Originally published April 24 2009
Free Energy Technology Could Destroy the Natural World (But It Doesn't Have To)
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
(NaturalNews) As the editor of NaturalNews, I've long been a proponent of free energy technologies and research. I've written about the reality of cold fusion for more than ten years, braving the incessant whining of ignorant scientists who said it was all a hoax, year after year, right up until the U.S. Navy recently announced its own cold fusion breakthroughs.
But in the world of free energy, cold fusion is where things are just warming up. The really interesting stuff is more in the realm of zero point energy -- tapping the vast stores of pure energy woven into the fabric of reality, even absent any physical matter whatsoever.
There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that free energy research has been blocked, discredited and suppressed by an organized cabal of fossil fuel pushers, but that's a different story altogether. This story is about something more pressing: What happens if we succeed in commercializing free energy technology?
Can Mr. Fusion become a reality?
There are many good candidates for free energy technologies that could be commercialized and sold for a few thousand dollars per household. Theoretically, such a device would be installed in a home (or office) and simply channel electricity day after day, year after year, with no moving parts and without ever using up its energy source.
Note, carefully, that this does not by definition violate any laws of physics. These devices aren't creating energy from nothing; they're simply channel energy from one form to another, much like solar panels do.
The pop-culture rendition of this concept is the "Mr. Fusion" machine in the Back to the Future movie series: Feed it banana peels and you get enormous amounts of energy along the lines of Einstein's famous equation: E = MC2.
That's a lot of juice from banana peels.
Let's leapfrog past the question of whether a Mr. Fusion type of device can actually be commercialized and go right to the larger issues here: What happens if Mr. Fusion machines could be purchased for a few thousand bucks?
I say that unless something radical changes in the ethics and behavior of humankind, such an invention would result in the near-complete destruction of nature and the eventual collapse of human civilization.
Why? Read on, dear friends...
Cheap energy unleashes a population bubble
Think about how we got where we are right now: We live on an over-populated planet that's been over-developed, mined, exploited, polluted and devastated by the sudden presence of a ballooning human population. In the year 1750, the world population was around 800 million. By 2050, it's estimated to reach nearly nine billion people -- a growth rate of over 1000% in just three centuries (the blink of an eye in terms of planetary history). (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_populatio...)
How was this population growth made possible? Cheap energy.
Yep: Cheap energy is what made the industrial revolution possible -- and with it came cheap food and an ensuing population bubble. The discovery and harnessing of fossil fuels resulted in the most astonishing population boom our planet has ever seen. Along with it, of course, came the organized destruction of nature. All those people have to live somewhere, after all. Their food has to be grown somewhere; their home construction materials have to be harvested from somewhere; and they have to poop somewhere, too. As the population bubble was fueled by cheap energy (fossil fuels), so did the destruction of nature and the paving over of our natural world.
Cheap energy gave us mechanized agriculture, low-cost ocean fishing and affordable ways to level mountains, dig canals and engage in serious terraforming activities (like the construction of the Hoover Dam or the Panama Canal).
And yet there is a limit to all this. It's a limit imposed by the practical costs of drilling and refining fossil fuels. There's also a limit to how much fossil fuel is contained in the Earth (peak oil is upon us). As a result of these real-world limits, there are mountains that cannot be profitably turned into condos. There is beach front property that cannot be profitably transformed into vacation resorts. Mother Nature benefits from a margin of safety simply because further destruction is beyond the economic reach of developers.
Free energy would eliminate those barriers. With essentially free energy powering a new generation of electric cars, trucks, planes and earth-moving equipment (with their Mr. Fusion devices on board), there is no longer any natural barrier to property development. Electric-powered personal aircraft would become practical and affordable, allowing the commercialization of previously remote sites. Even the paving of new roads and railways becomes remarkably cheap when energy costs nothing.
Free energy could unleash the most drastic population explosion and development boom ever seen on our planet. And the result, I fear, would be the near-complete destruction of our natural world.
This is the pessimistic side of the free energy story. But there's another side...
Look on the bright side
On the bright side of this equation, free energy would allow the global reclamation of deserts, turning them into oasis farmlands with lush natural life. How is this possible? Through free energy powered desalination of ocean water.
If energy is essentially free, processing ocean water into fresh water and pumping it into deserts for agriculture, reforestation or property development is dirt cheap. Suddenly, you could see the world's deserts being reforested with the help of free energy technology.
At the same time, all this new farmland would actually contribute to the population problem by creating new sources of cheap food. The food bubble, in other words, would grow even larger, and the population densities of the cities would increase substantially.
