Saving energy and our privacy

Several years ago, a flight home from Israel on El Al Israel Airlines changed my life.

I'd taken my wife and granddaughter on a trip to the Holy Land with Gov. Mike Huckabee, had a great time and was returning to California. By what may have been divine intervention, my granddaughter, Brittany, sat next to Dr. Gerald Schroeder, author of four books on science and one on God.

I was intrigued by his obvious intellect, his grasp of very complex science and by hearing of a controversial book this former agnostic had written about God, and his discovery that everything in true science points inescapably to the existence of a Creator. We talked all the way to Los Angeles, and I invited him to meet me again at my office to talk further.

Through Dr. Schroeder, I met a colleague of his, Tom Tamarkin, scientist and head of USCL EnergyCite, and was drawn into their mutually informed concern about the world's looming energy crisis. Not "green energy," not air pollution, not coal versus gas versus solar versus electricity – but the desperate need to find and develop some source of energy for the world's needs – when all known reserves of fossil fuel and other alternative energy sources are all used up, before the end of this century. Possibly by 2050.

It's true. As society worldwide moves into the 21^st century, becoming more modern and demanding energy for practically everything, all known resources are being depleted at an accelerating pace. All experts predict that combined outputs of solar, tidal, wind, geothermal and hydroelectric power will only provide a small fraction of projected 2050 worldwide energy demand.

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Are you hearing anybody talk about this? I hadn't. Although I'm not a scientist by training, I'm a daddy and a granddaddy, and I was suddenly and deeply concerned for the future of my family – and yours and, truly, the family of humankind on this planet.

My new friends, Dr. Schroeder and Tom Tamarkin and others, made me aware of Dr. David MacKay's book, "Sustainable Energy: Without the Hot Air," and factual statements like "50 percent of the U.K.'s energy needs might be met by biofuels "if 75 percent of the U.K. itself were covered with bio-fuel crops."

A ridiculous and impossible proposition!

Succinctly, all of this government's tax incentives and subsidies to those producing corn ethanol and all other biofuels are wasteful and ultimately nonproductive. It takes more energy to produce the crops and convert them into liquid fuels than the amount of energy those fuels provide! In time, it's a fatal circle, actually exacerbating the basic problem.

As I studied and learned, I wrote a series of eight published articles on nuclear fusion, stating emphatically that fusion, not fission, is "the last and best hope for the world's energy needs." Admittedly, I'm a lay person – but I was mentored by Dr. Schroeder and a team of practicing PhDs in the field of nuclear physics and high energy plasma physics. My function was, and is, to express scientific truth to ordinary folks in language we all can understand.

And all these articles are archived under my name at Fusion4Freedom.com. I encourage you to read them out of mutual concern for the world's future.

There is a more immediate threat that need to be addressed here, though. It's the need to individually – privately and practically – monitor and conserve our own energy uses. The need has been addressed by our government, but with a serious threat to our family privacy and eventual security! There has to be a better method. And there is.

Some in the same team that has mentored me, Tamarkin, Schroeder et al, have developed an extremely effective, patented "Smart Meter" to give individuals and homemakers the means of monitoring and controlling all power uses in home and offices. And I'm broadcasting this information because this administration has promoted another kind of "smart meter" that is already approved by the Department of Energy – and electrical utilities nationwide have already replaced more than 60 million old-fashioned, electro-mechanical power meters with "modern" digital communicating power meters. And by the end of 2015, virtually every former meter in America will have been replaced. In California alone, the three investor-owned utilities have replaced more than 12 million meters.

So you ask, "What's wrong with that?"

While the original purpose seems genuine, an unexpressed consequence is that every home in America will be connected to a huge remote computer system available to the government.

Let that sink in for a moment.

Whereas it was presented to the utility companies for billing purposes, there is genuine concern that these devices can (and will) be used to literally spy on people. You can see that, can't you? These government-approved devices will be able to know when you're home and when you're away as well as how and for what you're using electricity. Can you spell NSA and IRS? Can you think of any recent instances in which both are apparently already active in "intelligence gathering" unknown to the citizens? Have I got your attention?

Well, good news. The physics team I mentioned above has already developed and patented another, better "Smart Meter" that has a built-in data and control firewall between the utility and the inside of your house. After all, the only information the utility really needs is the minimum information needed to generate your bill, even time of use bills or demand based bills. They have no need to know details of how and when you used your power.

The EnergyCite meter gives you the energy use information you need, but it leaves the government and its "remote computers" out of the picture.

You and I should not be required to provide the government any of that or any other information. You likely have an anti-virus data firewall running on your computer, right? Are you comfortable with having a Big Brother government in your house, on your wall, monitoring your comings and goings, your uses of electricity and other utilities – and with the authority to shut off your use, disable your devices and, in effect, isolate you from "the system"?

I'm sure you're not. And that's why I want to recommend you come with me to the EnergyCiteIndiegogo project site. Give it a "Facebook like," and see how you can participate in monitoring your energy use and at the same time keep Big Brother's hands off your private business.