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By Pierre Wauters
www.seekvilcabamba.com

I have attended a small segment of the August 14-17 2010 Montesuenos ͞Truly Sustainable
Solutions for Ecuador and the World͟ conference (Vilcabamba, Loja Ecuador, see
www.montesuenos.org ) and, at least in the small segment that I have attended, I must say
that what was missing and unsaid feels to me more important than what I have heard.
Unfortunately, I had to leave after lunch to go to Loja. The afternoon was going to be a
discussion panel. I missed the panel but nevertheless, I can write here what I would have
wished to say there. The little time I spent at Montesuenos was certainly n ot wasted as it
gave me inspiration to write this essay below. Thank you Brian O͛Leary for making these
meetings and discussions possible.

Energy 101: there are two sides to the energy equation: the ›

 side and the 
side. The supply side is what is available to us: electricity, transport, heat or any other form
of energy that is given (I mean sold) to us. The demand side is how much of it it is that we
want and how much of it we can afford . The more energy we want or need, the higher the
demand. The demand depends on lifestyle of course. The US is notorious for its high energy
demand per capita. The higher the demand, the higher the supply has to be to meet it. It is
obvious that if supply does not meet demand, there is a shortage. To a shortage, the
response is usually not to look at the demand and try and reduce it but rather to try and
increase the supply. When supply meets demand, prices are low and this is what we, in the
west, call ͞economical balance͟, which is supposed to bring pe ace and happiness.

This basic mechanism of supply and demand is what got us whe re we are, I mean the mess
we are in. For decades, we have benefitted from dirt cheap energy in the form of the so -
called ͞fossil͟ oil (nothing fossil about it but that is anot her topic). Thanks to this cheap
energy, we have been able to do things like never before . And what have we done exactly?
Are we more at peace and more enlightened than before? As a species, are we generally
happier? Nope. In the west, people work more hou rs per week than ever, the state of our
health is a disaster; diseases that did not even exist 100 year ago have reached epidemic
proportion, there is not a single eco -system on the planet that is not in decline, mother
earth is in tears, raped, tortured, scarred. Sure, we can fly from A to B in huge planes with
one computer per seat, we can divert rivers, mine entire mountains, drill at incredible
depths in the ocean, etc... Without this immense supply of cheap energ y that we have had
available for so long, these things would simply not have been possible.

As a result of all this activity, compounded by the fact that the energy that we have been
using is dirty, we have polluted the planet. However and this is the first important point that
I want to make, I believe that the vast majority of the damage that we have caused to our
home planet has nothing to do with the fact that the energy that we have used is dirty. Any
other form of energy, no matter how clean, would have done the dirty job just as well if not
better. A bulldozer that would run on pure water and would emits no fumes whatsoever, or
one that runs on cold fusion or vacuum energy can flatten as much Amazonian forest as a
classic diesel engine one. I would even say that it could do more damage because the last
restriction, which is the price of fuel, would be removed, allowing bigger dozers to be built
to do bigger damage for less cost.

My observation is that, as a species, we are just not yet capable, not yet wise enough, not
yet ͞evolved͟ enough, to be given a lot of energy to play with, let alone energy of the free
kind. The first question that comes to my mind when talking about free energy is the
following: ͞2
2 

 
22

22


2
22
    ͟ If the answer is ͞
  2͟ then I
would say ͞ 2 ͟, if the answer is ͞  
͟, then I would say ͞2 
2
2 
22

 
222
  
 
 
   
  
2  ͟.

Sure, with abundant free energy, we won͛t need t o drill for oil anymore. Great! W e can start
drilling for something else then. What could possibly make anyone believe that we would
not find something else at the bottom of the ocean that we reall y want? Hey, we could start
dreaming of commuting to Mars and mine it. And why would we stop clearing the
Amazonian forest to make pasture for McDonalds͛ cows ? And why would we stop trying to
privatise water everywhere? These activities do *not* depend on whether we use oil,
alcohol, water or the energy of the vacuum , do they? In addition, with cheaper and more
available energy than before, we could drill deeper, cut down faster, blow up more and fly
further and more often. Is this going to make us healthy and happy?

