Background
It is indeed remarkable the propensity of our esteemed decision makers to ignore scientists’ warnings. Case in point, the March 1912 issue of Popular Mechanics correctly predicted that coal burning would accumulate carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and cause a greenhouse effect. Did the industrialized countries heed? The answer is that the world is now addicted to fossil fuels and will remain so for the foreseeable future. What is certain is that the catastrophic consequences of anthropomorphic climate change, which disproportionately affect those who contributed the least to it –the so-called “developing” nations and the poor- are getting much worse.
Water
Although water scarcity does not command the political prominence it deserves, it is a ticking time bomb. In the U.S. the line separating the moist East from the arid West may have already shifted 140 miles eastward, from the 100th to the 98th meridian. As a result of this encroaching aridification, the U.S. is now bisected into two regions of nearly equal size –one moist and the other arid, and their population densities and economies could not be more disparate. It makes sense: no water, no life. Thus, the Ogallala Aquifer, already severely depleted in some areas, and the Colorado River basin, which is basically drying up, simply lack the water resources to support future population growth. Clearly, a new source of abundant water is needed to address the real estate crisis.
Hydrogen and Water
New discoveries make it feasible to produce green hydrogen directly from seawater using solar energy. Many nations would like to switch from fossil fuels to hydrogen, not only for mobile applications but to generate electricity. China has already started building the world’s largest green hydrogen plant, German project developer Conjuncta signed a memorandum of understanding with Egypt’s energy provider Infinity and the United Arab Emirates’ Masdar for a $34 billion green hydrogen product in Mauritania, and the City of Los Angeles, CA is replacing a gas-fired plant with a green hydrogen unit.
These and other similar projects are all designed to use hydrogen’s energy-carrying properties, understandable given the global tensions revolving around, and resulting from, the desperate ongoing struggle to dominate the fossil fuels market. But hydrogen has another critically important property: it can be oxidized to make water. Thus, as noted above, highly efficient water splitters can extract green hydrogen directly from seawater using solar energy, and conversely, as Los Angeles proves, it is now feasible to build hydrogen-burning plants to generate electricity. Obviously, all that remains is to synchronize both ends of the equation to produce unlimited water (subject to availability of unlimited green hydrogen) and electricity. The cycle, anchored on a man-made, sea-level canal from the Pacific Ocean to Death Valley wide and deep enough to accommodate supertankers is shown here. Thus, the new fiord would become a hub where green hydrogen would be produced and distributed to domestic and foreign markets. The benefits of this project are described here. Incidentally, the principle could also be expanded to sun-drenched islands around the world and natural depressions such as the Dead Sea, Qattara, San Julián in Argentina, and others. One potential tangential benefit would be to disperse ocean water. That might mitigate the effect of rising seas on coastal cities worldwide.
The Struggle
The United States is in the midst of a titanic struggle with China for economic, technological and military supremacy. Barring a nuclear holocaust that would make everything else moot, the reaction of the Global South is going to have a pivotal influence in the struggle’s outcome. The region, which was at one time colonized by the G7, has the world’s largest reserves of many critical natural resources. More importantly, most people on the planet live there, and many are shockingly poor and hungry. Understandably, China’s indisputable track record of having lifted 800 million people from poverty in forty years resonates with their predicament far more than non-edible abstract mantras such as “democracy” and “authoritarian.” And some have already taken concrete steps to express their dissatisfaction with what the U.S. preaches and does. Brazil, Russia, India, China and others have not supported the U.S. and EU sanctions against Russia stemming from the Ukrainian war; Iran and Saudi Arabia, under Chinese mediation, have decided to pursue rapprochement, and some purchases of oil and gas are now being settled in currencies other than the U.S. dollar, a clear indication that the petrodollar is seriously ill. In fact, the dollar’s use as the reserve currency of the world, currently at 58%, has declined precipitously over the last three years, a direct consequence of the weaponization of the dollar for geopolitical reasons. Furthermore, there’s nothing to prevent this decline from accelerating. Indeed, that could happen very quickly should the petrodollar’s illness metastasize to the U.S. bond market. The consequences of that would be unprecedented in scope and severity, including the very real possibility of hyperinflation, collapse of the Defense Budget, and default on the debt, Social Security and Medicare. The solution is obvious. For the reasons described above, we should become the world’s largest producer of green hydrogen to replace fossil fuels. When used to generate electricity, the process would manufacture water as a byproduct, something no other fuel can do. If the U.S. could export hydrogen on a scale large enough to generate electricity worldwide, that might eliminate or at very least greatly reduce the trade deficit. Incidentally, it might forestall hyperinflation and strengthen the greenback independently of the petrodollar or the U.S. bond market.