A most enjoyable read! Where there is light there is hope!

The solar storm of 2029? Well, that's not due for 6 years yet and time to protect sensitive electrical equipment with Faraday cages.

AS for the prediction per se. We don't have to face that possibility, if we transition to abundant nuclear power as MSR thorium by 2025! And only doable with a change of government at the very next election!

As for those telegraph operators in 1959, and I was around, their hair quite literally stood on end and a good time to get a flat top crew cut.

By all accounts a pair of hedge trimmers and a steady hand all that was required. One chop all that was required. The spare hair didn't fall but headed skyward and into orbit. It was a hair-raising event. TBC.
Alan B.

Why wait for solar storms?

We should indeed wean ourselves of electricity and electronics, but not for the reasons stated in the article (zero carbon and all that rubbish), nor for panic of the ultimate solar storm which will destroy all electrical/electronic equipment in a day, a storm that might come tomorrow, in 2029 or perhaps only in 3039.

Instead we should do so comfortably, consciously and very gradually, gently leaning towards having less of it rather than more, dropping it with ease in small bits as spiritual contentment replaces material expectations and makes all these gadgets unnecessary. No problem at all if that effortless process takes some 200-300 years.

Yuyutsu, every pensioner is already doing with a lot less especially winter heating and summer heatwave air-conditioning. Had to sell the car because I couldn't pass a alleged medical for my licence renew. Sure, I had trouble getting from wheelchair to car. But aside from that still a good driver. That said, as a pensioner, not able to afford a car, fuel registration and upkeep. I manage on one or two meals (small) a day. Online scammers are busy trying to sell me stuff I don't need. At exorbitant prices. Like my drivers are out of date!? Nonetheless, still work as well when they were first programmed in. All this stuff about out of date drivers is fairly new and a scam, I believe. I was raised poor had SFA and know how to manage on virtually nothing. Take extreme objection by being told we need to manage on less.

As a remedy for energy that has become increasingly unaffordable. I believe the solution is not to use les and less but to manage with enough already and for mine that also includes energy that is not priced out of the poorest folk's pockets.

That means MSR thorium and MSR nuclear waste burners for energy that is so cheap and as safe as!

Moreover, burning nuclear waste as outlined incomplete safety, reduces the half-life to just 300 years. And a more than worthwhile outcome as we currently struggle under mountains of toxic nuclear waste. Why even weapons grade plutonium can be burned in the same technology for the same outcome.

At least two thirds of the homes on planet earth have no washing machine and some even have to carry the wash water or the laundry to the water. It's just inexplicable that you would believe these folk could manage with less. Shame on you, get out of your bubble and take a look at the real world.
Alan B.

incomplete safety should read, in complete safety. Thankyou autocorrect.
Alan B.

No, try 'incomplete', one word.

I admit that I lost interest in this article after a couple of lines. People who study writing are told to grab attention right at the beginning. This piece didn't.

Dear Alan,

I am sorry to hear about your health and financial situation.

I am not a nuclear expert, but yes, Thorium seems to be a nice possibility for the medium-term future. However, my comment was about the long-term future where hopefully we will not be requiring electricity any more, from any source.

Yuyutsu, In that case you need to change the we to I, given you can only speak for yourself and no other. I don't see any practical reason for your attitude and hope that the powers that be don't ever consider your flawed economic rationale.

That said, we can have a future where there's no longer designed obsolescence. And as much practical recycling as possible.

The later only doable if the energy component is truly affordable as well as being carbon free, i.e., MSR thorium and accompanied by power prices as low as 3 cents or less PKWH. If that's what you mean by doing with a little less, then we are in agreement.
Alan B.

There was one of those events about 20 years ago when it blacked out
Ontario, the NE US states and if I remember blacked out New York for
a short time.
They are real and such a major event that lasted for a day would shut
the whole earth down for a considerable time.
One of these events was featured in a BBC drama called COBRA and
featured a simulation of the real British Government COBRA committee.
In that story a main grid transformer was burnt out and a replacement
took a week to be transported from Germany to Britain.
The chaos with people that occurred was probably a good indication
of what would happen in real life.
Such an event would be no fun !

«Yuyutsu, In that case you need to change the we to I»

Well personally I have no plans to remain here that long, but I do not envy the new generations who will have to live with all this mess.

«I don't see any practical reason for your attitude and hope that the powers that be don't ever consider your flawed economic rationale.»

My rationale is anything but economic, my rationale is to overcome our present condition of slavery to material economy. I wouldn't expect these "powers to be" to willingly consider any move that would undermine their control.

«That said, we can have a future where there's no longer designed obsolescence.»