Understand that I am not saying that I love polluting cars and buses and that we should not
turn to better forms of energy. We should. What I am saying is that,

› 
› 


 
. Until we look at the other side of the energy equation and, most
importantly, 
     ››, nothing will change.
For a start, what exactly is the word ͞free͟ supposed to mean in the expression ͞free
energy͟? Does it mean that it would cost nothing? If that is the case, I would ask why we
think that we could get anything for free when it should be obvious that it is j ust not the
way our current world operates. For example, there is nothing cheaper to produce than
water, the whole planet is awash with it. Despite of that, we pay a lot of money for water. It
strikes me that a litre of drinking water is in many places mor e expensive than a litre of
gasoline. Water should be free but to many people it is not. This demonstrates that it is not
the intrinsic nature of a resource that determines whether it is free or not but rather how
we see that resource and who decides to ow n it. In our current global system, any form of
energy, no matter how cheap to obtain or produce would immediately be grabbed by
corporations and sold at a high price. This is the nature of our society and unless we change
this, nothing will ever be free.

You may say, well no, the word ͞free͟ does not mean ͞gratis͟ but means available in
unlimited quantities. In that case, we have another problem. Like I said earlier, because of
the way we are, anything that is available to us we tend to use. If we were to tap into
unconventional vacuum energy, also called zero-point energy, what we would do with it
would still be conventional work , such as moving a car, lifting a weight, heating a house....
And this work that we do with this energy will produce heat. For ex ample, if homes in cold
climates were all equipped with a vacuum energy generator, can you imagine the amount of
heat that would come out of these homes? Why bother sealing the windows or even closing
them when the vacuum energy heat pump is running day and night for free. And where
would all that heat go? Many new-age-free-energy-enthusiasts have no understanding
whatsoever of the laws of thermodynamics and believe that, just because energy originates
from a non conventional source, such as the zero-point, that energy does not follow the
same principles that we have observed for all other forms of energy? Heat is heat and heat
does not just disappear. Rather, it accumulates in matter and unless taken away by other
mechanisms, the temperature of the matter rises as a result. That is what sun rays have
done to ocean water for millions of years and the principle still applies.

Think of it that way. Let͛s compare vacuum energy with nuclear energy. If I hold a gram of
matter (e.g. iron) in my hand, it does not ap pear that there is a lot that I ca n do with this
gram in terms of producing energy. What is a gram of anything going to do? But if I
understand atomic energy and manage to somehow split the atom of this anything, I can
then release enormous amounts of energy from this single gram. If we were to split the
atoms, not of a gram but of millions of tons of matter all over the planet, we could release
quantities of energy impossible to comprehend. That released energy, when used to do
work, would ultimately and inevitably be converted into heat. Literally the whole of planet
earth would heat up, burn and/or blow up. Of course, we don͛t split the atoms of huge
quantities of matter all over the planet, because we can only split material that is
radioactive, such as uranium, and that material is dangerous and available in limited
supplies and we all know that the by -products of splitting this material are even more
dangerous and almost impossible to dispose of ( e.g. plutonium). One of such by-products is
͞depleted uranium͟, so called, not because it is harmless, but because it is less radio -active
than the non depleted variety and also to make it sound OK for the US and the UK to drop it
over the Middle East to help them win their good wars. Vacuum energy is to a cubic meter
of nothing what nuclear energy is to a gram of something . A cubic meter of empty space
does not appear to contain any energy at all, that is until we understand about the zero -
point and manage to find a way to release the energy that is within this cubic meter of
nothing (which we now have found). Vacuum energy is incredibly abundant of course.
There are many cubic meters of nothingness around us, more than we can comprehend,
and, unlike nuclear energy, vacuum energy does not release harmful by-products. But using
it, putting that energy at work, would ultimately produce heat just like using any other
energy form and we would be able to use truly unlimited amount of vacuum energy and
release unlimited amount of heat whereas we are limited in our use of nuclear energy. To
my knowledge no-one has done an in-depth analysis of what would be the consequences of
playing with these amounts of energy over a long period of time. Ironically it could very well
be that our use of dirty non -free energy is what has so far saved us from ourselves.

