Some Problems Cannot Be Avoided

The Yellowstone Caldera

But The Economic Collapse and the Chemical Contamination of the USA and Spaceship Earth Never Needed to Happen

Note that as the National Debt increased exponentially from 1940, the value of the U.S. Dollar was decreased accordingly by private bankers in the Federal Reserve.

The Chemical Contamination Problem

According to the National Academy of Sciences Oil in the Sea Report, the vast majority of oil in the oceans does not come from accidents, but simply using the oil.

One thing example of something that has been growing exponentially for the past 100 years is the production of long-lived toxic chemicals.  Humanity has increasingly become unnecessarily dependent on using oil, coal, natural gas and other highly-toxic and rapidly diminishing fossil and nuclear fuels, which have staggering environmental and health care costs associated with their extraction, refining, transportation, storage and end-use as a fuel or other chemicals, such as plastics or pesticides.   If such costs were factored into the costs of such fuels, which is what a Fair Accounting Act amendment would accomplish, no one could afford to use such fuels because it would be far less expensive to simply use electricity to extract hydrogen from water. 

While the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010 is estimated to have released some 200 million gallons into the sea, according to the "Oil in the Sea" report by the National Academy of Sciences, the Gulf oil spill is dwarfed by the over 1 trillion gallons of oil that is released each year worldwide, which does not come from accidents, but from simply using the oil as fuel, lubricants, pesticides and a wide-range of other long-lived highly toxic chemicals that we now know have contaminated virtually every organ of every person not only in the USA, but worldwide. 

Over 3 billion pounds of carbon dioxide are generated each day in the U.S., which will stay in the Earth's atmosphere for 3,000 years.  This underscores the warnings of scientists that the 6th mass-extinction event in the Earth’s 4.5 billion year old history is already well underway, and humanity is now passing a “tipping-point” of no return in terms of making the Earth uninhabitable.  This is like a car accelerating towards a cliff, after a certain point it will no longer matter what the driver does because even with all of the wheels locked, the momentum will still propel the vehicle over the cliff. 

According to Time magazine (April 12, 2010), over 21 million tons of unregulated toxic chemicals are being produced or imported each day in the U.S., which have contaminated the air, water, food, causing these poisons to be accumulated into the tissue of every American citizen.

Dr. Sunjay Gupta
CNN's Chief Medical Correspondent

According a "Toxic America" documentary aired on CNN, Dr. Sunjay Gupta, a neurosurgeon who is CNN's Chief Medical Correspondent, reported that over 85,000 of the most toxic chemicals known, including thousands of different types of pesticides and herbicides, were excluded from oversight and testing by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), because the chemical industry lobbyists made sure that such chemicals would be excluded from review from the general public or any governmental scientists.  Lisa Jackson, the current Director of EPA, acknowledged this harsh reality in her interview with Dr. Gupta.  Similar large-scale cover-ups have also occurred over many decades with the nuclear industrial complex. 

While there are those who argue that private corporations, who are only interested in maximizing short term profits and have no accountability to the public do not need to be regulated, the reality is that such mindless policies have allowed virtually every American citizen to be seriously contaminated.  Indeed, according to a laboratory reports by the Environmental Working Group, which were published in Reuters (July 14, 2005), based on tests of umbilical cord blood taken from pregnant women by the American Red Cross, they found an average of 287 highly-toxic chemical and radiological contaminants in the mothers blood, including mercury, benzene, and pesticides, which no doubt account for the epidemic of Autism, Alzheimer, cancer, heart disease diabetes, and a wide range of other health disorders that are affecting millions of Americans, and costing trillions of dollars in unnecessary health care costs.

Virtually no one has yet explained why there is now an epidemic of nervous system disorders, including Autism and Alzheimers, yet the highly toxic chlorinated hydrocarbon structure of pesticides and herbicides such as DDT, which is as deadly in attacking the nervous systems of insects today as when it was sprayed 80 years ago, but unlike 80 years ago, DDT and the billions of tons of other pesticides that have been sprayed since then have diffused throughout the plant kingdom.  When animals consume the plants, they concentrate the poisons thousands of times, which then provide a highly concentrated dose to the humans and other animals that consume animal products.  The fact that pesticides are now in the umbilical cord blood of women would certainly explain the Autism, as well as the Alzheimers, which is now destroying the lives and families of millions of people. 

It is important to note that it is not just American's who have been contaminated, but similar blood tests in bears, fish, birds and other animals in the Arctic have shown similar pesticides and other toxic industrial chemical contamination, which is a dramatic example of the physics process called "diffusion," which is what happens when cream is poured onto a cup of coffee, or toxic chemicals are allowed to be dispersed into the Earth's winds and waters.

Radioactive Contamination

Remarkable insights have been provided by a number of physicians, including John Gofman, a Professor of Medicine who served as the Director of Medical Research for the Atomic Energy Commission.

Professor John Gofman, M.D., Ph.D

John Gofman received his Ph.D in nuclear and physical chemistry, and after Medical School, he was Professor of Molecular and Cell Biology in the University of California at Berkeley, Department of Medicine.  He is the author of several books and more than a hundred scientific papers in peer-review journals in the fields of nuclear and physical chemistry, coronary heart disease, ultracentrifugal analysis of the serum lipoproteins, the relationship of human chromosomes to cancer, and the biological effects of radiation, with especial reference to causation of cancer and hereditary injury. 

While a graduate student at Berkeley, Gofman co-discovered protactinium-232, uranium-232, protactinium-233, and uranium-233, and proved the slow and fast neutron fissionability of U-233.  Post-doctorally, he continued work related to the chemistry of plutonium and the atomic bomb development. At that early period, less than a quarter of a milligram of plutonium-239 existed, but a half-milligram was urgently needed for physical measurements in the Manhattan Project. At the request of J. Robert Oppenheimer, Gofman and Robert Connick irradiated a ton of uranyl nitrate by placing it around the Berkeley cyclotron reactor (to capture neutrons), for a total exposure period of six weeks, in order to produce half cc of liquid containing 1.2 milligrams of plutonium.  After the plutonium work, Gofman completed medical school, and in 1947, he began his research on coronary heart disease and in 1959 his principal book that summarized his research, Coronary Heart Disease, was published.

In the early 1960s, the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) asked Gofman if he would establish a Biomedical Research Division at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, for the purpose of evaluating the health effects of all types of nuclear activities.  He agreed, and from 1963-1965, he served as the division's first director, concurrently with service as an Associate Director of the Laboratory for Biomedicine.  Some of Gofman's other books included the following:

      1.    Radiation And Human Health, 908 pages (1981).
      2.    X-Rays: Health Effects of Common Exams (with Egan O'Connor), 439 pages (1985).
      3.    Radiation-Induced Cancer From Low-Dose Exposure:
                                 A Independent Analysis, 480 pages (1990).
      4.    Chernobyl Accident: Radiation Consequences for This and Future Generations,
                                 574 pages (1994).

According to Gofman, the process of diffusion has been dramatically demonstrated by the fact that  virtually every organ of every person and other animal on the surface of the Earth has been contaminated with a wide-spectrum of radiological poisons, including isotopes like Uranium 238 that has a half life of 4.5 billion years.  Professor Gofman testified that based on his many decades of medical research, there is no safe level of exposure to X-rays or the emissions from radiological isotopes, and based on the medical data complied by he and his colleagues, approximately 75% of the breast cancers in women were actually caused by the millions of unnecessary medical  X-rays that are given annually on a fee for service (i.e., commission) basis, and millions of additional X-rays are given annually with virtually no oversight in dental offices. 

