free energy: the other side of the coin

8/9/2019 Free Energy: the other side of the coin

1/7


2/7

Are we more at peace and more enlightened than before? As a species, are we generally

happier? Nope. In the west, people work more hou rs per week than ever, the state of our

health is a disaster; diseases that did not even exist 100 year ago have reached epidemic

proportion, there is not a single eco -system on the planet that is not in decline, mother

earth is in tears, raped, tortured, scarred. Sure, we can fly from A to B in huge planes with

one computer per seat, we can divert rivers, mine entire mountains, drill at incredible

depths in the ocean, etc... Without this immense supply of cheap energ y that we have had

available for so long, these things would simply not have been possible.

As a result of all this activity , compounded by the fact that the energy that we have been

using is dirty, we have polluted the planet. However and this is the first important point that

I want to make, I believe that the vast majority of the damage that we have caused to our

home planet has nothing to do with the fact that the energy that we have used is dirty. Any

other form of energy, no matter how clean, would have done the dirty job just as well if not

better. A bulldozer that would run on pure water and would emits no fumes whatsoever, or

one that runs on cold fusion or vacuum energy can flatten as much Amazonian forest as a

classic diesel engine one. I would even say that it could do more damage because the last

restriction, which is the price of fuel, would be removed, allowing bigger dozers to be built

to do bigger damage for less cost.

My observation is that, as a species, we are just not yet capable, not yet wise enough, not

yet evolved enough, to be given a lot of energy to play with, let alone energy of the free

kind. The first question that comes to my mind when talking about free energy is the

following: assuming that tomorrow we get this free, clean and unlimited energy that we are

craving for, what are we going to do with it? If the answer is more of the same then I

would say no thanks, if the answer is something different, then I would say what on

earth makes you think that because the energy is free and clean we are going to u se it wisely

when history shows us beyond doubt that we wont.

Sure, with abundant free energy, we wont need t o drill for oil anymore. Great! W e can start

drilling for something else then. What could possibly make anyone believe that we would

not find something else at the bottom of the ocean that we reall y want? Hey, we could start

dreaming of commuting to Mars and mine it. And why would we stop clearing the

Amazonian forest to make pasture for McDonalds cows? And why would we stop trying to

privatise water everywhere? These activities do *not* depend on whether we use oil,

alcohol, water or the energy of the vacuum, do they? In addition, with cheaper and moreavailable energy than before, we could drill deeper, cut down faster, blow up more and fly

further and more often. Is this going to make us healthy and happy?

Understand that I am not saying that I love polluting cars and buses and that we should not

turn to better forms of energy. We should. What I am saying is that, by itself, this will

achieve nothing. Until we look at the other side of the energy equation and, most

importantly, until we look at ourselves, nothing will change.


3/7

For a start, what exactly is the word free supposed to mean in the expression free

energy? Does it mean that it would cost nothing? If that is the case, I would ask why we

think that we could get anything for free when it should be obvious that it is j ust not the

way our current world operates. For example, there is nothing cheaper to produce than

water, the whole planet is awash with it. Despite of that, we pay a lot of money for water. It

strikes me that a litre of drinking water is in many places mor e expensive than a litre of

gasoline. Water should be free but to many people it is not. This demonstrates that it is not

the intrinsic nature of a resource that determines whether it is free or not but rather how

we see that resource and who decides to ow n it. In our current global system, any form of

energy, no matter how cheap to obtain or produce would immediately be grabbed by

corporations and sold at a high price. This is the nature of our society and unless we change

this, nothing will ever be free.

You may say, well no, the word free does not mean gratis but means available in

unlimited quantities. In that case, we have another problem. Like I said earlier, because of

the way we are, anything that is available to us we tend to use . If we were to tap into

unconventional vacuum energy, also called zero-point energy, what we would do with it

would still be conventional work, such as moving a car, lifting a weight, heating a house....

And this work that we do with this energy will produce heat. For ex ample, if homes in cold

climates were all equipped with a vacuum energy generator, can you imagine the amount of

heat that would come out of these homes? Why bother sealing the windows or even closing

them when the vacuum energy heat pump is running day and night for free. And where

would all that heat go? Many new-age-free-energy-enthusiasts have no understanding

whatsoever of the laws of thermodynamics and bel ieve that, just because energy originates

from a non conventional source, such as the zero-point, that energy does not follow the

same principles that we have observed for all other forms of energy? Heat is heat and heat

does not just disappear. Rather, it accumulates in matter and unless taken away by other

mechanisms, the temperature of the matter r ises as a result. That is what sun rays have

done to ocean water for millions of years and the principle still applies.

