[ExI] Obama Transition Team Examining Space Solar Power

[Kevin H]

On Tue, Dec 23, 2008 at 4:38 AM, Dagon Gmail <dagonweb at gmail.com> wrote:

>
>  The only positive thing is that such people will probably be first
>> against the wall in a real breakdown.
>>
>
> I want nobody against a wall, period, but I think we should keep a close
> eye on
> these people, as a society and through our governments. These people have
> means
> and motive for mischief and I don't trust people with these ideas, as
> surely as I wouldn't
> trust those leather-booted angry young men singing, throwing leaflets and
> cursing at the
> bolsjewiks at those neurenberg beer halls.


I just wanted to mention, running off your post, that these people are
perhaps the least of our worries.  Just think what space solar power would
mean to all those countries, companies, government agencies, non-profit
groups, etc., etc., who, today, *depend* on things staying the way they
are.  Consider existing power plants, the people who own a stake in them,
the people who run them, the people who are employed by them; consider
foreign nations for whom their oil resources are their sole link to a
tolerable standard of living; and on and on.  There is more to fear from
desperate people than anyone else.  If Obama, by some stretch of the
imagination, decides to launch some kind of program to make space solar
power feasable, don't you see how many powerful interests such a move would
*rise up to oppose him?*  Just like anything else, there is so much favoring
the status quo.  Which makes what Keith just said sound suspicious to me:

"In late 1975 a team from the just formed L-5 Society went to the limits to
growth conference held that year near Houston.  Dr. Peter Vajk (physics) was
with us so we had the credentials to present power satellites as long term
solution to the energy (resource) limits and to be taken seriously.  We were
nearly kicked out.  It isn't that people disbelieve that there is a solution
to such problems, the _DON'T WANT A SOLUTION_.  A substantial fraction,
perhaps even a majority of the elite, want a collapse.  Exactly why isn't
easy for me to pick out of their rationalizations.  Guilt perhaps, I just
don't know.  I had another of these experiences last week."

I think when I hear things like this there is reason to be at least a little
cynical.  The political barriers may be more dire than the technological
ones.

*Kevin*
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