Instead of protecting the American people from such invisible poisons, the federal government has worked to protect the nuclear industry and its profits by assuring the lay public that such exposure is essentially harmless.  Indeed, according to a report published in The New York Times (March 28, 2010), urgent warnings by government radiation experts that CT scans were delivering the radiation equivalent of 400 chest X-rays were ignored by FDA officials.  An estimated 70 million CT scans are now performed in the U.S. annually, compared to only 3 million in the 1980s.  The patients understandably have to rely on their doctors, who because they work on commission, typically endorse positions that are in their economic self-interest. 

An Obvious Conflict of Interest

While many people assume that doctors are not influenced by money, such assumptions are foolish at best, and at worse, they ignore the reality that such financial incentives cause acute pain, disease and death for millions of people in order to maximize their return on investment for a $250,000 X-ray "cone beam CT" scanner, which can emit anywhere from 4 to 67 times more radiation than conventional X-rays.  As a New York Times investigative report Nov. 23, 2010) documented, a Dr. Edward Y. Lin runs advertisements proclaiming "I use my i-Cat for everything," and according to  orthodontist Dr. Terry Selilke, "Kids just love to see that 3-D image." The fact that children are especially suspectable to X-rays is of no concern to these profit-oriented doctors.  And if the X-rays do cause cancer in the patents, the income to the doctor goes up exponentially, which is why it is absurd to have a medical system based on such a commission system.

Indeed, according to another New York Times news report (November 30, 2010) even professors of medicine are not immune to financial bribery.  Specifically, two prominent professors, Dr. Charles B. Nemeroff, chairman of psychiatry at the Miami Medical School and Dr. Alan F.  Schatzberg, chairman of psychiatry at the Stanford University School of Medicine were discovered to have allowed a major pharmaceutical company, SmithKline Beecham, to essentially write the book that appeared to have been written by the two distinguished professors of medicine.  This underscores the view that honor dies where interest lies, and one's profession does not seem to alter a fundamental aspect of human behavior: greed.  

Gofman, who never accepted industry money, points out that the molecular damage from X-rays, nuclear pollution, and other sources of ionizing radiation is especially complex.  Kenneth and David Brower characterized the biological impact of radiation as well as anyone in an article they wrote called Miracle Earth:   "Life is adrift in a sea of radiation, as the makers of the artificial kind are apt to point out . . .   Yet on Earth, life has found something like a back-water.  Here life is protected from the full force of the cosmic stream by the planet's atmosphere; here life tolerates the weaker radiations from the planetary crust, but the margins within which life operates are small, and the tolerances are fine.  There is no question who the enemy is, our first and oldest.  If the universe is hostile to life, there is no better expression of that hostility than the radioactive particle.  The Four Horseman are secondary enemies, at a less basic level of organization.  The radioactive particle attacks us fundamentally by disordering the atoms of which we are made.  It strikes at and scatters the miraculous principle that distinguishes us from dust."

The Brower’s went on to explain that when a radioactive beta particle strikes the molecules of living tissue, it rips away negatively charged electrons from the molecule’s atoms, leaving positively charged ions in its wake.  These liberated electrons, in turn, ionize other atoms in a cascading effect, which proceeds to destroy tens of thousands of the highly ordered and complex biological molecules that serve as the molecular and genetic structure of living cells.  The passage of such a particle leaves the city of the cell in ruins.  Alpha, gamma, and x-rays all have this effect on biological molecules.  Their entry hole is small, but their exit hole is spectacular.

TSA Airport Body Scanners

In spite of these harsh realities, the U.S. Transportation Securities Administration (TSA) informed the general public that the X-ray radiation emitted from airport scanners "is equivalent to the cosmic radiation that is absorbed while in an airplane for two minutes."  In point of fact, comparing X-rays with "cosmic" radiation is misleading at best, because cosmic radiation includes galactic, solar and other anomalous cosmic radiation, which is made up mostly protons, but also a mix of other atomic and subatomic particles. 

Each of these particles have a unique origin, and they have a different effect when they strike the Earth's atmosphere, but rarely do particles with a wavelength shorter than 290 nanometers (nm) ever reach the surface of the Earth, because their high energy levels are absorbed by the molecules in the Earth's atmosphere.  Moreover, data has shown that even individuals in aircraft flying over seven miles above the Earth's surface only experience moderate X-rays (2 equivalent chest X-rays per hour of flight) during major solar storms, which are rare.  As such, comparing the X-rays that millions of humans, including children and infants will receive from an airport scanner with the bewildering mix of cosmic radiation that one may be exposed to during a flight is a meaningless comparison.    

What is well established in the medical literature is that cancer and inherited afflictions are caused by damage from exposure to X-rays, the vast majority of which comes not from cosmic or other background radiation, but from medical X-ray machines that are often miscalibrated, and patients never know if they have been overexposed unless the overexposure is so great that catastrophic medical developments can occur within hours or minutes.  As a general rule, patients are never provided with any documentation of what levels from X-ray radiation they have been exposed to. 

This is an especially serious issue given a recent New York Times report on dental X-rays, which documented that regulations were virtually non-existent, and according to Dr. Christos Angelopoulous, the director of Columbia University's Division of Oral Surgery, "radiation levels can vary greatly, depending on the scanner, its settings, and scan time."  Another expert mentioned in The New York Times article was Dr. Joel E. Gray, whose company Diquad, works under contract in three states to monitor radiation releases in dental offices.  According to Dr. Gray, there is a lack of understanding of the radiation issues in dental offices and he found as much as a 500 percent difference in radiation levels due to sloppiness in developing the radioactive film, including using chemicals that were degraded or at the wrong temperature.  And because the X-rays are invisible, it is impossible for a patient to ever know what level of exposure they have received.  This is the pathetic state of affairs as millions of unsuspecting people such needless radiation exposure. 

For additional details on Dr. Gofman and this nuclear contamination issue, please refer to the "Papers" section of this website.  Much of Gofman's testimony has also been archived and provided online by the U.S. Department of Energy, and it is also posted on the "Papers" section of this website.

Health Care Irresponsibility

The way to dramatically reduce health care costs while vastly improving health care is to operate the U.S. health care system on a non-profit, non-commission basis, which is the way health care is provided in the U.S. Army and Navy and the other "government" agencies that provide the best health care in the world, and the physicians and hospitals do not "operate" on commission, which profoundly impacts costs in contrast to a system that does not provide financial incentives to administer unnecessary drugs or procedures. 

Part of the financial problem, Walker acknowledges, is that there won't be enough wage earners to support the benefits of the baby boomers.  But the real problem is healthcare costs.  Our health care problem is much more significant than Social Security," he says.  Asked what he means by that, Walker tells Kroft, "By that I mean that the Medicare problem is five times greater than the Social Security problem” – and President Bush and the Congress made things much worse when they expanded the Medicare prescription drug coverage.  The fundamental solution is to operate the U.S. health care system on a non-profit basis, which would not allow doctor fees, medical procedures and other services to be provided on the existing "fee for service" commission system, which provides highly undesirable incentives that encourage unnecessary and highly painful procedures and drugs, particularly with terminally ill patients who are literally tortured to death in the last 6 months of their lives, just because the doctors and hospitals have significant financial incentives order such procedures.  Details on this health care approach are in the "Papers" section of this website.