Then again, if energy is really free, we could shut down the world's coal-fired power plants, essentially ending the carbon emissions that now threaten the planet with global warming. This would directly reduce the carbon footprint associated with energy use, indirectly increasing the carrying capacity of the planet.
Stated another way, if energy is clean and (nearly) free, then the planet can probably handle a larger population.
Free energy could also replace all the nuclear power plants in the world, eliminating both nuclear waste and the potential for nuclear reactor disasters. It could even replace the electricity generated from hydroelectric dams, which were once thought to produce "clean" energy but in reality have proven to be ecological disasters.
So there is a potential bright side to free energy. But how do we know whether such technologies will be used to create rather than destroy?
What's lacking: Ethics
The human race has not yet achieved the level of consciousness and ethics that would seem to be prerequisites for the handling of such powerful technologies. Free energy is no toy -- it is a planet-changing technology that could be used for either tremendous good or endless evil. It all depends on the intentions and self-imposed limitations of those who use the technology.
This point has not been missed by free energy inventors. One inventor in a remote village says his device already powers the entire village, but he refuses to release it to the world for precisely the reasons I've mentioned here: The world isn't ready for such advanced technologies. Humans didn't do too well handling fossil fuels, after all. Handing them even bigger toys to play with might be disastrous...
Another potential concern is that free energy might not really be free. Perhaps a zero point energy device appears to produce energy from nothing, but maybe a million light years away some star is winking out of existence because the zero point device is somehow sapping its energy and tunneling it across the universe to power your personal helicopter.
Even if humans can invent free energy devices, it's no guarantee we understand the ramifications of using them. This is the story of fossil fuels, after all: Cheap energy colliding with poor planning. Oil seemed endless for a while, and the environment seemed fine for a while, too. But now that we've come to realize how the burning of fossil fuels is destroying our future, it's too late to undo the damage.
Furthermore, the availability of cheap energy in the form of fossil fuels has taught the citizens of advanced nations to be extremely wasteful. Even cheaper "free" energy would terminate any efforts to teach energy conservation, resulting in a world of wasteful energy consumers who think nothing of leaving the electric car running all night just so the heater works in the morning without any warm-up delay (as an example).
Making energy free means there is essentially no cost to wasting it. So why not build homes without insulation and use free energy to run all the air conditioners? Why not populate the oceans with cruise ships powered by large-scale free-energy devices? There's no limit to the waste when energy is essentially free.
Humans are not yet ready for free energy
I agree that free energy sounds like a panacea, especially at first glance. Replace the coal-fired power plants and ditch gasoline vehicles for quiet, clean electric vehicles! Sounds great, right? But once you look more closely at the root cause of the current human population bubble -- and the destruction of nature we've caused in the last century -- it becomes obvious that unless humanity suddenly gains a whole new set of ethics, the introduction of free energy technology could be disastrous for the future of human civilization.
The fact that energy actually costs something right now is, in effect, putting the brakes on many of the activities of human beings. So it acts like a natural limiter of development and population. Lifting that cost and making energy "free" would unleash a whole new era of population growth and destructive exploitation of nature.
I believe human beings may be ready for free energy someday, and without question certain individuals or communities may have the wisdom to use these technologies wisely right now, but in no way is the human population as a whole ready to be handed this technology. For the most part, humans are a race of narrow-minded, short-sighted infants who have proven themselves incapable of long-term planning or even respecting life on the planet. Before humans are given free energy, they need to demonstrate the responsible use of existing resources and technologies, and sadly, humans are far from that.
Virtually all major technological advances on planet Earth have been motivated by WAR. Nuclear physics? It was all about war. Space exploration? It was about war, too. Exploring the oceans? War. Microbiology advances? War. Robotics? War. Solar technology? The U.S. military is the largest customer of solar tech. Even the Internet was originally developed as an information grid designed to send military messages during a nuclear attack.
Human beings have proven themselves to be preoccupied with war, profit and self destruction. Given such traits, the very last thing humans need right now is breakthrough energy technology that produces endless energy at virtually zero cost.
Handing this over to human beings now would be like giving a child a set of big red buttons for launching nuclear missiles.
What could be a possible solution for all this? An energy device that only works in conjunction with high-vibration intention from open-hearted individuals. If a device could amplify positive human intention into cheap energy -- while not working at all for those with dark hearts -- it could change everything for the positive. Love, after all, is the highest vibratory energy in the universe. It's not beyond imagination that love might someday be tapped as a conduit for clean, renewable electromagnetic energy. Need to recharge your laptop computer? Just send it some love!
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