A society that does not plan or prepare, that does not consider the consequences of the present and contingencies of the future, a society that lives only for today, the next quarter or the next election is doomed.
Events and a changing reality will, sooner or later, catch up with those that refuse to prepare. Available resources, time and most importantly, wisdom will simply not be at hand to allow us to adapt and recover from foreseeable negative developments - developments that reasonable people would have started to prepare for decades ago.
This “how-to” manual is intended to help Americans effectively and efficiently address a wide variety of problems that now loom darkly on the horizon and which appear to be moving ever closer. It is an action plan to replace inaction.
The various chapters, taken together, will help create a viable, resilient and sustainable oil-free transportation and economic system that can operate in parallel with our existing petroleum based system. We can transfer our economy, bit by bit, to the new, more efficient and oil-free replacement as our present system becomes increasingly more fragile and eventually unsustainable. These plans all rely on mature, proven and economically viable technologies and not the current “Hunt for Miracles” that Secretary of Energy Chu has so aptly described his department’s Advanced Projects Research.
As new technologies develop, as they will, and are debugged and scaled up, our plans can be adjusted to incorporate these new solutions. Yet we can make a viable, workable plan with what we have “on the shelf”, ready to go today. We need not gamble our future on “Just-in-Time Technology” appearing at just the right time and with just the right technology. No miracles are required, simply foresight, persistence and hard work.
This manual will show, as two sides of a coin, how we can keep the US economy from sliding into Third World status while dramatically lowering our energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions. We can divert oil and other consumption that has no lasting value into long lived, productive and energy efficient infrastructure that generates increased high value employment.
An oil-free transportation system can be enthusiastically supported by those who do not acknowledge the gravity or severity of climate change. An oil-free transportation system provides effective and efficient remedies to several critical national problems. However, the creation of an oil-free transportation system is also one of the two most effective ways to control our carbon emissions (the other being conservation & efficiency).
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