Some analysts estimate that since the Reagan administration, over $8 trillion in tax cuts has been provided to the wealthy, many of whom cannot even spend the interest on their inherited investments, and while the general public was distracted with a highly publicized $700 billion bailout for the bankers, in responding to a Congressional mandate, the Federal Reserve acknowledged that during 2007 and 2008, over $10 trillion was secretly provided to banks as near 0% loans, and then many of the same banks charged 30% predatory interest rates to their struggling credit card customers. 

Since the 1940s, both political parties in the U.S. and their representatives in Congress, have allowed the private banks to increase the money supply  essentially in secret while exponentially increasing the national debt each year, which is now rapidly destroying what is left of the value of the U.S. Dollar.  This highly irresponsible behavior has already reduced the value of the dollar by over 90% from 1970 to 2008, and with the 10 trillions of dollars in new debt that will now be added over the next 10 years (half of which will just be interest on the debt) this devaluation of the Dollar will only accelerate. 

This fiscal irresponsibility was made much worse by so called Free Market policies that encouraged companies to deindustrialize the USA and ship millions of jobs to slave labor countries such as China, where the average wage is one-tenth of that in the USA, which is why those jobs are never coming back.  Whether its the hammer you buy at Home Depot or a business suit at Macy's, it is now all made somewhere else.  One of the few remaining major products that are still Made in the USA are the billions of pounds of unregulated toxic chemicals and other poisons that are produced each day, which are now ubiquitous in the blood of humans and other animals worldwide.  This chemical contamination problem, which is discussed in more detail below, is compounded by the exponentially increasing human population growth, which is shown on the graph below, which directly impacts resources like water and oil, as the Oil Age graph shown below underscores. 

But virtually all of the most serious problems of energy, the environment, the economy and health care are directly related to our dependence on highly-toxic fossil and nuclear fuels that are rapidly diminishing worldwide, which means more and more people are competing for fewer and fewer resources.  When these critical energy resources and financial systems collapse, there will probably be as much warning as was given when Lehman Brothers went under.  It is not a question of whether, but when, and as the passengers aboard the Titanic learned, one's survival is going to be dependent upon lifeboats. 

The problem is that virtually no one in the federal government, or the private sector for that matter, is even aware of the scope of the problems,  and given this State of Emergency that now exists, it is increasingly clear that the only hope for survival is to initiate Article V of the U.S. Constitution in order to organize a Constitutional Convention to pass a number of key amendments, including a Democracy amendment that will bypass the army of lobbyists by empowering the majority of citizens to approve all legislation and judicial decisions that impact the majority of citizens.  Details on this approach will be provided below, but first, it is important to understand the exponential nature of the problems that now confront the global human community. 

Climate Change

One important fact is that the atmospheric chemistry data that has been taken from ice cores in the Arctic and other polar regions clearly shows that there have been 7 major ice ages over the past million years, but at no time did the carbon dioxide levels ever exceed 300 parts per million (ppm).  CO2 levels in 2010 are now approaching 390 ppm, and when placed on a graph, the curve is now going almost vertically off of the chart.  And to make matters worse, this carbon can stay in the Earth's atmosphere and stratosphere for over 3,000 years.  Anyone who understands these data is going to be understandably alarmed, and it explains why the 6th Mass Extinction even in the Earth's 4.5 billion year old history is now well underway.  This global process began to profoundly accelerate when fossil fuels were used -- instead of solar-sourced hydrogen from water -- to power the industrial revolution. 

While there are many lay people who choose to ignore the warnings of the large number of professors of atmospheric chemistry and biology in the NAS about Climate Change, this is like informed passengers aboard the Titanic trying to convince others not to listen to the scientists and engineers on board who said the ship was sinking.  

As the April 13th 2010 Time magazine cover story documents, the fossil fuel induced climate change has already initiated the 6th mass-extinction event in the earth's history, except this time its not the dinosaurs, it is humans and millions of other creatures that are threatened.  Over 90% of the global ocean ecosystems have already been destroyed from chemical contamination and overfishing, and the remaining fish are so contaminated from mercury and the tons of other toxic emissions that are emitted daily by coal and other fossil fuel and chemical plants, they are unfit to eat.  The remaining forests in the Rocky Mountains and Cascades are dieing, and the lizards, bats and bees are disappearing, along with over 5,000 other species each year as the droughts and advancing desert regions on the Earth grow exponentially. 

 

 Rising Sea Levels

While rising sea levels are significant problems, a much more serious concern is that the decreasing salinity of the oceans is already diminishing the critical flow of the Gulf Stream, which will cause temperatures in the U.S. and Europe to fall drastically, which will essentially destroy the existing global agricultural systems. 

While the global temperatures have only risen about 1 degree C in the past century, the temperature increase in the Arctic and other polar regions has increased by 7 degrees, which is now causing the methane ice crystals in the polar oceans and Tundra are now rapidly melting, which will ultimately put 100 times more carbon in the atmosphere that is now emitted from burning fossil fuels.  And given that the ocean ecosystems are already over 90% dead, it is not surprising that the senior scientists in the NAS, including James Hanson, NASA's chief climate change scientist, have warned that humanity is passing a tipping-point of no return as humanity is accelerating into a mass-extinction event for the global human community. 

Its like a car accelerating towards a cliff.  After a certain point, it will no longer matter what the driver does, because even with all of the wheels locked, the force of momentum will still propel the car over the cliff.  Ships are much larger than cars, and global climatic and ecosystems are much larger than ships, which is why it is no longer possible to avoid the climate chaos that is now inevitable. 

The Yellowstone Supervolcano 

In addition to the exponentially worsening climate change issue, an even more alarming sense of urgency to mass-produce Lifeboat food production systems in each community is the Yellowstone "Supervolcano," which has a Caldera (i.e., a massive magma holding chamber) that is more than 100 miles wide and over 450 miles deep.  While some volcanos have a surface crater that is one mile across, the Yellowstone supervolcano eruptions, which have occurred many times in the past with great regularity every 600,000 years, typically had creators that are are over 50 miles wide, which can emit enough ash and other particulates to create global mass-extinction events.

USGS scientists have mapped the Yellowstone Caldera that lies below the surface.

Scientists at the United States Geological Survey (USGS) have been carefully monitoring and mapping the massive Yellowstone Caldera for many decades, and they have indicated the volcano is well past due for a major eruption.  All of the key warning signs, including the forests dying because their roots are being cooked, the surface is actually rising, and there have been  over 1,000 tremors in 2010, suggest that an eruption could be imminent. 

Even if governmental officials were aware of the exact time of the eruption, they may well choose not to inform the public simply because they assume that nothing could be done in any case.  However, millions of Americans are now being paid not to work, and if $100 billion were set aside for such a project in each community, and assuming the Lifeboat system would each cost $1 million, over 100,000 systems could be in place, which averages out to be 2,000 Lifeboat units per state.  It is also worth noting that if the volcano takes its time in erupting, the food produced in such Lifeboat systems would be vastly superior to that which is now produced in the poison-laced, highly processed factory food products that are now the only option for the vast majority of Americans.

The Yellowstone eruption is going to create a decade of winter. 
The question is will we be ready?