‰22  ‰




Let͛s now look at the other side of the energy equation, the demand side, and see how
working on this side is the only sensible solution to our energy crisis.

Our so-called energy ͞needs͟ have steadily increased since the industrial revolution . It
seems that the more we͛re given, the more we believe that we need and the more we want,
just like kids with ice cream. We seem to have reached a point where we are completely
confused, not knowing what the difference could possibly be between ͞needs͟ and ͞wants͟ ,
let alone what͛s ͞good͟ for us and our children. For example, once upon a time we were
happy with one single warm room to settle in to together at night around the fire while it
was freezing in all the other rooms. I remember my aunty putting me to bed under 3
blankets in a non heated bedroom in Belgium. Today, we ͞need͟ central heating so that all
the rooms are equally warm at any point in time. The kids have individual TV sets in th eir
rooms and they each want to watch their favourite TV program. This is what we call ͞our
way of life͟; this is what Toni Blair said that we won͛t let these Muslim religious fanatics
destroy, ͞our way of life͟.

Then, we have more cars per person than ever, we fly to more exotic holiday destinations as
ever and we build bigger houses, not just one but two or three, there is no limit. But each
car, each house, each TV set, each computer, each plane that we build require materials,
metal, wood, plastic etc... These materials in turn require the harvesting of forests or the
mining of minerals that we take from the earth.

This is how our demand not only for energy but also for primary materials has increased to a
point that, were the people of China and India to adopt the same ͞way of life͟, there would
simply not be enough resources available on earth to meet the demand. This is not an
energy problem, it is a resource problem.

I live in a small village in the Andes Mountains of a small country called Ecuador. Here, the
majority of people are poor and their footprints on planet earth ar e tiny. They build simple
earth houses, wash their clothes by hand in the river and have no car. Many have never
travelled outside of their country. Their houses have no heating, they cook on firewood or
gas and their entire house would easily run on one single 10 Amp fuse to light the TV set and
the few light bulbs that th ey have. Meeting their energetic demand is a lot easier than
meeting the demand of the average European or North American family.

For generations, the people of Ecuador have only known their traditional ways of producing
food which requires virtually no energy. The seeds are sown, the irrigation water is collected
from the mountains and conveyed by canal, the food is harvested by hand and transported
on horseback to the markets. People come to the markets to buy the produce that they
carry in baskets or other forms of non disposable containers. For generations, people have
thrown what they don͛t want (AKA ͞rubbish ͟) through the windows, subconsciously
knowing that banana peels and chicken bones will all disappear soon thanks to the dogs, the
ants, the bugs, the soil flora... Mother earth knows what to do with flesh and bones. Today
they still throw the things that they don͛t want through the window and it is still called
͞rubbish͟. The difference is that today it is made out of plastic bags, plastic bottles and a
myriad of non organic non bio-degradable objects. The people don͛t seem to have realised
yet that their rubbish no longer goes away as it used to. Or maybe they have but don͛t know
what to do about it and have decided to look the other way . Who are we to blame? An
outside observer of our own societies would probably conclude that we don͛t seem to have
realised yet that the smoke from our cars is killing us. We are no better.

We use the word ͞sustainable͟ all the time as if sustainable necessarily means good. Well,
as long as we stay away from nuclear weapons or the infamous WMDs, we seem to have
achieved ͞sustainable war͟, haven͛t we? War can go on forever and appears to be quite
sustainable. Don͛t smile. This is in effect what the WMD business is about. Making war is OK
as long as it does not kill too many too fast, as long as it of the ͞conventional͟ kind and not
the ͞mass destructive͟ kind, in other words, as long as it is sustainable.