Think of it that way. Lets compare vacuum energy with nuclear energy. If I hold a gram of

matter (e.g. iron) in my hand, it does not appear that there is a lot that I ca n do with this

gram in terms of producing energy. What is a gram of anything going to do? But if I

understand atomic energy and manage to somehow split the atom of this anything, I can

then release enormous amounts of energy from this single gram. If we were to split the

atoms, not of a gram but of millions of tons of matter all over the planet, we could release

quantities of energy impossible to comprehend. That released energy, when used to do

work, would ultimately and inevitably be converted into heat. Literally the whole of planet

earth would heat up, burn and/or blow up. Of course, we dont split the atoms of huge

quantities of matter all over the planet, because we can only split material that is

radioactive, such as uranium, and that material is dangerous and available in limited

supplies and we all know that the by -products of splitting this material are even more


4/7

dangerous and almost impossible to dispose of ( e.g. plutonium). One of such by-products is

depleted uranium, so called, not because it is harmless, but because it is less radio -active

than the non depleted variety and also to make it sound OK for the US and the UK to drop it

over the Middle East to help them win their good wars. Vacuum energy is to a cubic meter

of nothing what nuclear energy is to a gram of something . A cubic meter of empty space

does not appear to contain any energy at all, that is until we understand about the zero -

point and manage to find a way to release the energy that is within this cubic meter of

nothing (which we now have found). Vacuum energy is incredibly abundant of course.

There are many cubic meters of nothingness around us, more than we can comprehend,

and, unlike nuclear energy, vacuum energy does not release harmful by-products. But using

it, putting that energy at work, would ultimately produce heat just like using any other

energy form and we would be able to use truly unlimited amount of vacuum energy and

release unlimited amount of heat whereas we are limited in our use of nuclear energy. To

my knowledge no-one has done an in-depth analysis of what would be the consequences of

playing with these amounts of energy over a long period of time. Ironically it could very well

be that our use of dirty non-free energy is what has so far saved us from ourselves.

Gaia oil on linen AlexGrey


5/7

Lets now look at the other side of the energy equation, the demand side, and see how

working on this side is the only sensible solution to our energy crisis.

Our so-called energy needs have steadily increased since the industrial revolution . It

seems that the more were given, the more we believe that we need and the more we want,

just like kids with ice cream. We seem to have reached a point where we are completely

confused, not knowing what the difference could possibly be between needs and wants ,

let alone whats good for us and our children. For example, once upon a time we were

happy with one single warm room to settle in to together at night around the fire while it

was freezing in all the other rooms. I remember my aunty putting me to bed under 3

blankets in a non heated bedroom in Belgium. Today, we need central heating so that all

the rooms are equally warm at any point in time. The kids have individual TV sets in th eir

rooms and they each want to watch their favourite TV program. This is what we call ourway of life; this is what Toni Blair said that we wont let these Muslim religious fanatics

destroy, our way of life.

Then, we have more cars per person than ever, we fly to more exotic holiday destinations as

ever and we build bigger houses, not just one but two or three, there is no limit. But each

car, each house, each TV set, each computer, each plane that we build require materials,

metal, wood, plastic etc... These materials in turn require the harvesting of forests or the

mining of minerals that we take from the earth.

This is how our demand not only for energy but also for primary materials has increased to a

point that, were the people of China and India to adopt the same way of life, there would

simply not be enough resources available on earth to meet the demand. This is not an

energy problem, it is a resource problem.

I live in a small village in the Andes Mountains of a small country called Ecuador. Here, the

majority of people are poor and their footprints on planet earth ar e tiny. They build simple

earth houses, wash their clothes by hand in the river and have no car. Many have never

travelled outside of their country. Their houses have no heating, they cook on firewood or

gas and their entire house would easily run on one single 10 Amp fuse to light the TV set and

the few light bulbs that th ey have. Meeting their energetic demand is a lot easier than

meeting the demand of the average European or North American family.

For generations, the people of Ecuador have only known their traditional ways of producing

food which requires virtually no energy. The seeds are sown, the irrigation water is collected

from the mountains and conveyed by canal, the food is harvested by hand and transported

on horseback to the markets. People come to the markets to buy the produce that they

carry in baskets or other forms of non disposable containers. For generations, people have


6/7

thrown what they dont want (AKA rubbish ) through the windows, subconsciously

knowing that banana peels and chicken bones will all disappear soon thanks to the dogs, the

ants, the bugs, the soil flora... Mother earth knows what to do with flesh and bones. Today

they still throw the things that they dont want through the window and it is still called

rubbish. The difference is that today it is made out of plastic bags, plastic bottles and a

myriad of non organic non bio-degradable objects. The people dont seem to have realised

yet that their rubbish no longer goes away as it used to. Or maybe they have but dont know

what to do about it and have decided to look the other way . Who are we to blame? An

outside observer of our own societies would probably conclude that we dont seem to have

realised yet that the smoke from our cars is killing us. We are no better.

