PRESS RELEASE: Renew the Earth suggests a way to balance the unequal impacts of economics on humanity, by using Energy Currency for basic human needs

Jeff & Susan • October 14, 2020

Albany, New York, October 2020 – Renew the Earth ( renew-the-earth.org ) suggests an Energy Currency Credit Card be given to every individual for use in acquiring their basic needs of food, shelter, education and healthcare.

Renew the Earth, an Albany, New York based non-profit organization has been developing a way to calculate what is necessary to sustain basic human life, named the Human Renewable Energy Measure. This calculation is valuable for many reasons. One thing it makes clear is how much human energy effort is needed to keep our economies running. Another is, that all our basic needs are the same in definition and quantity, worldwide.  The Corona virus pandemic has made it clear how valuable people are in keeping economies functioning.  And, that all people are essential to this effort, no matter what their job or activity or status. 

So, how much is a life worth?

How much is money worth?

These are questions that must be addressed if we are to create more economically equal societies. Why is this important? Economic inequality encourages racism. More equal societies have less racism, among other beneficial things like fewer wars, less migration, less depression, fewer debilitating diseases.  These societies are more empathetic, more inventive, more content, less fearful, more inclined to preserve nature, and use natural resources efficiently.   In order to have a heathy economy we need to have a healthy and informed population. Each person from birth to birth must have food, shelter, education and healthcare. These needs are the same and measurable, no matter where people live on Earth. They are equivalent to the base value of a human life. They make survival possible. These are not the individual intellects and talents that make each of us unique. These are the basics that keep us alive, they are the same for every person, and they can be calculated in objective energy units. This is a good thing and only possible now because computers have the ability to systematize. A chart showing where each human need will be distributed world wide, how much of each need is necessary in each population and how frequently deliveries must be made, can be developed.  It is essential that needs not be calculated in money values because money does not have a consistent value. Its value is subjective, controlled by the fluctuations of economies country to country, year to year, day to day. 

Human energy needs are consistent and must be met every day, no matter what. Human energy survival units can be calculated objectively and are constant and predictable, person to person, world wide.   Speculation, interest rates, stocks, inflation, are all impacts on the exchange value of money/currency/wants, and would impact the cost and distribution of basic needs, making it impossible for economically unequal societies to provide basic needs for their citizens. Instead, the result would be inflation of money value.  Through a separate but parallel currency stream we call Energy Currency, basic needs would be calculated and distributed. This currency cannot be invested or gamed and does not create inflation because it is destroyed at the banks.

As Senator John Lewis once said, “Make it simple, make it sing.” A new economic balance can emerge from what we have learned during the pandemic. Energy currency providing basic human needs and traditional currency for speculation, profit and investment. The result will promote innovation throughout humanity, not just a small percentage. We are all capable of creative leaps, if we have time to think and are not compelled to make more and more money to cover basic needs. Our future on Earth depends on the most diverse expansion of thought possible.   Is it possible, within our present economic functioning, to protect life? All life? Can we agree that whatever system sustains life has created ‘real value’? Our human impact has done and continues to do damage around the world. We are all aware of this. With out wanting to, we commit crimes against each other and Nature. Profit economics, functioning unrestrained, without being balanced by considerations like the health and survival of humanity and life in general, as we now see clearly, creates a  life blind  value system. We are compelled to compete with each other and make wasteful use of natural resources. Profit depends on constant growth. but constant growth is not possible on our finite Earth. This is the unsustainable structural/economic violence within which we are presently functioning.  

Anything is possible, if it is necessary. Let’s imagine two currency streams, functioning side by side, serving different purposes and complimenting each other. One, Energy Currency, is for objective Human survival needs, food, shelter, education and healthcare. The other, Traditional Currency, continues its useful functions in speculation and financial reward and for purchases of wants like, cars, investments, vacation homes, savings, fancy clothes, cruises, fun stuff, etc. This traditional currency carries on the way it always has, but the Energy Currency or credit, mitigates its damaging aspects and begins to create balance by stabilizing human labor through guaranteeing their basic needs.  

