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Pitch

Moving a ton to move a person on highways is expensive and polluting. Change the network to move only the person; power with sunshine.


Description

Summary

Moving a ton to move a person is expensive, polluting, and accident intensive. Remove these defects converts current costs into value. The IRS allows 56 cent per vehicle-mile for a car. JPods networks remove highway defects, cutting cost to 4 cents per vehicle-mile. It is this 10x cost reduction that will drive the paradigm shift from oil to ingenuity.



Leverage the MIT Campus as a laboratory, support Massachusetts Senate Bill #1837 definition of a regulatory framework that allows private capital to invest in solutions that exceed 120 passenger-miles per gallon. Here is a link to the bill and a hearing with Boston City Council

Start small and iterate relentlessly. Start with the Somerville effort to build the Grand Junction Line then leverage MIT's talented and diverse alumni to initiate solar-powered mobility networks in many more locations.

For the purpose of this summary metrics on JPods networks are used for solar-powered mobility networks. Consider that the Internet is a distributed collaborative computer network that moves data packets. JPods Patent (6,810,187) is for the use of distributed collaborative computer networks to move physical packets, the Physical Internet®. Video (90 seconds)

In human history, transportation has been the catalyst for changing energy systems. People:

  • Rode horse, then harnessed them to plows.
  • Sailed boats, then built windmills.
  • Paddle canoes, then built water wheels.
  • In the 1860 oil cost about $100 a barrel in current dollars. Railroads were the catalyst for changing the economy from biofuels (hay and wood) to fossil fuels.

 

JPods will be the catalyst for changing from fossil fuels to solar. Converting 90% of current energy, accident, and congestion costs into value, starting in niches with short paybacks, and leveraging talent, we can change the lifeblood of economies from oil to ingenuity.


What actions do you propose?

Objective: Answer the call to action of eight Presidents and cut oil use 45% by 2020.

Feasibility: The average American uses 88 megawatt-hours of energy per year. The average German uses 47.8 per year. An industrial economy can be powered using half the energy in the US.
 

Concept: Better physics, leverage history, use the MIT Campus as a laboratory, define metrics, define a regulatory framework, apply MIT talent to power the MIT Campus within a solar budget by 2020 to lead the nation to a sustainable economy.
 

Leadership is essential to create a majority in a democracy willing to take action. A Constitutional framework is used to define actions because if eight Presidents failed, without a Constitutional requirement, significant action such as a 45% cut in oil seems unlikely. 

 

Illicit Energy is dependence on energy outside of self-reliant. It is recommended to read the book "Fiery Trial" to understand how leadership was applied to end Federal support for Illicit Energy from slavery. Hopefully, leadership can be applied before there is a long domestic war to end Federal support for foreign oil.

Leadership must demonstrate to a majority of people that there is a 10x (ten times). Example, cell phones over rotary telephones. Fortunately, current transportation is so inefficient a 10x cut in cost is easy; the hard part is to get permission to implement. By using the MIT as the laboratory, the legal barriers to innovations can be corrected.

Better physics: Burning oil moving a ton to move a person is incredibly expensive and polluting. Repetitive applications of power in start-stops of urban traffic amplify the pollution of moving parasitic mass. The 140,000 miles of freight railroads in the US average 476 ton-miles per gallon by removing repetitive application of power in start-stop. Apply computer networks and robotics to achieve the benefits of freight rail efficiency in urban mobility. Build the Physical Internet®.

Leverage history: Transportation has always been the catalyst for changing energy systems. In history, people:

  • Rode horses, and then harnessed them to plows.
  • Sailed boats, and then built windmills.
  • Paddled canoes, and then built waterwheels.
  • In the 1860s, after railroads chopped down trees around railroads, they tuned their engines to burn coal and oil. This created a stable market for the extraction industries and the cost of extraction dropped from $100 a barrel (current dollars) in 1860 to $3. The energy system shifted from biofuels (hay and wood) to fossil fuels.

 

Use MIT's Campus as a Laboratory: Provide moral support for JPods to build solar solar-powered mobility networks on the Grand Junction Line.

Deploying solar-powered mobility networks in and around the MIT campus is a likely catalyst for changing energy system from oil to solar. For the purpose of this proposal, JPods building on the Grand Junction Line, is used to provide data. JPods is a variety of Personal Rapid Transit (PRT). The PRT network built in Morgantown, WV as a solution to the 1973 Oil Embargo has delivered 110 million oil-free, injury-free passenger-miles since it opened in 1975. Review Congressional Office of Technology Assessment Study PB-244854 (publish in 1974) and the Independent Financial Audit (2010) for background on the efficacy of the Morgantown PRT network.