We use the word sustainable all the time as if sustainable necessarily means good. Well,

as long as we stay away from nuclear weapons or the infamous WMDs, we seem to have

achieved sustainable war, havent we? War can go on forever and appears to be quite

sustainable. Dont smile. This is in effect what the WMD business is about. Making war is OK

as long as it does not kill too many too fast, as long as it of the conventional kind and not

the mass destructive kind, in other words, as long as it is sustainable.

Is planting alcohol producing crops to be used as an energy source for cars sustainable? And

if it is, does this fact make it good? What does the word sustainable actually mean? Think

about it. Does it mean that we can do it for a very long time? In that case, fossil energy has

been quite sustainable! Does it mean that we can do it forever? We can hardly think more

than 10 years ahead at the be st of time, less for our politicians. How could we possibly

comprehend the concept of forever? If it means forever, w hy would we think that running

millions of car engines on hybrid battery systems would be sustainable? How many batteries

can we manufacture before we run into new problems such as lead or mercury pollution?Batteries last 5 years and that is if you look after them and never let them go flat. Where do

they go after that? Do we want landfills with 10 billion batteries in them as the sustaina ble

solution to our problems?

Lets forget about solar panels and windmills and hydro, we are told. That is the kids

playground. Lets go and play with the grownups. Lets focus on real free energy solutions

such as the energy of vacuum, cold fusion, cool devices that produce more than they

require, seemingly violating the first principle of thermodynamics. To hell thermodynamics!

These devices work, they are real, they are the future, we are told. The reason why they are

not here yet, you see, is because they have been suppressed. So, we just need tounsuppress them and the world is on its way to happiness, finally, right?

I have explained above that the energy released by these free energy devices would still

ultimately be converted into heat and just that means that we could not use that energy in

unlimited quantities forever . But there is another aspect. No matter how free the energy

they produce is, these pieces of gear must be manufactured just like anything else.

Depending on what is required to build them and how many are needed for worldwide use,


7/7

the technology could be scalable or not, I dont know. That is not the main point though.

The main point is that we still havent addressed the demand side of our energy equation.

We are still with our nose glued on the supply side of it .

What we need to do is to ask ourselves the very fundamental question: what is it that we

really need to take us where we want to go? There are two sides to this question : thewhere and the how. First, we need to know where it is that we want to go. Then only, we

can ask ourselves how to get there, in that order preferably.

The problem is that the where part of the question is extremely hard to answer bec ause

the question is outside the realm of technology and science. The question is a philosophical

question that can only be answered from within, not from without. It used to be the

prerogative of philosophers, wise men, healers, priests ... to address this important question

of where exactly it is that we are going as a society. Not anymore. With this sense of

direction lost, we seem to be paddling in circles, only knowing th at we want to go faster, but

faster to where??

So, my solution to the energy problems of our times is to get back to that question of where

we want to go as a species. In the course of the doing that, we will inevitably hit the demand

side of the energy equation. How much energy do we actually need and what do we want to

do with it and why? Do we really need more energy? Could we not, God Forbid, for a minute

consider reducing our demands and needs which would in turn reduce the pressure on our

environment?

In the end it boils down to being versus having versus doing. We have become

obsessed with the latter two. Having gives us status. Doing keeps us busy and distracted.

Both give us identity and feed our egos. Even having good things, such as an art collection or

a wonderful home or a ranch with beautiful horses is still having. Even doing good things

such as leading the free energy movement, the 9/11 movement or the Vilcabamba landfill

management project is still doing. People love having and doing. Having and doing require

a lot of energy and admittedly if the energy was free and non-polluting, it would allow us to

have more and do more. Being is harder. Being does not require energy. One can sit under a

tree for 4 hours and be. We need to learn to be more, have less and do less.

The people of Vilcabamba and other villages of Ecuador can help us because many are doing

just that: have little, do enough, be plenty. Instead of teaching them what to do to become

like us, we need to watch them more, let the deep silence of the mountain fill up our hearts

and start being.

free energy: the other side of the coin

Documents