Building the Grail Castles

The knights of Camelot once rode out in quest of the Holy Grail and created the mythical legends that have inspired many generations. In our troubled times, when we look around the World and see so many problems, is there a Holy Grail that modern knights could ride out in quest of?

In the 1970s ecologists, including Charles Birch in Australia, searched for an environmental Holy Grail that they described as an ecologically sustainable society living a globally equitable lifestyle. In essence, this view looks toward every person being able to enjoy a healthy life, if we wish to achieve a healthy Earth.

Unfortunately, the dual ideal of sustainability and equity has continued to elude humanity, as poverty is now entrenched around the World and the Earth’s health is degrading on all fronts. A healthy life with a healthy Earth may be the way to peace on Earth, but this also appears to be a mirage, as the state of the World worsens.

In more recent times the economist Nicholas Stern has made a similar assertion to Birch, connecting climate change with global poverty and claiming that one will not be fixed without solving the other, that both must be addressed together. With our space age environmental knights now confronting the dragon of climate change, the Holy Grail of a solution continues to remain illusive, as national governments cannot agree on effective pathways to solutions that will defeat the carbon dragon and save the Earth.

James Lovelock, the author of the Gaia theory, is concerned that our planet’s fragile life-support systems are being damaged and because our star is now 25 per cent hotter than at the dawn of life 3.5 billion years ago, he warns that Gaia could swiftly shift to a permanently hotter environment that would be hostile to Life and human society (Lovelock, p.108). The leading climate scientist James Hansen, head of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, warns that the Earth could die and plunge toward becoming a second Venus, where there is no water and the rocks glow in the Venusian heat (Hansen, pp.223-236).

The 2010 report by the World Wildlife Fund describes how we are now living so far beyond our means that we need more than 1.5 Earths to keep our heads above water and this is ballooning toward 2 Earths by 2030. Like so many vampire bats latched onto a cow, we are slowly sucking the life from Nature and as a consequence, we are already causing the sixth great extinction of life on this planet.

Hansen concluded that we need to get carbon dioxide (CO2) in the air below 350 parts per million (ppm) to keep a safe planet. The CO2 level is now approaching 400ppm and is set to skyrocket from an increasing volume of human caused emissions, as well as releases from a fast warming Arctic region, where the permafrost is melting away and the methane clathrates on the ocean floor are beginning to dissolve.

Perfect Storm

Many writers now describe our multiple problems as gathering toward a perfect storm of catastrophes and that 2020 could be a problem year, or sooner, especially with an energy crisis as oil gets harder to find. We may now wonder, is there any way that we could have avoided our present predicament and such a dark future, where conflicts that result could all too easily slide into nuclear madness.

During the years of the Cold War, as the space race was reaching toward the Moon in 1968, Dr Peter Glaser proposed that solar power stations be built in space, accessing the unlimited energy-well of the Sun beyond the atmosphere, where the Sun never sets and the radiant energy is much stronger. In the same year Apollo astronauts photographed the Earth rising above the Moon’s horizon, capturing an image of our emerald Earth as if it were a ship sailing through the velvet void of space, an image that inspired a new wave of environmental vigour on Earth.

We reached out to the Sun and stepped onto the Moon, but unfortunately, we drilled down into the belly of the Earth for energy and released the poison of dead life, which is now presenting a threat to our survival. Professor Gerard K. O’Neill adopted Glaser’s vision with his proposals for industry and human settlement in space and wrote in his 1977 book ‘The High Frontier’, “If this development comes to pass, we will find ourselves here on Earth with a clean energy source, and we will further improve our environment by saving, each year, over a billion tons of fossil fuels,” (p.162).

Though an organisation inspired by O’Neill’s vision, called the L5 Society, attracted 10,000 would-be space settlers, it was not enough to deliver the construction of solar power stations in space. Now we pay the price for our lack of vision, by running the gauntlet of losing the lot on an Earth going mad in its death-throws, a damsel planet in distress held captive by the black-hearted carbon dragon that we have released from the belly of the Earth and that grows ever larger year by year.

In the 1970s humanity was still a sustainable presence on Earth and if we had drilled up to the Sun for our energy, we could have kept a safe Earth and offered a healthy life for all Earth’s children indefinitely. What would our World be like now if we had reached to the Sun and begun building a strong foundation for a Solar Civilization that would last as long as the Sun shines?

With solar power stations in space, we would have launched industry beyond Earth to make any product for Earth and space markets. It is a simple observation that a line could have been reached in space development by now, where there would be no further real cost to Earth, where all further space development would be essentially free and the return on the investment to Earth would be infinite.

Liberty Line

This line can be described as the Liberty Line, where the immense cost of space development would be fully covered by the long-term benefits. The Solar economy that connects with the Liberty Line would also be in a physical position the send poverty into history, permanently and deliver a healthy life with unlimited creative opportunities for all Earth’s children.

