Energy

The Japanese nuclear disaster of early 2011 was of sufficient gravity that it generated a wave of nuclear rebuttal by European nations, notably Germany. As nuclear energy thus appears less plausible as a global energy source, and green options such as solar, wind, and geothermal remain underdeveloped, the global population faces a huge and seemingly insurmountable energy problem.

The combination of a burgeoning global population hungry for energy, with a roster of energy options that, after the Japanese nuclear disaster, contains fewer if not few plausible options, has heightened, indeed made critical, the need for the most pointed, dispassionate, and social energy analysis and concomitant solution available.

Acquisition of energy is presently the overwhelming, if not singular focus in our energy dilemma. In contrast, engineering a social condition that actually requires less energy in the first place is largely ignored. The colossal need for energy is taken as a fait accompli, and indeed under capitalism it is.

However, since under a cooperative system industries such as banking, finance, accounting, advertising, and marketing, as well as manifold lines of product design and manufacturing would simply not exist, and other lines of industrial production would likely find dramatic reduction such as automobiles in the face of development of efficient mass transportation sources like bus and rail, a massive amount of energy would likely be saved, and the global aggregate energy requirement would accordingly decrease substantially (along with several categories of environmental pollution and human ill-health).

This dramatically reduced energy requirement can only occur under a cooperative system, however, because under capitalism many socially unnecessary industries such as those listed above, as well as armies of individual products, will continue to exist and require a massive amount of aggregate energy in their design, marketing, and manufacture. Indeed, the laws of capitalism dictate that such economic activity must continue, for when factories shut down workers lose jobs and thus cannot readily purchase goods and services, which depresses other industries as their factories in turn shut down, creating a cascade of economic deterioration. Under a CS, in striking, powerful, and pregnant contrast, the simplification of life will include industrial production, which in its simplified form will likely require far less energy. Thus the reduced total energy requirement will elevate less developed and available forms such as solar, wind, and geothermal to a position of greater plausibility and importance in the energy mix.

Green forms of energy would also be more feasible under a CS because their design, manufacture, and implementation would no longer be linked to the need to produce profit. Thus, all aspects of energy would proceed solely on the basis of social need, in intersection with available natural and human resources. Thus does transition to a moneyless cooperative system provide the only possibility for a realistic and permanent approach to the energy problem. It will likely not solve the problem immediately, but will do something essential that capitalism simply cannot do:  provide the conditions for the eventual generation and development of a complete and permanent solution, or close approximation.

And not just for energy, but indeed for all the many problems capitalism creates or exacerbates, as described and explained throughout this web site.