When this eruption does occur, the ash and particulates that will be put into the atmosphere and stratosphere will block out the direct sunlight needed for conventional agriculture systems for up to 10 years.  As such, wind and geothermal energy conversion systems will be critical, because without Lifeboat food production systems, civilization will perish in an Oblivion scenario where billions of people and other animals will starve to death in the cold. 

While humanity is now confronted with a bewildering array problems, it is important to be aware that shifting to a Solar Hydrogen Economy is a unified solution to many of the most serious energy, economic, environmental and health care problems, but the first order of business is to mass-produce Lifeboat systems with wartime-speed. 

Fundamental Solutions

"Lifeboat"
Food Production Systems

Given it is now reasonable to assume that the abrupt climate change event is now well underway, the only way to minimize what is coming is to fundamentally change course by initiating a "transition of substance" to a Solar Hydrogen Economy, which will incorporate "Lifeboat" indoor organic food production systems.  Even without the threat of abrupt climate change, the existing food produced in large centralized pesticide-based corporate factory farms needs to be replaced with locally grown indoor organic fish, vegetable and fruit crops that will also be protected from climate change chaos.  As such, these are true"lifeboats" that can make the difference on whether humanity survives or becomes extinct. 

One of the first commercial prototypes of a "Lifeboat" controlled indoor agricultural system was developed in Illinois in the 1980s by engineer Noel Davis, whose one acre building, which was similar in size to a modern supermarket, produced over 100 acres worth of produce with 13 crops a year.  This generated  an average of 16 tons of high-quality produce a month, with no sunlight, no sand, no bugs, and no pesticides.  Other investigators, including Aquapoinics.com have integrated indoor closed loop agriculture and aquaculture systems.  There are many other individuals who have pioneered indoor agricultural systems, including author Dickson Despommier, who wrote The Vertical Farm, and who has published some of the following images on the www.verticalfarm.com website.

 

Large-Scale Lifeboat Food Production Systems

The Phoenix Project
Rising from the Ashes of Non-Renewable Energy, Economic & Biological Resources
 to a Democracy and "Solar Hydrogen Economy" with wartime-speed

Unlike other energy plans proposed by the last eight Presidents, Al Gore, John McCain and or T. Boone Pickens, the Phoenix Project plan to shift to a Solar Hydrogen Economy is the only detailed technical and economic proposal that can make the U.S. energy independent of not just imported oil, but all fossil & nuclear fuels by 2020, by mass-producing wind and other solar powered hydrogen production systems that could have been mass-produced in the 1920s.

Solar Hydrogen Energy Technologies

There are a wide range of solar energy technology options, including photovoltaic cells, that generate electricity from sunlight quietly with no moving parts, as well as solar thermal technologies, which include line-focus trough systems, central receiver power towers, and point-focus dish engine systems.  Other solar technologies include wind, wave, ocean current and ocean thermal energy conversion (OTEC) systems.  Of all of these primary options, wind systems have been able to generate electricity for significantly less cost, although recent major advances have dramatically increased the efficiency and simultaneously reduced the cost of photovoltaic systems. 

A residential home powered with photovoltaic solar cells

However, with the exception of OTEC systems, which will be discussed in more detail later, all of the other solar technology options have a fundamental problem that has limited their use, which is that they are intermittent.  The sun only shines during the day, and only if the weather permits, and wind systems often operate at night, when there is little or no need for the electricity.  Thus wind and solar technologies are typically only able to operate about 30% of the time, and no one can predict when that 30% of the time will be.  As such, most solar technologies are unpredictable.  Utility companies refer to this problem as "dispatchability," which simply means when someone flips a light switch, they expect the power to go on 24/7, regardless of weather conditions (unless of course storms knock out all of the power).  That is why utilities prefer to use power plants that are fueled by coal, natural gas and other fossil fuels or uranium-fueled nuclear power plants. 

Hydrogen:
The Holy Grail of Energy

The Hydrogen Atom

Hydrogen is the simplest, lightest and most abundant element in the universe, and it has long been viewed as the Holy Grail of energy and sustainability because it can unite all energy sources with all energy uses, and it can be a completely non-toxic and carbon-free, "universal fuel" that can displace the use of gasoline, diesel fuel, natural gas and all other fossil and nuclear fuels worldwide by powering every existing vehicle and power plant with wind-powered hydrogen production and engine conversion technologies that were in use in the 1800s. 

Unlike electricity, hydrogen can be stored and transported in trucks, pipelines and ships, and delivered to markets worldwide, and unlike electricity, hydrogen is a universal fuel that can power any existing engine, power plant, or appliance, including a Coleman stove operating on a mountain top, as well as the engines of the Saturn V Moon Rockets and the Space Shuttle. 

Hydrogen makes solar technologies practical for large-scale use because it solves the intermittent problem of the wind and other solar technologies by passing the electricity from the wind and other solar technologies through water, which causes the water (H2O) to be split into its primary elements of hydrogen and oxygen.  This process is referred to as electrolysis, and it was first officially demonstrated in the year 1800.  Thus if the wind is blowing in the middle of the night, it doesn't matter because the electricity can be used for hydrogen production, and hydrogen is the only "universal" fuel can then be used to power any existing automobile, aircraft, ship, train or power plant that is now fueled by coal, diesel, natural gas or uranium.  As such,  hydrogen production is what makes wind and other solar technologies dispatchable and therefore practical. 

Benjamin Franklin was one of the early and passionate investigators of electricity, and in June 1752 he attached a metal key to the bottom of a dampened kite string and proceeded to fly the kite in an electrical thunderstorm.  A succession of sparks jumped from the key to show that lightning was indeed electrical in nature, but producing and using electricity was a difficult process, and it was not until the year 1800 that an Italian scientist, Alessandro Volta, demonstrated that it is possible to predictably produce an electrical current by soaking paper in salt water, with zinc and copper electrodes on opposite sides of the paper so the current could flow from the chemical reaction. 

With this predictable source of electricity, it only took a few weeks before Sir Anthony Carlisle, an English surgeon and his colleague William Nicholson, a renowned English chemist, discovered that when the electrical current was passed through water, a process now called electrolysis, the water molecules (H2O) are separated into hydrogen (H2) and oxygen (O). 

It is important to note that the process of electrolysis is approximately 60 to 80 percent efficient, which means more energy is used than is generated from the process.  This is only a problem if the electricity is being generated from a depletable energy resources like fossil or coal nuclear fuels, but if the electricity is provided by a renewable solar energy resources, the resulting solar hydrogen system can operate indefinitely.  

The first hydrogen fueled automobile was built in 1807, and in the 1920s and 1930s, thousands of engines and vehicles in UK and Germany, including submarines, were modified by Rudolph Erren to use hydrogen and gasoline interchangeably.  In 1923, the use of sea-based wind powered hydrogen production systems was proposed at Cambridge University by John Haldane, a professor of genetics and biochemistry who was well aware that photosynthetic plants had been making hydrogen from water with sunlight for billions of years. 

However, it was not until the 1974 that the first international scientific and engineering conference on hydrogen energy was organized and Chaired by T. Nejat Veziroglu, a professor of engineering at the University of Miami, who was also Director of the university’s Clean Energy Institute.  The Conference was held in Miami Beach, Florida and it was called "The Hydrogen Economy Miami Energy (THEME) Conference," where the concept of a Hydrogen Economy was formally proposed. 

