Upon the removal of Barack Obama from the presidency of the United States, and the implementation of a Glass-Steagall reorganization of our banking system, the economic recovery of the United States can begin with the immediate launching of the North American Water and Power Alliance.
The expressions of human economy are only understood in physical terms, in which the principal drivers for advance are developments in basic economic infrastructure and increases in energy flux density [1]. The combination of advances in the implementation of these factors creates the environment in which the individual, or groups of individuals, act, and, therefore, determines the level of potential productivity which can be achieved. That is to say, the productivity of industry, agriculture, and labor generally, are dependent on these two factors. Therefore any economic recovery, or progress generally, must focus on rapid advances in these core areas.
Based on these criteria, and the present situation of the economy, the most immediately beneficial recovery project to be taken up is the North American Water and Power Alliance, NAWAPA [2].
Originally planned in the 1950's and 1960's [3], the initial NAWAPA plan is a series of projects designed to take large amounts of fresh water from Alaska and the Canadian Yukon, divert it before its runoff into the Pacific Ocean, channel it through Canada, into the United States, and all the way to northern Mexico. This would be achieved by a series of dams, canals, tunnels, lakes, and pump lifts, guiding the water down the continent, allowing for the potential irrigation of an estimated 86,000 square miles, transforming the arid landscape along the way.
As by the intention of the original NAWAPA design, some of the most severe water shortages of the United States could be solved. For example, large amounts of water can be added to the desperate water systems of California. It could reverse the depletion of the massive Ogallala Aquifer, which is supplying a diminishing amount of fossil ground water to millions of acres of farm land in Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, New Mexico and other states. Water would even be diverted into the Great Lakes system, refilling the supply in the Eastern United States. In total, the majority of all the States in our Union will receive direct benefits in terms of water supplies.
The best option for initiating the economic recovery of the United States, will be to take the NAWAPA proposal, for which much of the fundamental design and planning work has already been done, and expand it.
Taking the core of the original 1960's design, we will elaborate the project by building high speed rail lines for both passenger and freight, new nuclear reactors, and even new cities. Along this route the irrigation and managed water flow will begin to transform the land area, including the climate and weather, as a case of mankind's conscious management of a significant region of the Biosphere, increasing the productivity of both mankind, and the Biosphere itself.
We are presented with the exciting challenge of a great project that will be much more than a source of desperately needed jobs, but, over the course of the next two generations, will transform the economic productivity of the entire continent, by creating a man-made synthetic environment, in which our development of advanced infrastructure and conscious management of the processes of the Biosphere creates the foundation for new orders of magnitude of economic advance.
ENERGY FLUX DENSITY AND THE BIOSPHERE
This will represent the most advanced step in bringing the Biosphere under the complete control of the Noosphere (i.e. Man's creative control). The Biosphere itself is characterized by a process of anti-entropic development (e.g. as seen in the evolution of living species), through which it incorporates increasing amounts of nonliving material, resulting in higher states of organization and concentrations of this material. By the creative intervention of man, we can act to organize and accelerate certain aspects of this activity of the Biosphere, creating an even higher state of organization than it were capable of achieving on its own.
By bringing water to these desert and arid lands, we will enable chlorophyll, one of the greatest of the Biosphere's technologies, to grip the surface of the Earth, and transform it. With NAWAPA's water providing the missing component for the growth of photosynthetic plants, the presently less productive solar radiation and carbon dioxide in the region will be transformed into useful biological material, even cooling desert environments [4].
This will also allow us to increase the efficiency and usage of these water supplies as they transit the continent, because the plants which absorb the water will spread moisture into the surrounding area, where the water will then be reused in more plants, which will also spread the moisture, creating a process of repeated reuse of the water as it makes its way down the continent. The increased density of cyclical water usage means the productivity of the water increases.
To maximize the effect of the solar radiation impinging on the earth's surface there will be an emphasis on green leafed agriculture, and the most evolutionarily advanced trees, such as fruit trees and hardwoods, which will absorb and convert more sunlight.
Throughout this process we are utilizing the ability of living processes to create structures of higher energy flux density, manage the temperature, and even begin to create small climate and weather systems. Mankind, acting through science and infrastructure, manages processes of the Biosphere, to the effect of increasing the productivity of both the Biosphere, and mankind itself.
