HeroX Solar Prize, Round 4 Submission
I have already died once, when my heart stopped for 10 minutes as my forehead was being sutured WHILE I WAS UNDER A GENERAL ANESTHETIC following a car accident in Kenya, Africa in 1980! I found that I had to relearn everything outside of what was eventually recoverable in my long-term memory – how to walk, speak and remember among them – interesting!
Fortunately, I had it within me to recover, by staggering, walking and jogging more than 600 miles, the 6.6 miles home from my first job 92 times, as recorded in the diary that I kept to improve my short-term memory. Along the way, I recorded ideas that occurred (jogging is boring) about how humanity might survive indefinitely, after all the fossil energy had been exhausted AND BEFORE WE IRRETRIEVABLY AND CATASTROPHICALLY WARM THE ENTIRE PLANET, which is already well underway!
One of the first conclusions that I reached as I staggered along the road in 1981 is that we’re all the “Genetic Reincarnations” of our parents, grandparents, and so on back to the beginnings of life on this planet! We are the Eternal manifestation of the components of all the genes of all our ancestors! That means that if we want the components of the genes that enable every one of us to live for eternity, WE MUST PLAN FOR A FUTURE, ASAP, THAT REQUIRES NO FOSSIL FUELS! Without that future, all of our genes will eventually die in some future generation, as those fossil fuels are exhausted!
So, let’s take this opportunity to understand how little energy we need to survive, to invent great new paradigms, as I have for the past 40 years, that can make the future both fun and low-energy, and to work as a team to achieve all of it very rapidly! There are wars being fought for oil already; can we use this moment, as sprinters use their starting blocks, to spring forward in much more sustainable ways?
I have long promoted “Linear Cities”, built north-to-south at right angles to the prevailing westerly winds in the Northern Hemisphere, 3 – 5 stories high with wind turbines along their roofline, to generate all the electricity required for global populations. Built from Miami to Montreal, Mexico City to Winnepeg, San Diego to Vancouver, Ho chi Minh City to Vladivostok, Naples to Copenhagen, and many other places, everyone could walk east or west for 10 minutes to be in their own land, to grow food organically. Wind turbine-powered electric trains would run up and down their length, and between the Linear Cities, and a “high-temperature superconducting electricity distribution network” in their cooled basements could distribute electricity across the country and around the world with little loss!
Shared walls and floors/ceilings also conserve heat and energy and, with food production areas only a 10-minute walk away from everyone’s residence, the total per capita energy requirement can be vastly reduced from today’s requirement! High-, medium-, and low-speed trains, and bicycles would accommodate the vast majority of travel requirements!
But, what of COVID, and other pandemic diseases, in such packed environments? Because Linear Cities ingeniously crowd people along only 1 line, and the separation practices that already limit its spread can be used here, to even greater effect, with the addition of new practices specifically designed to quash spread of any infectious agent, Linear Cities can and will overcome pandemics far more rapidly than the set-in-concrete current global infrastructure, which was not designed with any pandemics in mind!
What too of the human need to maintain contact with friends, family, jobs, etc. when everyone is stretched out along a Linear City? Because the dwelling units might be available in perhaps 10 different formats, it would be easy to move from one section of any Linear City to another with minimal inconvenience. Only the direct views over curated natural or manicured scenery need change, as well as proximity to other local businesses, educational options and leisure opportunities need change. And, as the pandemic has proved, we can have meaningful social interactions with friends, family, social and business colleagues without physical contact in times of pandemic, only to loosen restrictions as the pandemic eases!
The key here is that we must design for the next 2000 years, both to keep energy use within sustainable and foreseeable boundaries, and to enhance containment of any pathogens as rapidly and thoroughly as possible! Linear Cities would run between existing cities, and supply them with 100% sustainable food, jobs, transportation and energy, so everyone would also have the option of conventional urban living, and the high-tech low-energy lifestyles of this eternal future!
The humans on this planet now all face the extremely existential choice between recognizing that we must adapt to survive as a species, or hoping that a business as usual, with band-aids, approach might carry some of us through the coming troubles. The increasingly violent political turmoil, motivated by a wealthy sub-surface agenda, suggests that those with money recognize that a continuing movement to greater sharing of resources, political power, rights and education may threaten their positions as resources contract! Like those in the ex-Roman Empire did as it collapsed, they are building their castles right now! Let’s counter that zero-sum movement with a drive to provide everyone with everything that they might require, by building 100% Sustainable Linear Cities, right now!
But, what about transportation to places away from the Linear Cities, or across oceans 100% sustainably? I am converting a Hobie Cat in my backyard, adding hydrofoils and a canting, windsurfer-style tall mast to see if we might cross oceans on larger versions, without burning any fuels, and the current vast expansion in electric vehicle options should take care of the “last-mile” to any isolated destination anywhere on the planet! 100% sustainability is available, all we have to do is open our minds to creating the ways to achieve it, very rapidly!