The International Association for Hydrogen Energy (IAHE.org)

"T. Nejat Veziroglu
Professor of Engineering & IAHE President

Making Hydrogen from the Sun, Wind & Water

Note the spherical hulls in the Windships both above and below, where the crew will live and work, using the electricity from the wind turbines to to separate seawater into oxygen and hydrogen, while providing a vast sanctuary for the fish and other marine organisms.

OTEC plants are the only solar energy system that operates 24-hours a day, seven days a week, regardless of weather conditions, and OTEC systems generate vast quantities of fresh water and seafood as by-products.  Wind systems could also be installed on top of the OTEC system.

Primary Solar Hydrogen Production Systems

In addition to conventional land-based wind systems and other solar technologies, such as photovoltaic cells, either sea-based Windship or Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion (OTEC) hydrogen production systems can also displace all fossil and nuclear fuels now used worldwide forever, while saving ocean ecosystems in the process.  Hydrogen fuel can be manufactured from water with any source of electricity, but the Phoenix Project baseline assumptions focus on wind systems because they presently generate electricity for less cost than any other solar energy, fossil fuel or nuclear technology, and they can be rapidly mass-produced like automobiles on a scale to permanently displace the use of all fossil and nuclear fuels worldwide. 

While the U.S. has vast land areas for wind systems, it has equally vast ocean areas that could be utilized.  Sea-based "Windship" hydrogen production systems, like those pictured above, could in and of themselves allow the U.S. and other countries to eliminate the need to rely on the rapidly diminishing fossil and nuclear fuels, while providing a vast sanctuary for the remaining fish and marine organisms on the seabed floor that are in the final stages of being hunted into extinction.  Indeed, according to a wide-range of scientific studies, the global ocean ecosystems are already over 90% dead, and deploying large fleets of sea-based wind systems may be the only action that will allow the remaining marine organisms to recover (please refer to the Ocean Destruction paper attached on the Papers button link on this websites navigation bar).

The sea-based wind system image on the top was provided courtesy of Norsk Hydro, whereas the lower image on the left of a Windship hydrogen production system was initially published by National Geographic in December of 1975 and was developed by William Heronemus, a former naval architect and Professor of Engineering at the University of Massachusetts, who pointed out that from a technology perspective, both OTEC and wind-powered hydrogen production systems could have been mass-produced in the 1920s.  Note that the tugboat is delivering the crew that live and work in the submerged spherical hulls that also contain the electrolyzers that extract hydrogen from the seawater with the electricity generated by the wind turbines. 

The OTEC system shown above on the right was developed by Lockheed in the 1970s, and Lockheed engineers also developed detailed designs on how to modify existing commercial aircraft to use liquid hydrogen fuel (see below).  OTEC systems use the largest solar collector on the earth, the tropical oceans. 

OTEC systems were first field tested in the 1920s, and they are the only solar power plants that can operate 24 hours a day because the temperature differentials in the oceans are constant.  Like wind systems, OTEC systems could also displace all fossil and nuclear fuels now used worldwide, and they can be engineered to generate both vast quantities of fresh water and seafood as by-products.  It is why mass-producing a mix of such renewable systems can provide sustainable prosperity without pollution for the global human community. While the Regan administration terminated the OTEC research and development effort, Lockheed (now Lockheed Martin) has continued to develop OTEC systems, and they have produced a must see video that is available on the Lockheed Martin website.  You will not be disappointed. 

A Solar Hydrogen Production Island

A Brief History of Hydrogen-Fueled Automotive Vehicles

While hydrogen has been used to fuel all of the Saturn V moon rockets and the Space Shuttles, in 1807 Francois Isaac de Rivaz of Switzerland designed the first internal combustion engine that ran inside the first automobile (below left).  In 1860, Etienne Lenoir of France invented a hydrogen-fueled 1-cylinder, 2-stroke vehicle (below center), which was called the "Hippomobile."  Norsk Hydro of Norway (which also developed the offshore wind system pictured above in this article) modified the pickup truck (below right) to use hydrogen fuel in 1933.   

              1807                                        1860                                                 1933

In the U.S., Roger Billings, a young engineer in Provo, Utah first modified his family's lawnmower to use hydrogen fuel when he was still in high school, and in 1966, he proceeded to modify his father's Model A Ford (upper left) for his high school science project.  In 1972, when he was a student at Brigham Young University, he and his team modified a Volkswagen (upper center) to operate on hydrogen, and they won first place for emissions in the Urban Vehicle Design Competition in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Atmospheric air is approximately 78% nitrogen and only about 22% oxygen, and the high combustion temperatures in internal combustion engines causes oxides of nitrogen (NOX) to form from the nitrogen in the air. 

In order to reduce NOX emissions, Billings and other automotive engineers, including those at Los Alamos National Laboratory and BMW, have injected water into the cylinders to reduce the engine combustion temperature so the oxides of nitrogen would simply not be created in the first place.  Indeed, the hydrogen-powered Volkswagen was shown to actually clean the ambient air and as such, it was given a negative number for unburned hydrocarbons and carbon monoxide.  In 1977, Roger Billings designed a hydrogen-powered Cadillac Seville (upper right), as part of a Hydrogen Home project he developed. 

A Hydrogen Hummer

In 2004, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger worked with the engineers at General Motors to have his Hummer modified to use gaseous hydrogen fuel as part of California's Hydrogen Highway project. 

Hydrogen-Fueled Internal Combustion Engines

Liquid Hydrogen-Fueled Vehicles

A 1979 liquid hydrogen (LH2) fueled Buick modified and tested at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, with a self-service pump and LH2 cryogenic storage Dewar.

Investigators at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) in New Mexico modified the 1979 Buick pictured above to operate on liquid hydrogen fuel, which most closely resembles gasoline from a perspective of volume, weight and engine performance.  The self-serve hydrogen pump is attached to a white cryogenic liquid hydrogen storage tank, and in their final report, the Los Alamos investigators led by Dr. Walter Stuart, concluded that liquid hydrogen could be safely used in vehicles by members of the general public. 

Liquid Hydrogen-Fueled BMW Vehicles

BMW is the only major automobile manufacturer that has been modifying its vehicles to use liquid hydrogen for over 30 years because it is the only pollution-free fuel that does not force their customers to give up performance, range or the luxury of driving a full-sized vehicle.  The hydrogen BMW still has its gasoline tank as a reserve tank, and the engine can use either fuel with the flip of a switch.

A Hydrogen-Fueled BMW V-12 Engine and Liquid Hydrogen Storage System

BMW has also modified its smallest and most fuel efficient vehicle, the Mini Cooper (upper left), to operate on liquid hydrogen, which is stored under the rear passenger seats, as well as the world's fastest liquid hydrogen-fueled race car, which has exceeded 180 mph. 

Hydrogen Fuel Cells

Fuel cells, which were first developed in the 1800s, are able to create electricity from combining hydrogen and oxygen.  Fuel cells were successfully used in the space program are also being developed for automotive applications, such as the General Motors "Hy-Wire" fuel cell vehicle that is pictured above. The Hy-Wire system that does not have any of the conventional mechanical parts between the driver and the wheels because like advanced aircraft, everything runs on electronic sensors and motors.  However, the cost of fuel cells is still very high. 