Is planting alcohol producing crops to be used as an energy source for cars sustainable? And
if it is, does this fact make it good? What does the word sustainable actually mean? Think
about it. Does it mean that we can do it for a very long time? In that case, fossil energy has
been quite sustainable! Does it mean that we can do it forever? We can hardly think more
than 10 years ahead at the best of time, less for our politicians. How could we possibly
comprehend the concept of ͞forever͟? If it means forever, w hy would we think that running
millions of car engines on hybrid battery systems would be sustainable? How many batteries
can we manufacture before we run into new problems such as lead or mercury pollution?
Batteries last 5 years and that is if you look after them and never let them go flat. Where do
they go after that? Do we want landfills with 10 billion batteries in them as the sustaina ble
solution to our problems?

Let͛s forget about solar panels and windmills and hydro, we are told. That is the kids͛
playground. Let͛s go and play with the grownups. Let͛s focus on ͞real͟ free energy solutions
such as the energy of vacuum, cold fusion, cool devices that produce more than they
require, seemingly violating the first principle of thermodynamics. To hell thermodynamics!
These devices work, they are real, they are the future, we are told. The reason why they are
not here yet, you see, is becau se they have been suppressed. So, we just need to
͞unsuppress͟ them and the world is on its way to happiness, finally, right?

I have explained above that the energy released by these free energy devices would still
ultimately be converted into heat and just that means that we could not use that energy in
unlimited quantities forever. But there is another aspect. N o matter how free the energy
they produce is, these pieces of gear must be manufactured just like anything else.
Depending on what is required to build them and how many are needed for worldwide use,
the technology could be scalable or not, I don͛t know. That is not the main point though.
The main point is that we still haven͛t addressed the demand side of our energy equation.
We are still with our nose glued on the supply side of it .

What we need to do is to ask ourselves the very fundamental question: ͞ 2 2

2 2


2   ͟ There are two sides to this question : the
 and the . First, we need to know  it is that we want to go. Then only, we
can ask ourselves how to get there, in that order preferably.

The problem is that the ͞where͟ part of the question is extremely hard to answer bec ause
the question is outside the realm of technology and science. The question is a philosophical
question that can only be answered from within, not from without. It used to be the
prerogative of philosophers, wise men, healers, priests ... to address this important question
of where exactly it is that we are going as a society. Not anymore. With this sense of
direction lost, we seem to be paddling in circles, only knowing th at we want to go faster, but
faster to where??

So, my solution to the energy problems of our times is to get back to that question of where
we want to go as a species. In the course of the doing that, we will inevitably hit the demand
side of the energy equation. How much energy do we actually need and what do we want to
do with it and why? Do we really need more energy? Could we not, God Forbid, for a minute
consider reducing our demands and needs which would in turn reduce the pressure on our
environment?

In the end it boils down to ͞being͟ versus ͞ having͟ versus ͞doing͟. We have become
obsessed with the latter two. Having gives us status. Doing keeps us busy and distracted.
Both give us identity and feed our egos. Even having good things, such as an art collection or
a wonderful home or a ranch with beautiful horses is still ͞having͟. Even doing good things
such as leading the free energy movement, the 9/11 movement or the Vilcabamba landfill
management project is still ͞doing͟. People love having and doing. Having and doing require
a lot of energy and admittedly if the energy was free and non -polluting, it would allow us to
have more and do more. Being is harder. Being does not require energy. One can sit under a
tree for 4 hours and ͞be͟. We need to learn to be more, have less and do less.

The people of Vilcabamba and other villages of Ecuador can help us because many are doing
just that: have little, do enough, be plenty. Instead of teaching them what to do to become
like us, we need to watch them more, let the deep silence of the mountain fill up our hearts
and start being.