That would be wonderful.

«And as much practical recycling as possible.»

No matter what we do or don't, if the aim is to accommodate more human population then something or the other is bound to fail.

«if the energy component is truly affordable as well as being carbon free»

I don't see why either is necessary.

We are addicted to "energy", myself included, and the way to go is to gradually wean ourselves of that dependency.

If you want to use thorium in the interim, that looks fine to me.

Bazz,
Yes, I remember hearing about that North American event too. But it wasn't an inevitable feature of large electricity grids, but rather a result of underinvestment in electricity infrastructure. A well designed (and well built) grid would've been able to withstand that sort of trouble.

_____________________________________________________________________________

Yuyutsu,
Life can't function without energy, and trying to ween ourselves off the convenient forms of it would only result in us devoting far more of our lives to gaining it.

Human population is not growing exponentially, but it is growing. Accommodating more people is a necessity, and not bound to fail at all.

Dear Aidan,

It is not about the population still growing because human population is already many orders of magnitude too high.

Technology, including artificial energy-production, is not about convenience but about containment of that many humans. As population numbers increase there will be crisis after crisis and yes, technology may still be able to continue filling the gaps, allowing more people to survive.

So if biological survival is the goal, if life has no other purpose, then you are right.

Electrical production (from any source) and consumption cannot be done by a single person, nor even with the help of one's family, extended family, one's friends, and I doubt whether even all one's acquaintances can produce a working light-bulb (let alone a LED). One can inherit a working generator and if lucky it might even work for a generation or two, but after a while it will wear down and no single person (or family, etc.) can replace its failed parts on their own.

This means that we depend on strangers, many strangers we are unlikely to ever meet, and that paves the way for kings and rulers of sorts to take control of our lives, so we too must work for strangers.

Thus we must decide: freedom or electricity, can't have both.

When we consider how much we directly and indirectly work for having comforts like electricity, we find that it's the vast majority of our time, that we struggle on our back-foot to serve the system, that we have less available time than in previous centuries, that we don't even get enough sleep in 24-hours, including for example because we must study many years to specialise enough to get a job serving strangers; and increasingly now, because we must protect our gadgets from "identity" theft, where previously we did not even need an "identity".

Electricity seems comfortable at the moment because we are addicted to it and I am not suggesting a cold-turkey approach, just very gradually over several generations letting go of one or two electrical gadgets at a time that we can easily do without.

Yuyutsu,
>It is not about the population still growing because human population is already many orders of magnitude too high.
Too high for what purpose? And who are you to say what the human population should be?

Of course we depend on strangers. Self sufficiency's overrated. It may make good TV, but in reality it doesn't make sense to devote so much time to stuff you're neither good at nor enjoy.

>and that paves the way for kings and rulers of sorts to take control of our lives,
No it doesn't. They were far more powerful over people's lives before electricity was available.

>Thus we must decide: freedom or electricity, can't have both.
I'd much rather have the practical freedom of what electricity enables me to do than the hypothetical freedom of life without it.

Dear Aidan,

Obviously we want different things:

You seem to prioritise survival and comfort while I prioritise freedom.

«Too high for what purpose? And who are you to say what the human population should be?»

Too high to avoid slavery and forced regimentation.
I say that human population should be as low as necessary to allow enough space for those who do not wish to live under the rule of society(s) whose values and morals they don't share, to go elsewhere and live decently either on their own or with other like-minded people.

I estimate that limit to be around 100 to 200 million people.

«Self sufficiency's overrated.»

Depends on what you want. I want freedom.

Now let's admit that we are both addicted to certain comforts, including electricity, that we both would find it extremely difficult to live without. Addicted people don't want their addictions to be taken away and cannot see beyond: again, I'm not suggesting cold-turkey, nobody is going to snatch away your electricity which you became so used to. One day, you or your grand-grand-grand-children will by themselves realise that keeping it isn't worth the prices, meanwhile I only advise baby-steps to start this blessed process.

Please also note that self-sufficiency isn't necessary: smaller independent societies are also good enough, within which there will still be a degree of specialisation, thus no one needs to "devote so much time to stuff you're neither good at nor enjoy". At present, while we not so much do stuff we're not good at, most of us spend a lot of time doing stuff they don't enjoy.

«They were far more powerful over people's lives before electricity was available.»

We may need to go a bit further back in time when people could and did escape when they so wished, but for example, should another Hitler arrive today, not a single Jew would be able to escape, whether hiding in forests, in monasteries, inside fake walls, underground, or Jewish babies adopted by Christian families, with present technology all will be rounded and murdered, possibly by AI robots without human touch.