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From: Russell D. Hoffman, California USA
Date: 24 Jan 2001
Time: 13:46:43
Remote Name: user-2ivfj96.dialup.mindspring.com
January 23rd, 2001
According to Bucky Fuller's Critical Path, page xxxi (Introduction), he "discovered" that:
"...a world energy network grid would be possible if we could develop the delivery reach. Since I was on the watch for it, when the 1500-mile-reach capability was technically established twenty years ago [i.e., about 1960, since the book was published in 1981 -- rdh], it was immediately evident to me that we could carry our American electrical network grid across the Bering Straits from our Alaska grid to reach the extreme northeastern Russian grid, where the U.S.S.R. had comnpleted a program of installing dams and hydroelectric-power-generating stations on all their northerly flowing rivers all the way into eastern Kamchatka [those plants are now seriously outdated and considered terribly inefficient -- rdh]. About 1500 miles could interconnect the Russians' Asiatic continent electric integrated power grid with the Alaskan grid of the industrial North American electric energy grid."
Now, transmission distances are in the 4,000 mile range, instead of the 1500 mile range Bucky wrote about in the 1980's, or the 350-mile distance at the time Bucky came up with his grid idea in the 1930's (before it was technologically feasible).
Bucky commented on talking to Trudeau in Canada and Brezhnev in Russia, both of whom favored the idea, and then he wrote:
"I therefore predict that before the end of the 1980's the computer's politically unbiased problem-solving prestige will have brought about the world's completely integrated electrical-energy network grid. This world electric grid, with its omni-integrated advantage, will deliver its electric energy anywhere, to anyone, at any one time, at one common rate. This will make possible a world-around uniform costing and pricing system for all goods and services based realistically on the time-energy metabolic accounting system of Universe."
Okay, so Bucky's time-frame was off on an energy grid, but the computer DID bring about a worldwide grid within the timeframe mentioned, but not the one Bucky envisioned: Rather one which uses instead of supplies energy (it supplies information though, and is called the Internet).
But Bucky's idea is still vital. By having such a grid in place we can tap the renewable energy resources which are available throughout the planet, but not always near our population centers.
Right now, 2,000,000,000 of the 6,000,000,000 people on the planet -- a third of the population -- have NO access to electricity at all! They need the grid. We in California, who are now forced to pay 2 to 3 times what we were paying just a few months ago for energy -- and doing so just so that some large corporations can get even larger -- need the grid too, so that we can get the cheap renewable energy sources to us.
Renewables include Wind Energy, Solar Energy, and also Tide, Biomass, Geothermal, Hydroelectric, Wave and many others. The Earth is a garden of energy sources, and we need not pollute the planet with nuclear waste, or contribute to global warming with fossile fuels. There are solutions, which may require a lot of time, effort and money to implement, but which will be far cheaper in the long run than continuing down the dreadful path our leaders have thus far taken us, or rather, let greedy corporations take us.
Russell D. Hoffman California, USA Web sites to visit:
Global Energy Network Institute: www.geni.org
Bucky Fuller Institute: www.bfi.org
my own web site: www.animatedsoftware.com rhoffman@animatedsoftware.com