Do You Know?

John Darvill

1990

Published in:

The Northwest Technocrat, 3rd quarter 1990, No. 320

...The environment band wagon is beginning to roll, and some strange groups are clambering aboard. Recently at a gathering held at the Mall in Washington D.C., which was called EarthTec 90, who the participants were was interesting to say the least. Among them was Waste Management, the largest publicly held company in the waste business; one of its affiliates is facing a $44.5 million fine for improperly burning hazardous wastes. DuPont is the producer of Freon and other hazardous chemicals. Ciba-Geigy was indicted in 1985 on thirty-five counts connected to illegal dumping on its landfill in Toms River, New Jersey and in the Atlantic Ocean. Browning Ferris Industries (B.F.I.), another giant in the waste management business, in March was fined $1.55 million for 1,400 hazardous waste disposal violations at a Louisiana facility. The smell of money is in the air; "cleaning up the environment", "save the planet", what stirring phrases to convince the gullible public to part with their money. Earth Day has come and gone; many prominent citizens put in an appearance at events across the land, arriving in limousines, and then, having done their duty, returned to their lavish homes and heated swimming pools, secure in the knowledge that they had played their part in saving the planet. It will become a boondoggle of major proportions, and, despite spending over a trillion dollars in an effort to control pollution, little has been accomplished. Standard pollution emissions such as dust, sulphur-dioxide, carbon-monoxide, carbon-dioxide and nitrogen-oxides have declined by only 18% since 1975, and not at all since 1982.

...For each gallon of gasoline it consumes, every automobile now on the road produces nearly 20 pounds of carbon-dioxide (CO₂). In total, automobiles in the United States annually produce 677 million tons of CO₂, an amount equal to the annual output of 170 typical coal-fired electrical generating plants. Oil imports have risen from 37% of the oil consumed in the U.S. in the early 1980s to over 46% in 1989, and are expected to surpass 50% within the next few years. In 1989, cars, trucks and other U.S. transportation activities consumed 3.6 billion barrels of crude oil, 36% more oil than the total of all domestic petroleum production. This oil-use accounted for more than 27% of all U.S. energy consumption and is equal to over five times the maximum annual capacity of the Alaskan oil pipeline. Automobiles consume the greatest share of this energy, accounting for almost 41% of all the fuel used for transportation activities in 1989. The above is contained in a report issued by Public Citizen, Critical Mass Energy Project, Washington, D.C.

...An ominous bill is being prepared in the Canadian House of Commons; it is Bill C-15 The Plant Breeders Rights Act. It will allow plant breeders to obtain patents on plant material that they develop. The government likes it because funding for research and development would be shifted to the private sector. The companies like it because they will collect royalties on plant material that they will have patents on. Vic Althouse, MP (member of parliament) for MacKenzie District in Saskatchewan states, "Profit will be the chief driving force; it will not be finding a better plant." What follows plant patenting? -- animal patenting, then human tissue patenting. This is another indication of government furthering the interests of business to the detriment of the general well-being. It makes one wonder how many other secret protocols are being worked out by government officials which will benefit business enterprise to the detriment of the general-well- being.

...In the early 1920s, the Technical Alliance, the research group which preceded the organization Technocracy Inc., and upon whose findings the design of Technocracy is based, introduced the Energy Certificate to effect a means of distribution based upon the use of energy as a means of measuring production and distribution. For the details of this method we refer the reader to the Technocracy publication "The Energy Certificate". While the "Energy Certificate" specifications spelled out the concepts of a proper distribution system, there have been continual improvements in the technology. There is now a product called Lasercard and it employs a technique known as WORM (write once, read many) -- that is, whatever is etched into its memory is there forever. The card will hold up to 2.6 megabytes of information; that is about 1,000 typed pages. It could keep track of all the information required, health records, driver's license, address and all information necessary for a distribution system based on energy. In other words it will do all of the things required of the Energy Certificate. As first stated by Technocracy, "The Energy Certificate" would be much more efficient and practical then the medium of exchange we refer to as money. It would make the distribution of abundance possible, eliminate the archaic Price System and enable many of today's serious problems to be dealt with.

...There is a great difference between what is achieved and what is achievable. Even if we consider the best aspects of our present society, it falls far short of what it could be capable of. We will never achieve our potential, much less solve our growing social problems within the framework of the obsolescent Price System. As long as monetary expedience is our prime consideration, the problems we now face will become more serious and complex. We must concern ourselves with function; we must operate things as they were designed; we must so order our physical equipment that it will bring about the greatest possible amount of material benefits and freedom for all. We must organize our technology to benefit mankind -- not to destroy him, and the Technocracy design for an abundant life makes this possible. INVESTIGATE IT.

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