The initial small fuel cells used in vehicles being tested in California cost over a million dollars each, and even in mass-production, GM estimated that the cost of the fuel cells would still cost between $50,000 to $100,000, which would exceed the cost of the car itself.  While fuel cells may be practical at some point in the future, given that the senior scientists at the National Academy of Sciences have stated that fossil fuels need to be phased-out within 10 years in order to avoid irreversible damage to the earth's climate and food production systems, the only practical solution is to simply modify existing vehicles and engines to use hydrogen as well as gasoline with the flip of a switch.

Oil Company Considerations

Given that large amounts of hydrogen are required to make gasoline from oil, the major oil companies are well aware of its use.  However, all of the oil companies now obtain the hydrogen they need from nonrenewable natural gas and other hydrocarbon resources where the hydrogen atoms are chemically bonded to carbon atoms.  Unfortunately, the oil companies are only focused on making hydrogen from natural gas, coal, uranium and other energy resources that are highly-polluting and rapidly diminishing worldwide. 

Hydrogen Safety Considerations

Hydrogen is the simplest, most abundant and lightest element in the known universe, and because it is lighter than air, it goes up and away within seconds if a leak or accident occurs.  This is why hydrogen is much safer than gasoline or other hydrocarbon fuels, where the hydrogen is chemically bonded to carbon, which is heaver than air, and therefore causes the hydrocarbon fuel to stick to passengers like glue and form explosive mixtures when leaks and accidents do occur. 

While the images of the Hindenburg accident were horrific, it is important to note that according the the official accident report, two-thirds of the passengers and crew survived the accident. 

In a carefully controlled test funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, DOE, Dr. Michael Swain and his colleagues at the College of Engineering at the University of Miami initiated similar fuel leaks with two identical vehicles.  As the images below show, the hydrogen-fueled vehicle on the left suffered no temperature increase or physical damage to the passenger compartment, whereas the gasoline-fueled vehicle was totally consumed in flames in less than three minutes.  This underscores the impact of carbon when it is combined with hydrogen to form a highly-deadly hydrocarbon fuel.

  Given the images of the hydrogen-fueled vehicle on the left or the gasoline-fueled vehicle on the right, which vehicle would you choose to be in in the event of an accident?

Liquid Hydrogen Tankers

The liquid hydrogen tanker pictured (above left) was built in the U.S. in the 1970s by General Dynamics, and fleets of similar cryogenic tankers are now used worldwide, primarily for transporting liquid natural gas(LNG).  However, unlike liquid hydrogen, LNG tankers and storage facilities are very dangerous because the hydrogen in natural gas is all chemically bonded to carbon, which allows the LNG to pool and form highly-explosive mixtures.  The advanced liquid hydrogen supertanker pictured on the right, which looks more like a cruse ship, is being developed in Japan by Kawasaki Heavy Industries.

Hydrogen can be transported as a cryogenic liquid in tankers just as oil is, except that oil is highly toxic and dangerous if it is spilled, whereas hydrogen is completely non-toxic, non-polluting and relatively safe in the event of accidents or spills.  If the Exxon Valdez was transporting liquid hydrogen instead of oil, no ecological damage would have occurred as a result of the accident.  It is worth noting that even though the accident took place 20 years ago, the estimated 11 million gallons of oil that was spilled has never been able to be cleaned up and is still contaminating the Alaskan environment. 

While the BP Oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010 is estimated to have released over 200 million gallons of oil, according to the Oil in the Sea report published by the National Academy of Sciences (NAS), over 1 trillion gallons of oil is released each year not from accidental spills, but from simply using the oil as a fuel and as a lubricant.  This is a major factor why the NAS has warned that the use of oil and other fossil fuels are rapidly making the earth itself uninhabitable. 

 
The Liquid Hydrogen "Supergrid"

The above image was generated by the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI)

Unlike electricity, hydrogen can be stored and delivered to national and international markets by cryogenic tanker trucks, ships or underground pipelines that can also be engineered to transmit electricity as well as the hydrogen.  The so-called "Smart" grid proposals that are now being proposed by the Obama administration involve condemning private property in order to build thousands of miles of conventional unsightly and inefficient high-voltage transmission lines across the country, which will ultimately cost over a trillion dollars.  The reason the conventional transmission lines are placed up in the air is because they are hot, which is due to the fact they are leaking energy, and the heat is then dissipated into the atmosphere. 

The Phoenix Project proposal, by contrast calls for building a low-temperature cryogenic Interstate Hydrogen "Supergrid" System that was first proposed in the 1970s and is now being developed by the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), which is the largest utility research group in the U.S.  The hydrogen pipelines would be able to carry highly-efficient superconducting high-voltage transmission lines underground, as well as the gaseous and liquid hydrogen fuel that will be made from electricity ideally made from the wind and other solar and geothermal resources.  As the Supergrid image above also shows, a magnetically levitated train could also be incorporated in the system. 

Liquid Hydrogen-Fueled Aircraft and Spacecraft

In order to modify existing aircraft, Lockheed engineers in the 1970s simply located the two liquid hydrogen storage tanks (Dewars) in the fuselage of the aircraft.  This would make hijacking the aircraft virtually impossible because the flight crew is separated from the passenger compartment by one of the liquid hydrogen storage tanks.  The takeoff weight of the hydrogen-fueled aircraft was reduced by over 40%, the aircraft was stronger and much safer in the event of accidents; the wing area was smaller; and the engines were quieter and required less maintenance because hydrogen combustion does not produce organic acids or carbon deposits in the engines

The Hydrogen-Fueled Saturn V Moon Rockets & Space Shuttle

Liquid hydrogen has been used as a primary rocket fuel because it has the greatest energy per weight of any fuel.  This is why it has been used by NASA to fuel all of the Saturn V moon rockets as well as the fleet of Space Shuttles.  Note the three liquid hydrogen-fueled engines, which are located on the tail of the Space Shuttle, where the light-blue hydrogen flame is almost invisible.  This is in contrast to the solid-fuel rocket boosters (SRBs) that are located on the sides of the shuttle's main hydrogen and oxygen fuel tanks.  While the hydrogen engines are essentially pollution free, the SRBs emit a highly toxic aluminum exhaust, which damages the atmosphere each time the Shuttle is launched. It is important to note that when the Columbia Space Shuttle exploded in 2003, it was not the liquid hydrogen systems that caused the problem, but the seals on one of the SRBs that failed, which then caused the spacecraft to explode, killing all of the astronauts on board. 

Spaceship Earth

The earth is the only planet in the known universe that can sustain humanity and the other mammals, yet the earth's biological life-support systems are in the final stages of being made uninhabitable because of humanities reckless exploitation, chemical contamination and mindless addiction to non-renewable fossil and nuclear fuels, which are both highly-polluting and rapidly diminishing worldwide.  It is why a "transition of substance" to a Solar Hydrogen Economy needs to be implemented with wartime-speed (i.e., by 2020).

 
The Silver Bullet

The Phoenix Project plan will provide a fundamental solution to the energy and economic crisis, as well as many of the most serious environmental problems by rising from the ashes of oil and other fossil fuels to a Solar Hydrogen Economy with wartime-speed with technologies that could have been mass-produced in the 1920s. 

