What President Trump Can Do With The American System 2.0 - Flipbook - Page 25
allocation, and two would match Nevada’s al- Third-World-style electricity brownouts and
location. It must also be understood that all cur- blackouts have become routine in many regions
rent arguments that begin with the phrase “de- and where there is no energy capacity to actualsalination is too expensive” are fraudulent. The ly grow the productive economy. Capital investeconomics of scale and
ment in natural gas
mass production of
and nuclear energy
these facilities (if comhas dwindled, while
Today, the per capita energy consumption
bined with the remov“green” wind and sofor industry is less than it was in 1950.
al of environmental
lar projects, heavily
sabotage and lawsuits)
backed by government
will bring the costs down. But, most important subsidies and tax breaks, have given us the skyis to recognize the nature of negentropic eco- rocketing costs of the Harris/Biden “Green New
nomic growth. This is another case of the revo- Deal.” As a result, the lights are going out and
lutionary transformation of what we consider to electricity prices keep rising.
be economically viable resources. With energy
The reconstruction of the United States as
cost being a major factor for desalination, an a “manufacturing superpower” will require
expanded energy grid with lower power costs enormous increased energy consumption by
means the world’s oceans become a natural re- our industrial and manufacturing sectors, and
source for producing our freshwater needs for frontier technologies, like arti昀椀cial intelligence,
the foreseeable future.
require massive amounts of electricity. We
Between large-scale water transfer with should be planning to at least double electricity
NAWAPA (or something similar) and large- generation and increase our total energy genscale desalination of ocean water, we can do eration by at least 50 percent.
much more than meet existing freshwater needs
One convenient way to look at the energy
throughout the West. We can create the basis for needs of our nation is to examine the energy
additional growth and development. Current- 昀氀ux-density of the economy as a whole. We do
ly, the Colorado River alone supports 40 mil- this by summing the total energy consumption
lion people, 16 million jobs, 5.7 million acres of (not only electricity) throughout all aspects of
farmland, and $1.4 trillion of annual economic the economy (residential, commercial, indusactivity. Imagine what more we can create with trial, and transportation) and divide that total
two to eight additional Colorado River’s worth by the number of people in the country to get a
of fresh water. This is another excellent example
where public credit would come into play, funding 10 to 25-year projects that would unleash
the restricted economic productivity of 25 percent to 40 percent of our national territory.
Energy and Power
President Trump’s call for “hundreds and
hundreds and hundreds of big, beautiful power
plants” is exactly on the right track. We must
massively increase the availability of energy
throughout the economy, while signi昀椀cantly
lowering the costs. This will have profound impacts throughout every aspect of the economy.
Over the last several decades, U.S. baseline
power-production has been decimated. A combination of deregulation, 昀椀nancialization, and
“green” policies have created a situation where
Promethean Action
Image credit: Hansueli Krapf (CC BY-SA 3.0).
page 23