How does Energy Currency/credit work? This ‘social credit’ is not used like present traditional currency. It cannot be invested or saved and is destroyed when it gets to a bank, so it won’t create inflation. It can be issued to each person in the form of a card that can be used only for basic food, shelter, education and healthcare. The credit can be ‘cashed in’ by the recipient at a fair market value that is monitored so that it cannot be used for speculation.   No one is to blame for the damage being done to people and nature, but we all have had to participate. We have been formed by our economic systems from birth and behave within its constricts. It is almost impossible to imagine another way of living. Economics even controls governments. The task for all of us is to think our way out of constant competition and money making into a different economic structure. Then, make it a reality. Economics that enhances the well being of everyone and all life, making it possible for us to enter our brightest future.
 

Are you interested in learning more about Renew the Earth and their concepts of Human Renewable Energy Measure and Energy Currency? Please check out their website at  www.renew-the-earth.org. “These are open source ideas and we welcome your input,” says Susan Caumont, president; Renew the Earth.

About Renew the Earth: Renew the Earth has been working since 1970 to educate the public about renewable energies, sun, wind and biomass and sustainable practices. Over the past 10 years, our focus has shifted to the HREM, Human Renewable Energy Measure, and Energy Currency. We feel that general acceptance of renewables has been reached and the present roadblock is how economics functions for-profit and not for humanity and best practices. “Time is not money, time is life.”

Jeff Beller, economist and vice president of Renew the Earth.

Contact Information:Name: Jeff Beller

Address: Renew the Earth, 8 Robin Ann Lane, Westerlo, NY 12193

Phone: 518-797-3377

Chapter 11: Japan Part 3

September 15, 2025
Japan Log, Part 3 General impressions, Japan and Jeju South Korea

Japan, special Nagasaki log

September 9, 2025
I went to the Nagasaki Museum of Art. There was a special exhibit there called War in the Eyes of Artists; from Goya to several Nagasaki artists. Though I had deliberately avoided visiting the epicenters of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki for reasons I have already expressed, seeing this exhibit at the museum was just as intense. For this log I am going to highlight a display I found most moving. I am including the youtube address where it can be seen and heard. Place address here The display starts with a poem and an illustration. Both commemorate the bombing of Nagasaki. After viewing the illustration and reading the poem you enter a small theater to sit down and watch an animation of the illustration set to music. All the children, adults, animals and Shinto like creatures that are in the illustration (in a huge tree) come to life and move to the rhythm of the music. A male voice sings overall, lyrics that may have to do with the poem, written by singer/songwriter Masaharu Fujiyama and entitled, “Kusunoki; Blown by the 500-year Wind.” The illustration is the work of an artist named Junaida. The lyrics were inspired by the Kusunoki (camphor trees), which survived the atomic bomb.

