I want to get off this
rock for a little while,
so that's what
we're going to do.
We're going to look at global
sustainability from a unique perspective.
Of course, being the science
techno-geek person that I am,
having worked with the space
shuttle and somewhat immersed
in a lot of the
technological references
that enable an RBE to
exist in the first place,
I decided to take this
venture from Mars to Earth,
kind of going a different way.
When you think about space exploration,
it's usually the other way around,
going from Earth to somewhere.
Well, let's flip it.
So space exploration and sustainability:
what is that all about?
Well, when you do
anything in space,
it is inherent into the system
that you need to be sustainable.
There is no Walmart,
thank God, in orbit.
[Laughter]
So, you sort of want to plan accordingly,
to maximize the efficiency
of the International Space
Station, or shuttle missions,
or Dragon Missions from Space X,
or whatever the case may be.
So what you do in this case is:
Let's do a Mars Base thought experiment
and isolate some of the variables
that would be the most
important and most relevant
to living on a hostile world that
wasn't really designed for us.
Basic necessities of life:
air, food, water,
sleep, medical care.
Then you ask yourself "Can
those be provided in a way
such that the astronauts don't
have to be the stewards
of their own habitat
all day long?"
In fact, any researchers
going to Mars,
their job is not to be the
maid of their building.
It's to go out and drive and explore
and dig up dirt and rocks ... right?
So, you would want to make sure that
everything you put into their habitat
is as automated as possible,
sustainable as possible,
self-correcting as possible.
And that also falls into the
shelter, clothing, education,
energy, transportation and
communication aspect as well.
Shelter's kind of a
funny one, right?
On Earth, we can-...
clothing too:
technically you can walk
around naked under stars
and you'll be perfectly fine,
unless it's winter in New England.
But, on Mars, you can't
quite do it that way.
Your shelter is a life
preserver in and of itself
because of the
Martian atmosphere.
Your space suit is a life preserver
for the exact same reason.
And so, some of that is also
built into a sustainable aspect.
So, let's say something
breaks on my space suit,
and I need to rapidly
knock off a part.
Do I want to bring a whole
bunch of parts with me,
that have mass and require
bigger rockets to get up there?
Or, do I bring a 3D printer
and just knock off what I
might need in the interim?
And so when you're looking
at space exploration,
something to consider
is abundance:
having more than enough to
suit the needs of the region,
and by far probably one of
the most important aspects
for us to live, peacefully.
I typically tell this story, and
most people can resonate with it.
We have a room full of people here.
If I put you all on a stranded island
with one coconut tree, no matter
how awesome you think you are,
and how peaceful you
are, at some point
you're probably gonna come to blows
because there just isn't enough,
and so negative behaviors
are going to manifest.
But if I put all of you on an island
with an abundance of coconut trees
and food resources, you're not going
to have a need to behave that way.
So, you would also do that, obviously,
in any space exploration mission,
but it would also
translate back home.
But in space we have
technical abundance.
You can't really farm
the land on Mars.
So you need to have certain
ways, and air creation
(being able to have breathable air),
water recycling systems, and what-not.
It's all done through
technical means.
It's the ability to produce an abundance
with minimum human labor input.
It goes back to the point of, what do
you want your astronauts doing all day?
What do you want your
researchers doing all day?
So, in order to give them the
time to go do the awesome stuff
that they got educated to
go do in the first place,
it's an absolute necessity
on a Mars base.
So: from Mars to Earth, let's
reverse gears. All right.
Can we do that on Mars?
Yeah, we can.
In fact, we've had NASA and other
space exploration institutes
have had designs and plans on the
books for moon bases, for lunar bases
and Mars bases for quite some time,
and I mean 30, 40, 50 years,
some of it rudimentary, or even
better now than we were then,
but the concepts
are still sound.
So if we can do that there, why the ...
aren't we doing it here?
[Applause]
What I'm gonna do in the interest of
time is to isolate two key examples,
just something to think about:
biological need of food,
and a quality-of-life need of energy.
Energy is an amazing thing.
If you look at the development of
human civilization throughout time,
energy- harnessing energy- is by
far the dominant characteristic
that changes our
quality of life.
So let's look at technical
abundance for food.
You have hydroponics,
aquaponics,
sciences that are relatively
new in some respects,
as far as our ability to apply
reasons why this stuff works:
technical know-how,
technical capabilities,
that allow us to grow without
the need of using soil at all.
Then you have self-sustaining
systems that can regulate
with sensors and monitors, pH-balance
adjusters, things like that,
to make sure that the water is
great for the plants and the fish.
Clean energy power systems
(which I'll touch on in a bit),
and it can be highly automated.
Now, I'm not saying that
such systems would be completely
void of human interaction.
But then again, they
don't have to be.
You're going to have people that
want to trim the tomato plants,
that enjoy getting into
the plants and stuff.
So it's not so much that we
have to automate all of it-
that's it, that's what we have
to do- like some dictatorship.
It's about automating as much
as we can, so that the person
who is the agriculturist that just
loves to grow spinach or what not,
can go in there and just do the
minimal things that they want to do,
and then spend the rest of the
day hanging out with the kids,
or enjoying life, or
learning something
and really reinvigorating
that whole family unit
that seems to be disintegrating
a lot these days.
And then you look at our
clean energy needs.
We all... far too many people
actually don't understand
the clean energy potential,
that we have on this planet.
This planet is bombarded
on a regular basis
by a boatload of
energy from the sun.
We have wind, we
have wave, tidal,
hydro, geothermal ways
of harnessing energy,
and it's not like 'free' energy as if
it comes from some invisible ether,
all you're doing is converting
from one form to another,
and we're getting really good at
converting Earth's energy potential
into something we can use.
