, power, has left the world a sterile wreck

The time is now, the evil consequence

The rising oceans, the bitter air

Look at the earth, look at the sky

The planet is one, the Earth is alive

What we do here, shows up over there

What they do there, shows up everywhere

We shift the balance of nature, the coming changes, our own

Can we repair costly damage? Can we but find the worlds salvation?

The song “House of Love” by Joe Mitchell 1985

 

Some people in this world can’t call their house a home

They’re fighting for their freedom, most of us have known

Jailed and tortured for what they think, many more have died

Join us in our plea tonight, let’s make them hear our cry

Don’t want to preach tonight, don’t want to bring you down

But some people wear the thorns, others wear the crowns

Some people buy and sell the lives of other men

But that’s got no place here; let me tell you once again

This is the House, the House of Love

Come on into the House, the House of Love

You’ve got a home, in the House of Love

Make This World a House of Love

Music is the doorbell, and singing is the key

Clap your hands and stamp your feet

We’ll all be set free

When we stepped out on the stage, we put our troubles away

We just want to dance and sing, and say one thing today

This is the House, the House of Love

Come on into the House, the House of Love

You’ve got a home, in the House of Love

Make This World a House of Love

Some people try to rule ya, Some people try to fool ya

Some people try to screw you-but ain’t we all the same?

Some people say they cry for you

Some people say they lie for you

Some people say they’d die for you

Tonight we don’t play that game

This is the House, the House of Love

Come on into the House, the House of Love

You’ve got a home, in the House of Love

Make This World A House of Love

 

 

Tags: an end to poverty, energy solution, global warming solution, human rights, hydrogen fuel cells, war