Couple this process of development of the Biosphere with the implementation of the most advanced forms of basic economic infrastructure required for society. Again, the focus must be based on acquiring the highest available energy flux density sources of power, i.e. the most advanced nuclear reactors available. These will power our new cities, industry and agriculture.
New cities will be designed around a center of cultural and educational development of the population. This will be surrounded by a region of housing, followed by the relevant industrial activity, and around that the agricultural farmland. No suburban sprawl. Public transport will be designed to deliver the majority of workers and students to their destinations on the order of 15 minutes or less. High-speed magnetically levitated rail transportation systems will connect the broader region, with speeds and efficiencies that are superior to flight.
Such a project will provide the opportunity for life-long, meaningful employment for a generation of youth which presently has no significant skill level, and is otherwise a “no-future” generation. This will create the most important resource for our nation, the development of a skilled generation of creative citizens, without which no economy will survive.
This is to be understood as a unified process of development of North America. All these aspects are to be taken as a whole, a single project of development, which will create the foundations for rapid economic progress, progress that will be impossible otherwise.
Here, with this program, we have the type of economic outlook upon which the recovery of the US and World economy depends.
ON TO THE FUTURE: A CHOICE
The initiating concept is the NAWAPA program. The basic structure of the plans have already been worked out, leaving the core of this project ready to go, waiting for political implementation.
If the right changes were made, this program can begin this fall. The jobs can be created, both in the direct construction of the projects and in the required industrial and material supplies; what currently remains of our skilled industrial labor force and industrial capacity can be activated and revived; the increased economic activity can aid starving state and city governments (which are otherwise dying under the Obama austerity program); and the economic transformation of the United States can begin.
The NAWAPA program places our nation on the direct path to more ambitious development programs which will carry our nation, and the world, into prosperity through the coming generations. From NAWAPA we can see the Bering Strait rail tunnel project, connecting Alaska to Russia, linking the two great landmasses of the globe with high-speed rail transit. There are many other project which can be successively brought into operation, all of which will be necessary, but the pinnacle, guiding mission will be the commitment for colonization of space. The prospect for the industrialization of the Moon, and the development of permanent cities on Mars will be the lawful, prosperous continuation of the “NAWAPA economic program,” that is, man attaining conscious mastery of the science of his own economic development.
However, the stark reality of our present situation currently stands before you, and your being able to create this future which your posterity deserves.
The funding and implementation of this program can not occur until we implement a Glass-Steagall-based reorganization of the US economy. As long as our nation is forced to remain committed to the hyperinflationary debts of Wall Street, there can be no NAWAPA, and there can be no recovery.
Faced with a president who has committed his own existence in the presidency to blocking a Glass-Steagall reform of our economy, you, the citizens of the United States, are left with a clear choice of action.
FOOTNOTES
[1] For a presentation of the most advanced understanding of economics, see the ongoing series of writings by Lyndon LaRouche on the subject of “The Secret Economy,” What Your Accountant Never Understood: THE SECRET ECONOMY, This Present Century: THE SECRET ECONOMY’S OUTLOOK, etc.
[2] See Lyndon LaRouche's discussion of the NAWAPA project on The LaRouche PAC Weekly Report of July 28, 2010.
[3] The original designs for the NAWAPA project were done by the California-based, Ralph M. Parsons Company, which had helped to design and build the water management systems in California, turning the relevant regions of the state into the most productive agriculture region of the nation. In 1964 a written proposal for NAWAPA was drafted and submitted to a special Subcommittee of the United States Senate. Despite strong support from some forward-thinking enthusiasts, due to political pressure and the post-industrial cultural paradigm shift of the rise of the “68er” generation, the project was never started. The feasibility and benefits of the project were never legitimately challenged. For more details on the 1960's project, see the 1988 LaRouche Movement overview of the original NAWAPA proposal, The Outline of NAWAPA.
[4] The process by which plants absorb solar radiation into their structure through photosynthesis is an up-shift in the energy flux density of that solar radiation. Thus grass will convert roughly 1-2% of the solar radiation into useful biomass, and certain trees convert more in the range of 10%, all contributing to a cool, more pleasant environment. Don't waste otherwise useful solar energy on lower energy flux density technologies, such as fields of solar panels, you will lower the productivity of man and create deserts.
