| To save the Earth, are
YOU a Solartopian?
In the global campaign to save the Earth, a shared vision
is vital.
"
Solartopia" foresees a democratic, green-powered 21st Century
civilization. Our economic and ecological survival depend on it.
Technologically, the vision rests on four simple pillars:
1. Total
renunciation of all fossil and nuclear fuels. In a sustainable, survivable
future, they are a 20th Century pox, neither green
nor clean.
2. All-out conversion to renewable energy, led
by the "Solartopian
Trinity" of wind, solar and bio-fuels. Mother Earth
gives us the natural power we need.
3. Complete commitment to maximum efficiency,
including revived and solarized mass transit and passenger rail
systems. Our automotive "love
affair" is a hoax.
4. Zero tolerance for production
of anything that cannot be re-used or recycled, including
chemical-based food. Solartopia is an
organic, post-pollution world.
Along with wind, solar
and bio-fuels, Solartopian energy comes from the waves, currents,
rivers and tides; from
the geothermal
heat beneath the earth's crust; from the interplay
of solar-heated water at the oceans' surface and the frigid deep.
Hydrogen
and electricity are the chief power carriers, but they are always
produced by clean Solartopian means.
The efficiency revolution drives
Solartopian energy consumption
levels ever downward. Compact fluorescent bulbs are transcended
by Light Emitting Diodes. An evolving armada of efficiency
devices, many invented in backyards and garages, spreads
at warp-speed
through a hyper-linked global community.
Advanced methods of organic food production get us past
the "silent
spring" of chemical pesticides, herbicides, fertilizers
and genetically modified crops.
The ever-evolving Internet fuels a geek-driven torrent
of Solartopian innovation---and the raging e-network
of green grassroots democracy (http://solartopia.org/Links.php).
In our 21st Century global economy, renewable technologies
are already on the whole more profitable than the obsolete
King CONG "alternatives" of
coal, oil, nukes and gas.
But from bio-fuels to wind, from hyper-efficiency to
organic farming, no green technology is without costs
and limitations.
All demand
vigilance, limitation, regulation and innovation to stay
clean, current and useful.
When done right, the Solartopian
revolution spawns the decentralized wealth, full employment,
and community-based
economic power of
a prosperous, socially democratized society.
Homes, buildings, communities and farms control their
own energy. Power and prosperity are widespread,
not concentrated
in the
hands of King CONG and its corporate minions.
Indeed, Solartopia can't happen without transcending
some primary barriers:
5. Corporations can no longer enjoy human rights without
human responsibilities. Revised corporate charters must
break the grip
these giant economic organizations have held on our political,
economic and ecological systems.
6. Population is the province of women, who in Solartopia
are empowered, educated and equally paid. In synch
with Mother Earth,
they bring
us the number of children She wishes to accommodate.
7. Where everyone has a right to the basic necessities
of life, including free education, nobody starves. The
Solartopian rich
may be plentiful, but no civilization thrives unless all
have access to sustenance and dignity.
8. Big Money is barred from the campaign process. Free
and fair elections and referenda power non-violent community-based
evolution.
The universal right to ballots on recycled paper means
accurate vote counts and recounts for all.
Solartopia demands that business serve society and the
planet, rather than vice versa. Capitalism
may be one thing, but Enron
cannibalism is quite another. Balancing competition
and the profit motive with human and ecological need, the Solartopian
vision
demands accountability, efficiency, service
and justice.
The switch to renewables defunds global terrorism.
Atomic reactors are pre-deployed weapons of
radioactive mass destruction.
Shutting
them ends the fear of apocalyptic disaster
by both terror and error. Transcending coal
and cars cures much of global
warming.
But everywhere we turn, the King CONG corporations
build barriers. They use government subsidies
and media disinformation
to prolong
their failed investments in obsolete technologies
and the fossil/nuke fuels that run them.
Inseparable
from those fuels are authoritarian power structures that produce wars
for oil,
financial imbalance and social
chaos, leading to biological extinction.
By contrast, Solartopia is the diverse, democratic,
organic place we go to survive and thrive.
Born of hyper-linked grassroots non-violence,
empowered by post-pollution prosperity in synch
with Mother Earth
and all her children, Solartopia
is the 21st Century vision of our necessary
future.
Are YOU a Solartopian?
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