Define, apply academic rigor, and publish metrics that supports the public's understanding of progress towards a sustainable economy:

  • Parasitic Energy Ratio of Consumption (PERC).  Publish and use the metric of Parasitic Energy Ratio to evaluate transportation modes. This is a very rough, but generally understandable metric. It is a ratio of the kinetic energy of the moving mass divided by the kinetic energy of the payload mass times the number of applications of power. Parameters of velocity and constants cancel leaving Moving Mass divided by Payload Mass times Start-stops. Examples:
  1. "Beam me up, Scotty" would have a perfect Parasitic Energy Ratio of One. No parasitic vehicle mass and only one application of power.
  2. Bike: 3.7 PERC with vehicle mass of 25 pounds, 200 pound person, and 2 Start-stops.
  3. JPods: 6 PERC with vehicle mass of 600 pounds,  and 1.5 Start-stop.
  4. Cars: 160 PERC with vehicle mass of 3000 pounds, 200 pound person, and 10 Start-stops
  5. Buses: 160 PERC with vehicle mass of 4000 pounds, 200 pound person, and 10 Start-stop3
  6. Trains: 130 PERC with vehicle mass of 5000 pounds, 200 pound person, and 5 Start-stops

 

  • Disposable Energy: The metric Gross Domestic Product was designed for Congress in 1933 to encourage consumption and debt. As metric of government economic stewardship it contributed to rapid consumption of fossil fuels, borrowing to fund oil-wars, and pollution driving Climate Change. This metric needs to be displaced by something better. Disposable Energy is a possible option. It is a simple metric of how much energy people can buy with their after tax take-home-pay; how much energy can people buy to power their pursuit of happiness.

 

  • Net Energy: Net Energy measures the efficacy of an energy source. It is a ratio of the energy available to power the economy to the energy required to get that energy to market. The Net Energy of oil in 1910 was 50:1. As oil fields depleted this has dropped below 10:1. Fracked oil and oil-sands have Net Energy of about 3:1. Biofuels have perhaps Net Energy of 1.1:1. Hydrogen has a negative Net Energy. Presentation on Net Energy.

 

  • Travel Time Tax: Some metric of the penalty low income people spend traveling.

 

  • Metric of Logistical Equality: Some metric of the ability of low income and employment poor neighborhoods to receive and ship goods. Typically low income neighborhoods are "food deserts", devoid of grocery stores. They are also devoid of machines shops and other labor intense opportunities that require logics to send and receive goods. The fact the entrepreneurship is alive and well in these communities is illustrated by the number of hair and nail salons. Labor demonstrates a willingness to create work if the logistical burdens are fair. Current government highway and bus policies favor big box stores on major highways against the economic efforts of low income neighborhoods.

 

Establish a regulatory framework. Applying better physics to engineering requires a well-established framework of regulation and common law for capital to risk investing. Two items can be quickly implemented:

  • Pass Massachusetts Senate Bill #1837. This bill repeats the successful model of restoring liberty to the people to choose communications infrastructure in 1982. The roll of government is restricted to enforcing that efficiencies exceed 120 passenger-miles per gallon and safety exceeds those of already approved modes. Bill #1837 specifies the ASTM standards for theme parks to access as safety record thousands of times better than DOT, existing insurance industry, existing enforcement industry, and existing common law.

 

  • Pass at the State and/or Federal level a Tax to Defund Terrorism. To honor the sacrifice of soldiers who bought Americans time be self-disciplined to be energy self-reliant, each Memorial Day increase the tax on foreign oil by $30 per barrel. Has the US military lead defunding terrorism by cutting its use of oil 45% by Memorial Day 2016. This will be a shock to the military, but it has the leadership to adapt.
  •  
  • Require lawmakers recognize the importance of liberty to commercializing sustainable infrastructure:

 

