Avoiding the Extinction of Humanity: A Practical Plan

By John M. Goodman

If you are driving off a cliff, someone telling you to slow down isn't much of a help. (Well, slowing down while you turn in a new direction is likely to be a good idea.) By burning fossil fuels, humanity is now driving itself off a climate cliff toward extinction. We need to completely stop burning "stuff" (fossil fuels, or anything else) for ene

• Language: English
• Publisher: Waterfront Digital Press
• Release date: May 22, 2014
• ISBN: 9781939116864

Book preview

How This Book is Organized

I have divided this book into six main parts. Here is a brief summary of those parts.

The first explains why humans need so much energy, how we get it, why this is driving our global climate, and why none of the proposed solutions to this problem is sufficient.

The second section describes the super-tall trestles I am proposing that we build. It also tell you why I think we can do that, even though I do not know, at this point, exactly how we will do it.

The third section describes the new global solar power generation and distribution system. Here you will learn why it will be so much more effective than ground-based solar power.

The fourth section describes the transportation system in enough detail that you’ll be able to visualize how it will be able to carry both cargo and passengers so quickly and inexpensively.

The fifth section show how a clever use of the solar power system can also let us directly control our global climate—and even modify how sunlight power is distributed over the globe, possibly letting us minimize the extreme weather our current global climate is producing.

The sixth section provides some additional thoughts and a summary.

Before you plunge into one of these parts, I thought you might want to know a bit more about who I am and how I came to write this book. (My more formal biography is at the end of this book.)

John Merry bow tie (smiling) 400x500

A Personal Note

Who, you might wonder, is making these audacious suggestions? Let me introduce myself.

I am not a climatologist (that is a scientist who has specialized in studying the science of climate history and change). I was trained as a physicist. Specifically, I got my B.A. in Physics from Swarthmore College, and my Ph.D. from Cornell University with a major in Experimental Physics, with minors in Theoretical Physics and the History of Science and Technology. My thesis research was in low-temperature solid-state physics. I’ve always been interested in learning for myself as much as I could about almost any branch of science or technology, a trait that has, as it happens, helped me be pretty good at what I have spent most of my life doing.

I have not, primarily, been a research scientist—working to extend scientific knowledge. Instead, I have been primarily a teacher—helping others understand what scientists and engineers have accomplished and what is still unknown, and perhaps helping them realize where we should be focusing our attention and efforts.

I’ve had over five decades of teaching experience in many different venues. I’ve been a classroom teacher at various colleges and universities, a high school, and several proprietary schools, and for several years I was a course director and taught multi-day classes on the road for a technical seminar company. Some less obvious teaching roles have included being a consultant to various small to medium-sized businesses, being the founder, exhibit designer, and Executive Director of an interactive science museum, and being the author of seven books explaining how personal computers work.

I never set out to study climate change or to write a book about our impending self-caused extinction. That was the accidental result of something very different. It began when I asked myself a question and then began to do research to see if I could find an answer.

My journey began with my personal desire to enjoy the experience of space travel. I know that I’ll never do it the way it is now being done. I’m too unfit, and not nearly wealthy enough. So I wondered if there might be a way to do space travel differently. A way that would let anyone experience that sort of adventure, without having to be particularly fit or wealthy.

I came up with an answer—a way that could, I believe, be built and provide just that sort of experience at a very modest cost (to be more precise, a very modest marginal cost). [The marginal cost means the cost for each additional person’s travel, as opposed the capital cost to create the system in the first place.] However, I realized that creating this system would be so hugely expensive that I doubted there would be enough market for its services to motivate anyone to build it.

Then I realized something: This innovation would have many other, much more valuable uses. To begin with, it would revolutionize long distance travel. Maybe that would make it more attractive to investors.

I also knew that this system would need a lot of energy, so I looked into how that might be supplied. I found a way to do that and this turned out to be even more revolutionary in its potential impact. We could get all of the energy that all of humanity could possibly use for any purpose from the sun nearly for free, once the system itself was built.

