Raeal » Time for Clean Energy

September 4, 2008

Time for Clean Energy

Filed under: Columns — Raeal @ 1:02 am

In recent times, people from all over the world have been reeling under the effects of increasing energy costs. Fuel prices have doubled in many places in just over a year, sparking protests from drivers and the common people alike.

Everything in this world is really much more interconnected than we like to believe, both within and without. The increase in fuel prices have driven up transport costs and in a domino effect, it has pushed the prices of everything up, resulting in record inflations over the world.

In a way, I feel that the majority of the governments are rather powerless as they are held hostage to the increasing oil prices, besides having to cope with higher demand as their population becomes urbanized. United States is a net importer of oil and its representatives responded to the crisis by repeatedly calling for an increase in oil production from OPEC.

Nevertheless, we are also willing participants in handing over our money to the oil producers.

On the ground level, many of my car-driving friends including myself could also feel the impact of higher petrol costs and resulting inflations. I was in a cab one day and chatted with the driver about the recent adjustment in cab metering. He explained that the increase in cab fare was good for a while but the ever-increasing fuel price is driving him crazy and he is making lesser every month. He wondered how he is going to cope. Similarly, my friends curse and swear at the petrol companies for revising the price upwards 14 times in a few months. The petrol companies are so greedy, they say.

Nevertheless, we are also willing participants in handing over our money to the oil producers. For most of us, we chose and elected to be in a free economy driven by capitalism. Everything is therefore supply versus demand. One party provides a good and sets a price for selling and another party willingly pays at the price for it. Nobody pointed a gun at us to pump our petrol at Shell or Esso. Even though they fix and control the price as an oligopoly, we can always choose not to drive.

The way I see it, humanity is facing a global lesson in this crisis and we will emerge better from it.

While I said earlier that governments are powerless in this energy crisis, that is because governments are largely reactive rather than being proactive. Most governments fail to anticipate future demands and problems.

For example, a city might have doubled its energy consumption in a decade and what does the city government do? It builds another conventional power plant to cope with the increase. Now that the power plant is in operation, the pollution increases because of the additional plant, more industries and higher emissions from more vehicles.

What does the governor then do? He responds by starting a green campaign to try to reduce the pollution. We have seen too many of such examples in real life and we can largely predict their results. It will be too late, too difficult to reduce the pollution, in part being hampered by self-interest lobbies and citizens who are resistant to change.

Our world is putting in so much energy in â€œreactingâ€ to events, rather than solving problems at their roots.

I sometimes feel that certain environmentalists are very much like some of the anti-war participants. While both groups have good intentions and serve a role in making the world a better place, some of them focus so much energy on fighting pollution and rallying against war that they forget about creating clean energy and peace respectively.

Mother Teresa was once asked to attend an antiâ€“war rally and she refused, responding to those requesting her attendance by saying, â€œBut if you ever have a peace rally, let me know and I will attend.â€

Similarly, we need to focus our energy on creating the world that we would like to see instead of fighting problems. When we focus on what we do not like, the more of it we experience. This is the law of attraction. The universe is absolutely neutral and reflects to us what we focus our creative energy on. That’s why we are co-creators.

Let us examine some of the â€œreactiveâ€ measures taken in the current energy crisis.

Changing to smaller cars with lower fuel consumption
Raising or lowering air-conditioning temperatures (depending on your climate)
Developing energy-saving home appliances
Researching energy saving measures, such as making engines more fuel-saving or cleaner engines
Switching to alternative depletable energies like compressed natural gas (CNG) or bio-fuels

While helpful in the short term, these measures do not really solve the energy crisis in the long run. Fuels are still being consumed and with increasing demand from rising economies, the reduction in energy consumption per product is going to be balanced out, if not overtaken by an increase in overall energy consumption due to more goods manufactured and used.