It is important to note that the Phoenix Project plan that complies with the specifications and warnings of professor James Hanson, NASA’s chief climate scientist, and the senior scientists at the National Academy of Sciences, that fossil fuels need to be phased out within 10 years or humanity will pass a tipping-point of no return, which will destabilize the climate to such an extent that the earth’s primary food production systems will fail.  Indeed, the tundra and methane ice crystals in the Arctic are now rapidly melting, which could release 100 times more carbon into the atmosphere than is now generated from burning fossil fuels, which underscores the need to shift to a Solar Hydrogen Economy with wartime-speed.

According to Hanson and other scientists, atmospheric carbon dioxide levels are already at 385 parts per million and they need to be less than 300 in order to minimize the impact of the worldwide global famines that have already begun.  Scientific studies have documented that the global ocean ecosystems are now more than 90% dead from the free market forces of unregulated overfishing and the remaining fish are so contaminated from mercury and radioactive isotopes emitted from coal plants they are unfit to eat.  The major forest ecosystems in the Rocky Mountains and the Cascades are being destroyed from the warmer temperatures, and the bees, which are critical in pollinating food crops, are disappearing, along with the bats and frogs as part of a global mass-extinction event that is already well underway.  This time it is not the reptiles, but the mammals that are at risk.

There is a remarkable precedent for such a transition of substance, because some 3.5 billion years ago, the earth's population of protein-scale nanobes and micron-scale microbes was also exponentially increasing, and as such, they were also faced with extinction because their non-renewable hydrocarbon reserves in the primordial soup were rapidly being consumed. Their solution was to re-industrialize their civilization around photosynthetic plants that could extract hydrogen from water with solar energy, and this system has been successfully working on a global scale with no pollution ever since.

A Renewable Rate of Return

Although President Obama has spoken about the need to emphasize renewable energy technologies, his expenditures are less than 1% of what are needed, and because he and his advisors assume there is no "silver bullet" solution, they are continuing to pursue all energy options, including offshore drilling, coal, corn-based ethanol and carbon and nuclear energy options that waste both time and money because they will never be able to make the U.S. energy independent -- much less energy independent of fossil and nuclear fuels, which are rapidly diminishing and highly polluting. 

The U.S. currently spends over $1 trillion annually on energy, and to implement a wind-powered solar hydrogen energy system, approximately $6 trillion of the $9 trillion authorized for the financial bailout, would be needed to build and install the 5 million 2 megawatt wind systems that will be needed to displace not just imported oil, but all fossil and nuclear fuels now used in the U.S. -- as well as the engine conversion systems that will allow the existing fleet of 250 million automotive vehicles to use hydrogen or gasoline, diesel fuel or other hydrocarbon fuels interchangeably.  An additional 15 million wind systems could then generate enough hydrogen to displace fossil and nuclear fuels worldwide, and because the U.S. has vast land and offshore wind resources, this reindustrialization effort has the potential to transform the U.S. from being the world's largest debtor nation and energy importer into a multi-trillion dollar hydrogen energy exporter with a fuel that is non-toxic, pollution-free, and exhaustible, thereby providing a renewable rate of return on the investment. 

It is worth noting that unlike the current economic stimulus proposals, the Phoenix Project solar hydrogen re-industrialization effort would not be creating short-term make-work jobs, but millions of high-quality private sector jobs that would generate over a trillion dollars of wealth annually with hydrogen production and end-use technologies.   And because solar-sourced hydrogen is both inexhaustible and pollution-free, it will fundamentally eliminate many of the most serious climate change and other environmental and related health care problems with technologies that could have been mass-produced in the 1920s.  This underscores the fact that the obstacles to this “transition of substance” are not technical or economic -- they are political.

Proposed Critical Amendments to the U.S. Constitution

Elections come and go, but very little changes regardless of who gets elected.  Given this reality, and given that the current two party system of government in the U.S. is so fundamentally corrupted by multinational oil and other corporations and other special interests, only a series of amendments to the U.S. Constitution can resolve the problem.  As such, the non-profit Phoenix Project Political Action Committee is focused on organizing an Article V Convention in Washington D.C. to pass a number of critical amendments, including a Democracy amendment that would transfer political power from the lobbyists to the majority of U.S. Citizens, and a Fair Accounting amendment, which is the "trigger mechanism" for implementing a Solar Hydrogen Economy because it would require that the environmental, health care and military costs of toxic products such as oil, coal and uranium be factored into the costs of such products. 

The Democracy Amendment

Perhaps the most critical change needed in the U.S. Constitution is the Democracy Amendment, which would transform the U.S. from being a Republic, which is rule by the tiny few, into a real Democracy, which is rule by the majority, where the majority of American citizens would have the power and responsibility to approve all legislation and judicial decisions, would essentially eliminate the power of lobbyists and the political corruption that they foster.  Given this accurate definition of the language, it is obvious that the United States is not a Democracy, and virtually all of the so-called Democrats in the government are really Republicans. 

While most people assume the U.S. already has a democratic form of government, such misinformation only serves the interests of corrupt elected officials and lobbyists who write the bills that most members of congress do not even read before they vote to approve them, which allows the lobbyists to run the Congress like a house of prostitution. 

The key difference in a Republican form of government compared to a Democracy is that a Republic is "representative" government, which is in and itself rule by the tiny few (i.e., far less than one-half of one percent of the citizens in the USA are elected representatives), but given the way the seniority system in Congress works, an even much smaller number of Committee Chairman are empowered to not only conduct business in secret, but they alone get to determine which bills are even allowed to come to a vote in the Congress. 

This means that lobbyists only have to bribe and otherwise influence a tiny number of the already tiny number of elected officials that are elected to the Congress, and with the unverified computerized voting machines that are easy to hack and are now in widespread use, even the elections are highly suspect. In a Democracy, however, the majority of the citizens would be in charge, which means the lobbyists would have to bribe literally millions of citizens in order to get their way. While the first democratic form of government was in ancient Greece, at present, the only country that has a true democratic form of government is Switzerland. 

 
Other Proposed Amendments

In addition to the Democracy and Fair Accounting Act amendments, other proposed amendments would end government secrecy, unverified voting machines, federal budget deficits, and the production of radioactive wastes, while providing a universal non-profit healthcare system that would eliminate the need for health insurance, and no longer allow physicians to "operate" on commission, and an Educational Excellence Amendment would bypass the outdated factory school systems with ultra-high quality educational programs developed and produced by the best educators and animators for all American citizens.  These programs would emphasize critical thinking skills and would be provided at no cost on the internet, or be made available at a small cost on CD/DVDs, and they would therefore allow each student to progress at their own individualized speed.  Details on these proposed amendments are available on the PhoenixProjectPac.US website, and any comments or suggestions on any of these proposed constitutional amendments would be greatly appreciated.

Utopia or Oblivion

It is important not to forget that due to the Exponential Age in which we live, humanity is rapidly accelerating into a technological "utopia" of molecular medicine that by eliminating aging and disease will give birth to a new biocybernetic species: Homo Immortalis.  Such extraordinary developments, however, are dependent on avoiding the ecological "oblivion" of mass-extinction that is already well underway.  and the decisions made in the nest few years will determine which future evolves.  For details on the critically important nature of exponential growth, please refer to the Phoenix Project video documentary and the Exponential Icebergs paper that are both posted in the video and papers section of this Phoenix Project Foundation website. 

For a discussion of the ethical implication of such developments, please refer to the Revealing Science of God paper that is posted in the "Papers" section of this website. 