Further, I realized that if we could do that, moving away from fossil fuels to this alternative energy source would be a no-brainer. Instead of trying to get people to sacrifice and pay more to be green, this would let us all feel good about how much money we were saving even as we felt good about not doing bad things to our environment.

So I began to study the impact of burning fossil fuels for energy, which is how we now get over 90% of our energy. And what I learned scared me!

Along the way I also learned a lot about how our world population has grown—and is still growing—and how it might be curbed, plus about some other population-related problems that some countries are now facing (and many more will soon be facing) when dealing with a declining population. I realized that the same innovation I came up with that can save us from extinction, and give us free energy, and more could also help relieve all of these population-related problems as well. That is the subject of a companion book I’m calling Multiple Population-Related Problems and a Surprisingly Graceful Solution.³

I wrote this book because I believe we are in serious trouble and what I’ve imagined—expensive and difficult as it will be to create—may just be the most practical solution we can find to our present problems.

A Peek at Our Possible New Future

One morning, in Los Angeles, in California, in the United States of America, a young man named Glen and his wife of only three years, Peggy, are having breakfast. Glen excitedly says to Peggy, Honey, I took off work today. I want to do something special with you. She’s interested, so he goes on, I thought we might like to go to dinner and take in a show in Paris, France tonight.

Can we afford that?

Easily. I was looking around online last night, and I figured it all out. We can travel to Paris and back for less than it costs for dinner there and the show. However, if we want to do it today, we’ll have to leave soon. After all, it is already early afternoon there. ⁴

Okay, I guess. What’ll I wear?

Better dress up. After all, we’re going to go out on the town—and not just any town. We’re going to Paris!

Glen spends the next few minutes online securing reservations (with a total trip cost that really is less than the cost of their dinner and the show they’ll be seeing), while Peggy gets ready. Finally, shortly after 8AM, they go to their neighborhood transportation center. There they get into a special train car with perhaps a couple of dozen other folks, all of whom are also going to Paris, France.

This train car is unlike the commuter train Glen normally takes to work. This one is set up more like an old-fashioned parlor car. Instead of rows of seats—which Glen thinks of as pews, like in their church—this one has several conversational groupings of chairs. Some are around small tables; others have a low coffee table in the middle; yet others are just high-backed wing chairs for folks who want some privacy as they read. The car has no windows, but it does have several large view screens which will mostly show what one would see if you looked out a window in that location: on either side, at the front and rear of the car, or up at the ceiling. There is even one in the floor—currently showing the track beneath the train.

Everyone settles in.

The train door is closed and locked. From the view on the screens the passengers can see that the train is moving. A steward asks if anyone would like a beverage, and then provides whatever people request.

After awhile, Glen notices a group of men around a card table across the car from them drinking and playing cards. They are speaking French. He asks his wife, Honey, who do you think those men are?

She replies, I’m not sure. Let’s ask the steward.

They beckon to the steward who comes over to them and asks, Is there something I can do for you?

Yes. We’re wondering who those men are over there. With their ties pulled down and their jackets off, drinking beers, they look like they are businessmen at the end of a work day—but it isn’t even 9AM.

"Oh, yes. I know them well. They are regulars on this run, and it is nearly the end of their work day. They are salesmen for a huge multinational corporation. They come to Los Angeles once a month for an early morning meeting with their fellow salesmen from all around the globe. LA is a convenient place for these meetings.

When these men left Paris earlier today it was early afternoon their time. Likewise for their colleagues from London and all over Europe and Africa. Their colleagues from our East Coast as well as ones from various places in South America, including Buenos Aires, Argentina and Rio de Janeiro, Brazil left home for this meeting a little after their normal breakfast time. Their Los-Angeles based colleagues merely had to get up a bit earlier than usual. The representatives from India had to leave home after dinner (today!), while the ones from Moscow left in mid-afternoon (today). The only hardship cases came from East Asia (including China and  Japan) or from Australia. They had to leave their homes in mid-evening today to make it here for a 6:30AM (Los Angeles time) meeting