So you have ideas like this, where
you take vertical axis wind turbines
and put them on the light posts that
you're electric car would drive by,
for example. You zip by at 60 mph,
and somebody else zips by at 60 mph,
that little wind turbine is
'gonna haul ass', spinning.
And what's it going to
do when it does that?
Generate power, which is going to
charge a battery in the bottom.
And then at night time, what's going
to turn on the light?: the battery
that was charged by the people
who drove by during the day.
No grid.
The whole pole runs itself.
[Applause]
So if we implemented abundant solution
sets for our most basic needs-...
there's the question, isn't it?
Of course, most of the people in here
probably know the answer to this one.
Can the current socioeconomic
system we live in now
actually handle such robust
global sustainability?
No.
[Laughter]
It was never designed to.
It served a purpose to get
us to where we are, right?
I akin it to this: are you bitter or
mad at the pants you used to wear
when you were 9 years old?
No. When you were 9 years old
the pants served a purpose, right?
They fit you, they worked.
And then you outgrew the pants.
[Applause]
So we need new pants.
So what do we have now?
A system based on scarcity.
What we're moving towards-...
and this is a very organic movement.
Yes, The Zeitgeist Movement is a
representation of a train of thought
that a lot of people cling onto, and there
are other groups and organizations.
It's like ... a good chunk of the
world is starting to wake up.
I blame the Internet a lot, because
now we're able to share information
in such a way that people are going
"What the fuck are we doing?!"
[Laughter]
We have a system based on
inefficient human labor.
Let's go to technical labor to
cover most of the labor needs.
Cyclical growth and consumption on a finite planet?
That's a brilliant idea!
Let's be a bunch of bacteria in a Petri
dish, and grow and grow and grow,
and then when we reach the maximum
size of the Petri dish, we die.
'Cause that's what happens!
Science, people, wake up!
And so, when you look at the finite
carrying capacity of the Earth,
it would make sense to
manage what you're doing
and limit that whole 'growth
forever' thought process.
A system based on ownership and
control, is what we have now.
We know we're all moving towards
usership and open access,
open source of information
and ideas, even blueprints
and thought process, 3D
printers, the list goes on.
Outdated multi-century old
ideologies and institutions:
I think that has been hammered
pretty good up to this point
by the great speakers before me.
We need a forward-thinking, adaptive
and emergent train of thought
in society that says "Just
because it worked yesterday
doesn't mean that it's
going to work tomorrow."
Like the sciences do, keep punching
at your theories until they break,
and then when they break, go "Sweet!
Now I have a better idea."
[Applause]
We have a system based
on hostile competition,
secrecy and
differential advantage.
What we need is a more cooperative,
collaborative system of ideas
for information and
mutual benefit.
And then political
opinion (yay- politics)
dictate the ebb and flow
of global operations,
including corporate
influence on government.
Quite obviously, that's not a very
good idea for moving forward.
So mankind needs to upgrade its
global OS (its operating system).
You can call it an RBE, a Natural
Earth, a Star Trek economy,
what the hell ever else you want
to call it, doesn't matter.
There are a lot of different names
for the same general concept.
Just remember this:
there are no utopias.
As you notice, there's kind of a
theme with this 'no utopia' thing.
There are always going to be
problems and things to tackle,
like building that Mars base.
That's going to be a pain in the ass.
It's going to be great. It's going to be fun.
It's going to be challenging.
It's gonna cause us to rethink all
kinds of ways of doing things.
So there are going
to be challenges.
So you're going to need new
tools and new ways of thinking,
and I akin that back
to the utopian idea,
to the hunter-gatherers
of 50,000 years ago.
Try to explain today, just try
to explain air-conditioning-...
they're going to call
you a utopianist!
"Wait, I can sit in one building
all day and call that my home?
And go to a store that has all kinds
of stuff, and it's shipped all over?
What the hell's the Internet?
And what's that? Phone? Satellites? What?!"
OK, the list could go on
for a really long time.
Transitioning, how do we get there from here?
I love the transition question.
"Transition: I want an
itemized 1 through 27 list
of exactly what
we're going to do!"
[Laughter]
You can't even do that
looking through history
at transitions that happened,
that we know happened,
because they frickin' happened, you know?
Agricultural to industrial, whatever.
It's a piecewise meal of several
functions and variables;
I can probably do calculus
on the damn stuff.
The point is that it's a
very emergent, flowing,
nebulous move from one
thing to the other.
But in short, it's
an erosion process.
It's basically reducing the
dependency on the current system
and helping to improve, or move to a
different way of thinking and doing things.
There's a lot of ways that
people can go about doing this:
from joining a group
or a network,
starting at their own corporately
social responsible company
that's kind of a hybrid between...
It's like this monetary company, but
it's got an RBE brain behind it,
so the point is to kind of drive yourself
out of business in the long run.
You kind of play the game now,
and then you eventually say
"Good, I don't have to worry about doing
that anymore," something like that.
Start or work for a non-profit,
that can kind of do the same thing.
But also work with what
you're passionate about.
Don't email me saying
"I'm gonna be an engineer
because I think that's
the best thing to do."
[No.] Are you going to be an engineer
because that's what you want to do
or because that's the best thing
you think that needs to be done?
If you happen to be a musician or
an artist or whatever, do that.
Don't just become something
because you think
that's what needs to be
done in that respect.
I don't think you're going to do yourself
or anybody else any major favors
by just jumping into something
because you think it's appropriate.
And so, a quote to end on.
It's always good to have a good quote to end on.
Good old Bucky [R.
Buckminster Fuller]:
"You never change things by
fighting the existing reality.
To change something,
build a new model
that makes the existing
model obsolete."
[Applause]
The Zeitgeist Movement