A Summary of the Phoenix Project's Energy,
Environmental, Educational, Health Care & Economic Recovery Plan

     1.  Mass-Produce Wind-powered "Lifeboat" Food Production Systems ASAP
These Lifeboat systems are the most critical elements that need to be implemented with wartime-speed.  While the climate change concerns are profound, they will not impact the global human community like the Yellowstone "Super-Volcano" Caldera that could erupt at any hour.  This is a planet killing event, and the only thing that will make the difference between survival and extinction is being able to eat!  The potential costs are insignificant when one considers that the quality of the food produced in the Lifeboat systems will be vastly superior to that now found in the factor-farm supplied supermarkets that are transforming Americans into obese diabetics with their brains disabled by the pesticides like DDT that are still deadly and in virtually all of the produce in the supermarkets.  As such, the Lifeboat food production systems will earn substantial profits that can recover the capital costs and be shared by those who master the process of closed cycle agriculture.

     2.  Passage of an Article V Democracy Amendment
It is critical to eliminate a government run by lobbyists by enacting an Article V Convention to amending the U.S. Constitution with a Democracy amendment that will transform the USA from being a Republic, which in fact turns out to be is rule by a tiny few in secret, to a real democracy, where the majority of voting citizens -- and not their elected representatives -- will have the power to approve all legislation and court decisions.  Given this understanding, it is easy to see why the Governments of North Korea, Iran, Russia and Iraq, all operate as Republics and not Democracies.  Additional details on this Democracy amendment as well as the other critical proposed amendments are outlined on the PhoenixProjectPac.US website.

     3.  Passage of a Fair Accounting Act Amendment
According to the National Academy of Sciences, it is now critical to phase out all fossil fuels with wartime speed, and the only technically and economically practical path is to implement a Solar Hydrogen Economy in the USA with wartime-speed (i.e., by 2015).  The Fair Accounting Act is the "trigger mechanism" for reindustrialization because it would end the trillions of dollars in pollution subsidies that are critical to make oil and other fossil and nuclear fuels appear to be less expensive.  The capital costs of this Solar Hydrogen reindustrialization effort would be about $10 trillion for the 5 million 2 megawatt wind-powered hydrogen production systems; $1 trillion to modify all of the existing automotive vehicles (including aircraft) and power plants top use the hydrogen; and approximately $1 trillion to construct the underground "Supergrid" liquid hydrogen pipelines and electrical transmission systems.  However, given the system would generate over $1.5 trillion annually the $12 trillion capital investment would be recovered in 8 years, with equipment that could have been mass-produced in the 1920s and can last indefinitely, that will be generating a fuel that is both pollution-free and inexhaustible.

      4.  Passage of a Balanced Budget Amendment
Given the unprecedented fiscal irresponsibility of the U.S. Congress, it is clear that elected officials from both Republican and Democratic political parties have been unable to control their deficit spending habits.  The only way to override this tendency to steal from our children is to require the President and the U.S. Congress to balance the federal budget each year.  As such, this amendment shall make illegal for elected officials to allow spending to exceed revenues, especially in times of war to minimize corporate profiteering and abuse.  If such an amendment were in place, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan would have never occurred in the first place because taxes would have needed to be raised to pay for the war.

     5.  Implement a Non-Profit Universal Health Care System
Given that health care costs are out of control and now dominate spending by the federal government and the private sector, it is critical to implement a non-profit universal health care system for all Americans.  Approximately 30% of health care costs are now spent on terminally ill patients torturing them in the last six months of their lives so the doctors and hospitals can maximize profits, which is why it is critical not to have doctors and hospitals "operating" on a commission basis, which is a primary cause of unnecessary pain and suffering.  For details, please refer to the paper on health care that is posted on this website.

     6.  Implement A Balanced Economic System
Implement a balanced economy, which means nationalizing critical economic sectors, including failed banks, insurance companies, and automotive companies that will need to be retooled to mass-produce the solar hydrogen production, distribution and end-use engine, appliance and power plant conversion technologies, which will create the trillions of dollars in new wealth each year that can then be used to pay off the national debt and ultimately provide significant royalties to U.S. citizens.

     7.  Implement Fair Markets vs "Free" Unregulated Markets
Instead of lowering the American standard of living to that of Third world countries that use child and slave labor and have a complete disregard for the environment, U.S. trade policy should focus on bringing the Third world standard of living up to American and European standards by encouraging organized labor and enforcing minimum wage and environmental standards for any product sold in the USA.

     8.  Implement An Enlightened Foreign Policy
Dramatically reduce US military commitments worldwide and implement a foreign policy based on treating others as we would want to be treated, as opposed to the Golden rule now practiced, which is "he who has the gold makes the rules."

     9.  Providing Educational Excellence for Everyone
Transform education from the existing factory school system to highly individualized internet-based learning systems at no cost that will be created by the most gifted instructors and animators in every major field of study, which will be similar to the programs that are now on NOVA, Frontline and the History and Discovery channels. 

   10.  End the Drug Wars
Approximately $1 trillion of the $14 trillion national debt is the result of the mindless Drug War that the federal government has been waging for the past 40 years.  Relearning the lessons on the Prohibition of alcohol, drugs should be legalized and taxed.  According to a CBS News 60 Minutes report, a senior medical official in the UK stated that the major illegal drugs, including heron, are no worse than alcohol from a medical perspective, and by spending billions of dollars to make them illegal, over 50% of the U.S. prison population is there because of drug charges and brutal gang lords have been made into billionaires.  Prohibition did not work, and either has the worsening drug wars that have been going on for several decades.  Drug abuse is a medical problem, it doesn't need to be a criminal problem. 

Take Action Now and Become Part of the Solution

Help to communicate and implement this fundamental Phoenix Project solution by making a donation to the Phoenix Project Foundation, while there is still time to make a difference.  Our primary focus in this regard is as follows:

1.  To educate the American public about the information outlined on this website, and other related websites, including the Phoenix Project Pac (phoenixprojectpac.US), the International Association for Hydrogen Energy (iahe.org) and the National Academy of Sciences (nationalacademies.org).  

2.  To educate the American public about the importance of an Article V Convention for Democracy and Fair Accounting.

3.  To create a Solar Hydrogen Fleet of state-of-the-art hydrogen fueled vehicles that will be developed and deployed on a media-intensive national tour that will end up in Washington DC.  With such a media-intensive event, Congressional Hearings will surly follow, as will the public support for an Article V Constitutional Convention that will address the amendments that are being proposed by the Phoenix Project Political Action Committee.

4.  To secure the necessary funding to have the Harry Braun radio talk show on the air in all 50 states for a minimum of two hours a day, five days a week. 

5.  To secure the necessary funding to purchase major advertisements to help counter the public relations propaganda from the oil, coal and natural gas and nuclear corporations. 

For more details on this transition of substance, please refer to the "Papers" and "Video" section of this website, all of which are provided at no cost.  You can also contact the Foundation or schedule Harry Braun for an interview by calling or writing to the Phoenix Project Foundation at the address listed below. 

Phoenix Project Foundation
4160 West Wild Iris Lane, Torreon, Show Low, Arizona 85901
Telephone:    928-532-0008 
  HB@PhoenixProjectFoundation.US  

Copyright © 2010 Phoenix Project Foundation.US.  All rights reserved.