  1. The book "The Wisdom of Crowds" provides case after case to illustrate why free markets and democracy work. The aggregated self-interest of all of us, each acting in our own self-interest is wiser than the wisest of us at choosing between choices. It is the aggregated wisdom from the many that creates the "general welfare".
  2. Who sets the choices becomes critically important. Liberty is societies tolerance for disruptive minorities. There is no minority as tiny and disruptive as inventors.
  3. While Federal central planners set choices in communications infrastructure, liberty was denied and Americans had a century of rotary telephones. After liberty was restored in 1982 niche markets formed and long dormant innovations of the Interent (1969) and radio telephone networks (1946) commercialized.
  4. While Federal central planners set choices in transportation infrastructure we still hae the efficiency of the Model-T (25 mpg) and half the freight rail in the US was abandoned since The Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956 removed efficiency as a market force. Federal central planners borrow money from Posterity to socialize the cost of oil-wars to obtain the energy to power their commercial monopoly.hae the efficiency of the Model-T (25 mpg) and half the freight rail in the US was abandoned since The Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956 removed efficiency as a market force. Federal central planners borrow money from Posterity to socialize the cost of oil-wars to obtain the energy to power their commercial monopoly.

 

The Boston Tea Party was a riot against the King's transportation monopoly. On Sept 14, 1787, by a vote of 8 states to 3 the Framers voted to restrict Federal involvement in infrastructure to no more than delivering letters in defense of free speech by "post Roads" if no other means was practical. Madison explained the Divided Sovereignty of the Preamble, restriction on internal improvements in Federalist #45:

"The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite. The former will be exercised principally on external objects, as war, peace, negotiation, and foreign commerce; with which last the power of taxation will, for the most part, be connected. The powers reserved to the several States will extend to all the objects which, in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives, liberties, and properties of the people, and the internal order, improvement, and prosperity of the State."

Divided Sovereignty was again reinforced in Amendments 9 and 10 of the Bill of Rights. Inventors retain liberty to invent solar-powered mobility networks. People retain liberty to choose cleaner, faster, safer, and more affordable mobility networks. Federal sovereignty is restricted from interferring with the liberty for inventors to offer society options and society to kill off and reward the options which benefit their self-interest.

Massachusetts Senate Bill #1837 restores liberty to inventors and to customers.

Climate Change is the direct consequence of the Federal government violating Divided Sovereignty and the "post Roads" restriction to create commercial monopolies to benefit the few at the expense of the many. President Madison clearly states this restriction in his veto of March 3, 1817:

"Having considered the bill this day presented to me entitled 'An act to set apart and pledge certain funds for internal improvements,' and which sets apart and pledges funds 'for constructing roads and canals, and improving the navigation of water courses' . . . I am constrained by the insuperable difficulty I feel in reconciling the bill with the Constitution of the United States to return it with that objection to the House of Representatives. The legislative powers vested in Congress are specified and enumerated in the eighth section of the first article of the Constitution, and it does not appear that the power proposed to be exercised by the bill is among the enumerated powers."

As a historical note, it was Divided Sovereignty that forced an end to Federal support for slavery; the diversity of state economies, conflict between free-labor and slave-labor states in the western expansion. Federal actions supporting burning coal and oil to benefit unconstitutional commercial monopolies mimics Federal support for the expansion of slavery:

  • Defeat of the Land Ordinance of 1784 to limit slavery to states where it already existed is similar to the 17th and 18th Amendments that undermined Divided Sovereignty and reduced the cost of corruption from buying half a state legislature to merely contributing to a Senatorial campaign. The 18th Amendent unleashed Federal policing of individual Americans, but when this was repealed by the 21st Amendment, Federal policing of individual Americans was usurped.
  • Compromise of 1850 expanded slavery. Rural Electrification Administration removed energy self-reliance as a market force, established Federally subsidized commercial monopolies, mandated the burning of coal, and wiped out distributed energy industry and 600,000 windmills in 1935.
  • Kansas-Nebraska Act expanded slavery. The Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956 removed efficiency as a market force, socialize transportation networks, mandated the burning of oil, wiped out nearly half the freight railroads in America, funded terrorists with oil-dollars, and subordinated the liberty and survival of America to a 45% dependence on foreign oil.
  • Fugitive Slave Act oppressed labor much as Federal monopoly oppress invention of sustainable infrastructure alternatives.
  • Dred Scott Decision has an energy equivalent in Wickard v Filburn. In Drea Scott the Supreme Court expanded Federal police powers over individuals to seize State recognized freemen who were brought as slaves by masters into free states. In Wickard v Filburn, the Supreme Court expanded Federal police powers over individual Americans to such an extent they can force wheat to be burnt grown for personal use on an owners private land.