Are we too late to act now on this future, which we so willingly waltzed out of in the 1970s, preferring wars like Vietnam and armaments of insanity with nuclear weapons? If we had made the transition from an Earth-based house-of-cards carbon economy to a Solar Civilization with unlimited access to stellar energy, we could have built a strong Solar economy that would last as long as the Sun shines.

It was as if Nature was pregnant and ready to give birth to the expansion of life beyond Earth, but we blocked the birth canal and have now endangered the life of our Mother, the Earth and by implication, our own survival. With recent advances in Earth-based solar power generation, it is possible that we could supply enough energy for our needs, but this will not be enough to deal with the crisis that we have caused on this Earth by releasing the carbon dragon.

We are now in a race against the clock for survival and with every minute passing the fate of life and of the future of Earth’s children hangs on a thread. To save the Earth and also ourselves, we must now drill up to the Sun to access the unlimited energy-well of our star and mine excess carbon from the air as a resource.

With this energy we can also desalinate any volume of ocean water and pump this liquid gold to any location where people will need energy and water to survive and keep cool. We will also have the energy to build our way through any dangerous Earth change that may happen.

Survival in a dangerous future on Earth may demand that we live on Earth more as if we were living in space, if warming oceans, growing dead zones and acidification cause the sea to start dying, where algal blooms could release toxic hydrogen sulphide into the air, which can kill life on land and destroy the ozone layer. If we act swiftly, we may avoid the worst that could happen, but much will be lost as many species of life become extinct each hour and ecosystems are destroyed.

Our pregnant Mother Earth is now in a breech birth emergency and radical surgery is required to achieve a safe delivery and return Nature to a healthy condition. With political arguments avoiding practical action on a scale that will save the Earth, the death-waltz continues and we face a problem, a global state of emergency, which defies all normal solutions.

All institutions, all politicians and all environmental organisations have totally failed to keep the Earth safe and now the children of the Earth must face the price of this total failure. Albert Einstein once said, “You cannot solve a problem from the same consciousness that created it; you must learn to see the world anew.”

Rather than stubbornly continuing the death-waltz that has led the whole world into the swamp of carbon sludge, we must lift our game and find new ways to deal with our problems on Earth. The time for polite debate has now long past, as the hour demands people of action who will rise to the challenge to create a new world.

When we awaken to the truth that the long sought environmental Holy Grail is the Sun, then we may begin to see the Grail Castle that we seek, is the building of solar power stations in space, accessing the unlimited energy-well of our star. No government is seriously moving in this direction, but if individuals within nations awaken to the power with a shared vision for survival, they could by their collective action roll the world over.

A nation like Australia could lead the way to a safe future on Earth, by investing the current resource bonanza into delivering the energy to build a stronger future for the lucky country. Australia could build partnerships with many nations, such as South Africa, India and Chile, to construct this bridge into space and open the way to a whole new chapter in human history.

A movement of people at the grass roots of society, created by individuals who can see the problem and also what the solution must be, could change history, save the Earth and deliver an amazing future for all Earth’s children. By direct action, the people of the Earth could open the way to build those missing solar power stations in space, as the essential insurance policy that we cannot afford to live on Earth without.

It would only take ten keen and determined people to start a movement that would change the world and save the Earth, through the strength of their unity and the speed of shared trust. If ten people could be that effective from the grass roots, imagine what a movement of 10 million empowered and determined people could achieve.

This new generation of Grail knights could ride out to save the damsel planet, by riding hard for the construction of the Grail Castles in space that will be used to rescue the Earth and open the way across the Solar System and to the stars. In this way we could win back a safe Earth, send poverty into history and in the process look toward achieving that long-held dream of peace on Earth.

Kim Peart
island Earth

Save.islandEarth@gmail.com

“We are deeply impressed by the power of our weapons, yet they are puny compared to the most powerful weapon of all; creative intelligence,” James Lovelock, 2009

“We can no longer expect Mother Earth to take care of us – the planet is ours to run and we can’t retreat from our responsibility to run it wisely.” Wally Broecker, 2008

“If you think the problem is out there, that very thought is the problem.” Stephen M. R. Covey, 2006

“We believe that people with passion can change the world for the better.” Steve Jobs, 1997

“You cannot solve a problem from the same consciousness that created it. You must learn to see the world anew.” Albert Einstein

“Even ten persons who adhere firmly to truth can save the world.” Sathya Sai Baba, 1996

“Those that fail to learn from history, are doomed to repeat it.” Winston Churchill

References:

‘Storms of My Grandchildren’ by James Hansen, 2010
‘The Vanishing Face of Gaia’ by James Lovelock, 2009
‘A Blueprint for a Safer Planet’ by Nicholas Stern, 2009
‘The High Frontier’ by Gerard K. O’Neill, 1977
‘Confronting the Future’ by Charles Birch, 1975