Here’s a rough example to illustrate this idea. Let’s say we develop a car which achieves 20% better fuel consumption. While the car is now more fuel-friendly, increased demand may see another 20% increase in the number of cars put on the road in the same period. The energy consumption will still end up being higher. We still lose by trying to play catching up.

So why are we spending so much energy (and money is energy) on reactive measures? Should we not be putting our money at solving the root of the problem and creating complete solutions? That is, to develop and use clean energies that will eliminate pollutions instead of fighting pollutions.

As it is today, the proportions of funds put into researching clean energies and the number of such projects are way less than projects on saving energy. The general public is increasingly aware of the energy issues thanks to media coverage like television, newspapers and magazines. Governments and NGOs are also busy running campaigns on cutting energy consumptions. All these create awareness and it is a good thing. Yet how much media coverage or actual efforts are on developing clean energies that will eliminate the depletion and pollution problems once and for all.

If we flow and work with nature, everything is pretty much sustainable.

On the other hand, the oil producers obviously do not want you and me to use clean energy until they can make all the money from oil while they can. But we are really allowing them to do so ourselves by taking reactive measures. Do you see from my earlier example that saving energy makes no difference to oil producers as long as there are more goods put out into the markets that require oil to power them? We are only slowing our demise if there should ever be one.

I believe the universe is full of abundance, including any energy sources we need to power our fantasies. Why can’t we have our cake and eat it too? I don’t believe we created earth to be a limited planet, such that we can only live on it for a limited period. If we flow and work with nature, everything is pretty much sustainable.

A recent message from Kryon (channeled by Lee Carroll) has reminded us of free energies already available that do not create any pollution. One source is tidal energy and another is underground thermal energy. Both are freely abundant and very clean energy sources. Kryon mentioned that tidal energy technology is already viable and three plants are already operating in the northern hemispheres. I did a quick check on the internet and there are indeed some projects going on in the world, a few commercially. One webpage is at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tidal_power, outlining several projects in Italy, England and Canada.

Inspired by Kryon, I had written an email 3 years ago (in 2005) to one of Singaporeâ€™s government ministries to suggest that they explore into tidal and underground thermal energy. To my surprise, I actually received an email reply that was copied to several people from the ministry, including some department heads. I was pleasantly surprised by how I was taken seriously but the reply itself led nowhere. They thanked me for the suggestion but simply said the technologies were not viable. Perhaps they should take a look at the current projects going on and some of them apparently started from 2001.

Interestingly, Singapore is one of the leading countries in alternative water technology with a successful waste-water recycling plant that produce drinkable water from waste water. Yes, I had tasted it myself before. One listed company, Hyflux, is now a multi-national company working on various water projects around the world, helping other countries to cope with water shortages.

In this scenario, Singapore does not have enough drinking water and is forced to buy fresh water from our neighbor, Malaysia, yet we face the daunting prospect of the tap being turned off if relations should ever sour. Given the immense pressure from the shortage of water, Singapore has no choice but to put in the money and embarked on developing alternative water sources, hoping to achieve self-sufficiency in the long run.

Likewise, it seems that our planet is going to be pushed to the brim of this energy crisis before we finally get our act together and put our full focus on researching and developing clean energy sources.

We could make this transition smoother and easier if we start focusing our energies on developing clean energies now.

Like what Kryon said, if there are those of you who are far-sighted and have the deep pockets, itâ€™s probably very wise to invest your money in these clean energy technologies. It is probably still very new and there could be many issues to iron out. But are we going to wait until the oil hits US$200 per barrel or when oil starts to run out before we start doing anything?

Look at the automobile, computer, mobile phone and internet industries and see how fast they grow. If humanity is willing to join forces and focus our energies on developing clean energies, we can solve the energy crisis and pollution problems in no time.

Let me end by quoting Kryon:

Did anyone ever ask Spirit, “Why do we have a moon?” I’ll tell you why: So that you could power your cities!

This is from my monthly column at Cosmic Lighthouse Metaphysics Magazine

September 4, 2008

Time for Clean Energy

Leave a Reply

blog