 

As Hamilton noted in Federalist #17, Federal involvement in agriculture would be a gross usurpation of sovereignty:

"Allowing the utmost latitude to the love of power which any reasonable man can require, I confess I am at a loss to discover what temptation the persons intrusted with the administration of the general government (Federal authorities) could ever feel to divest the States of the authorities of that description.... The administration of private justice between the citizens of the same State, the supervision of agriculture and of other concerns of a similar nature, all those things, in short, which are proper to be provided for by local legislation, can never be desirable cares of a general jurisdiction."

Thomas Jefferson underscores the benefits of Divided Sovereignty the Framers created and the nation implemented in a letter to Joseph C. Cabell, February 2, 1816

"The way to have good and safe government, is not to trust it all to one, but to divide it among the many, distributing to every one exactly the functions he is competent to.

Let the national government be entrusted with the defense of the nation, and its foreign and federal relations;

the State governments with the civil rights, law, police, and administration of what concerns the State generally;

the counties with the local concerns of the counties, and each ward direct the interests within itself.

It is by dividing and subdividing these republics from the great national one down through all its subordinations, until it ends in the administration of every man"s farm by himself; by placing under every one what his own eye may superintend, that all will be done for the best.

What has destroyed liberty and the rights of man in every government which has ever existed under the sun? The generalizing and concentrating all cares and powers into one body."

In the 20th Century we trusted all powers to the Federal government without Article 5 Amendments. Without the rigors of Article 5 amendments, the nation was denied hearing minority voices that understood Peak Oil (Dr. Hubert, 1956), oil-wars (Admiral Rickover, 1957), and the environment (long standing). The consequence is Federal commercial monopolies that bind the survival of the nation to burning coal and oil.

The Rule of Law is essential for liberty to offer society choices and for people to aggregate their wisdom into the general welfare by choosing between choices.

By starting small, using Massachusetts Senate Bill #1837 to restore liberty, focusing on applying that liberty to invent solutions focused at MIT’s campus a model for a sustainable world can be forged. for capital to invest in the risky field of invention. If the Constitution is violated by Federal commercial monopolies the result is a century of rotary telephones, the gas mileage of the Model-T, and pollution so significant it tilts the balance of nature into Climate Change. Start small; iterate relentlessly. Start with Massachusetts Senate Bill #1837 and the MIT Campus as a laboratory for changing the lifeblood of the economy from oil to ingenuity.

Background:

“Want of foresight, unwillingness to act when action would be simple and effective, lack of clear thinking, confusion of counsel until the emergency comes, until self-preservation strikes its jarring gong - these are the features which constitute the endless repetition of history.”

Life requires energy. Oil is finite. Life and nations powered by oil are terminal.

US Peak Oil was in 1970. Since US Peak Oil oil imports and national debt increased in tandem. The 1973 Oil Embargo, 1979 Iranian Revolution, and rising oil prices until the banking collapse of Sept 2008 underscore the fragility of an oil powered economy. American soldiers trading blood in oil-wars since 1990 but buy time for Americans to end dependence on foreign oil has yet to be respected by Americans being self-discipline to be energy self-reliant. Eight President issued calls to action, identifying dependence on foreign oil an enemy that threatens national security. Oil-dollar funded terrorists attacked America. Pollution from burning foreign oil has tilted the balance of nature into Climate Change.

We are in a race against both Climate Change and the collapse of affordable oil. Syria is a current example. Their Peak Oil was in 1996 with a 90% collapse in available energy in 2012. In 2010 the Joint Forces Command warned all US military commands that this type of collapse would happen with the risk of general world war:

"By 2012, surplus oil production capacity could entirely disappear, and as early as 2015, the shortfall in output could reach nearly 10 million barrels per day."

"A severe energy crunch is inevitable without a massive expansion of production and refining capacity. While it is difficult to predict precisely what economic, political, and strategic effects such a shortfall might produce, it surely would reduce the prospects for growth in both the developing and developed worlds. Such an economic slowdown would exacerbate other unresolved tensions, push fragile and failing states further down the path toward collapse, and perhaps have serious economic impact on both China and India. At best, it would lead to periods of harsh economic adjustment. To what extent conservation measures, investments in alternative energy production, and efforts to expand petroleum production from tar sands and shale would mitigate such a period of adjustment is difficult to predict. One should not forget that the Great Depression spawned a number of totalitarian regimes that sought economic prosperity for their nations by ruthless conquest."

"Energy production and distribution infrastructure must see significant new investment if energy demand is to be satisfied at a cost compatible with economic growth and prosperity."

"The discovery rate for new petroleum and gas fields over the past two decades (with the possible exception of Brazil) provides little reason for optimism that future efforts will find major new fields."

Foward by General James N Mattis