Its not as bad as you think
| 20 January 2012
Today Ray Kurzweil announced the launch of the Abundance Book which promotes the simple message that "we're living during an incredible day and age" .. "the realization that the world is getting better at an accelerating rate". Having just watched Cool It by Bjørn Lomborg I'm totally up for the positive outlook; concentrating on what we can do right now to make the world a better place. AVIF's volunteers do that every time they get involved - they make change - and with good reason. It feels good. I haven't read the book yet (currently shipping internationally for $24 + $7.99) but it WILL make you feel good and positive about our future. The books authors are true change makers. Dr. Peter Diamandis is the Chairman and CEO of the X PRIZE Foundation, which leads the world in designing and launching large incentive prizes to drive radical breakthroughs for the benefit of humanity. Best known for the $10 million Ansari X PRIZE for private spaceflight and the $10 million Progressive Automotive X PRIZE for 100 mile-per-gallon equivalent cars, the Foundation is now launching prizes in Exploration, Life Sciences, Energy, and Education. Diamandis speaks about the "explosion in connectedness around the world" and uses the illustration of a maasai warrior with a mobile phone ... cue Jackson, our host in Nkiito, Amboseli!.
The book explains 4 major powers of force that are aiding the changes we need to make. Written also by Steven Kotler, bestselling author, award-winning journalist & co-founder and Director of Research at the Flow Genome Project, an international organization devoted to putting flow state research on a hard science footing. He's also the co-founder of the New Mexico-based Rancho de Chihuahua dog sanctuary n'awwwww !
Here are 2 technologies the book talks about that WILL change the world.
- Dickson Despommier's Vertical Farms could solve the problem of finding the resources to feed the growing population. "By the year 2050, nearly 80% of the earth's population will reside in urban centers". An estimated area of new land about 20% greater than the entire country of Brazil will be needed to grow enough food. For places like China, India, ALL the Arab Emirates where there's a lot of people and limited farmable land Vertical farms could be built. The incredible part is the cycles sustainability .. "nothing leaves the building except the produce". The system even cleans water and coupled with ancilliary services alongside; grow wheat - make flour & bake bread next door - the system will employ more and more people.
Of course these buildings are capital intensive but as Bjørn proves in Cool It - we've got the funds available - especially with all the Techophilanthropists that will be made in the near future, in addition to the likes of Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg et al.
- Dean Kamen’s Unique Slingshot Water Purifier. Kamen is well-known as the entrepreneur and wild-eyed inventor of the highly promoted Segway scooter. For almost 20 years he has been creating "a radically new way to purify water" thats cheap, extremely energy efficiency and portable.
"Every 8 seconds one child dies from diseases that are related to untreated water. The primary cause for 80% of all sicknesses that are easily preventable in 3rd world developing nations is the lack of clean drinking water".
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Kamen’s refrigerator-sized water purifier makes 10 gallons of fresh clean water in 1 hour requiring only 500 watts of electrical power. It employs heat to distill, boil and condense water and then recycles the energy, using the heat captured from his self-developed generator. It is "elegantly simple and maintenance free" able to purify water containing lead, copper and other heavy metals, arsenic poison, latrine waste, crawling parasites, chemical waste and even ocean water!
Kamen states 95% reliability and has made various partnerships with African countries. Now we need a cost-effective smaller "home" version or help with distribution and we know how easily and quickly that will happen simply by looking at the size of Jackson's mobile phones.
Lastly I wanted to write about the incredibly simple back-to-basics way to source scarce water. Our project to drill a borehole well has a cost coming in at £19,000 for a 320m well. This is a lot of money. We're being advised by the established Kenyan-based wwwTAKAfrica.org who mentioned that they'd heard a story about a Dutchman who's invented a way for any community to drill their own well. Enter FLOFLO and Floris de Vos.
The video is self-explanatory and the system so simple that with a team already established in Kenya we're hoping to buy a kit and training for the Nkiito community to drill for their own water supply. TAK Africa will advise along the way and provide pumps and maintenance programmes such as flo feeders for separate cattle drinking. 2012 is really shaping up well.
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