Chapter 11: Japan Part 2

September 2, 2025
Shizuoka

Chapter 11: Japan Part 1

August 25, 2025
We dock at Hakodate, Japan on the 80th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. That stands as a singular horror among the many horrors humans commit on each other and Nature and continue to commit to this day. There is no apology possible and unfortunately nothing may have been learned. We still threaten each other with nuclear weapons. No treaty has stopped the building of nuclear bombs. I wonder how the Japanese people keep the memory of this tragedy so that living can continue with some normalcy. Maybe it can be equated to a typhoon or earthquake, like a natural disaster having no morality or intention. It has influenced their imaginations ever since though, revealed in movies like Godzilla and in their Manga. Threatening creatures, imagined power that cannot be controlled or resisted. People can be like a natural disaster to each other. People can also be wonderful. We saw this as we left the city. A small group of dancers appeared on the dock to say goodbye. The dancing they did was so charming and touching. It was a traditional dance, maybe 15 dancers. About 8 people played instruments to accompany them, flutes, drums and other unique percussion. Watching from the top deck of the ship the dancers appear like exotical dolls. Three warriors pantomime their strength, emphasized with elegant gestures of their fans and their golden, brightly tasselled headdresses that bow and flash in opposition. Then the little children emerge, five of them. Their elders position them precisely and they wait for the music to begin. Their tiny movements are sweetly in time as they step then extend their fans to tap the air with it lightly, creating a feeling of certainty and control. Moving to one side with a gliding motion they unfurl their fan, flourish and close it, then glide to the other side and do the same. The dance continues with variations of these movements and some new ones punctuate occasionally. So intent and serious, each tiny performer dressed in elaborate traditional clothing, a magical, miniature display. The dance becomes hypnotic as it continues to the simple rhythms of the drums and flutes repeating and repeating an ancient significance remembered by a few. After they finish, our ship pulls away with several blasts from the horn. The tiny dancers wave goodbye, with their hands crossing again and again in front of their faces, for so long it seems as if they might continue until we are out of sight. Finally we are too far away to hear the children cry out. This experience was fleeting and very moving. A dancing gesture of dignity and friendship. People are not their military, they are not their government. They have to participate in their society but they are first of all human. They want to create understanding beyond language and country.

Chapter 10: Alaska Part 2

August 12, 2025
Alaska feels like a different country; not like one of the United States. Maybe its vastness and extreme climate have created this unique presence. People who adapt themselves to living half the year in darkness and half in light, in a lot of cold and rain with magnificent beauty all around, this has an impact. The unique environment of Alaska transforms people.  The Tlingit were one of the aboriginal Alaskan groups. They crossed the Bering Strait from Asia, approximately 9,000 years ago. There are also some theories about individuals island-hopping from Polynesia. Both scenarios may be true. Nonetheless, they formed a highly complex social, legal and political structure along with extraordinary creative arts and oral culture. Before European contact their population reached approximately 20,000. Status was based on birth and wealth, creating a hierarchical social structure. There was a noble class (determined through hereditary) followed by medicine men and women, warriors, traders, commoners and slaves. The Clan House was home to three resident classes; nobles, commoners and slaves. The construction of the Clan House was a sacred event involving rituals for the dead. The two ritual groups (moiety) were Raven or Eagle/Wolf, and they were expected to marry outside their group (exogamous). Tlingit followed a matrilineal clan system. Children inherited the clan side of the mother. All rights were through the mother; these include fishing, hunting and gathering places, the use of certain clan symbols, totem designs, house decoration and ceremonial clothing designs. The Clan had spiritual, psychological and medical protection from a medicine man or woman. They were also known to control weather, bring luck, predict the future, expose witches and speak to the dead. They did not cut their hair in order to keep their power strong. Their power would pass to a younger relative when they died.

Chapter 10: Alaska Part 1

August 4, 2025
Some context for this trip and log. The ship we are traveling on is the Villa Vie Odyssey. It is a small cruise ship with about 300 passengers and 300 crew. We have bought a cabin aboard. My plan is to document one circumnavigation. This will take about 3 and ½ years. So far this has been a record from when we boarded in Barbados, going through the Panama Canal, up the western coast of Mexico over to Hawaii then up the western coast of the United States to Alaska.The following is an account of Alaska. After this we will travel to Japan. Thank you for your interest. I was unprepared for the profound beauty of Alaska. The more you see, the more it astounds. How is it possible that people could hunt seals, foxes, wolves and beavers to extinction, log evergreen trees to bare brown ground - as if a massive electric shaver was used to mow the mountains- that grow back in patches and trails made for giants? Vastness is not endless. The harsh environment, remoteness and beauty did not protect them. Still, how was it possible? Only people caught in a frenzy of commerce could do this. The same frenzy that brought thousands of men with dreams of making fortunes in gold to remote outlands of Alaska. They became insane devourers. Luminous white water rushes from a cleft at the top of the mountain sliding in and out of evergreens to the river below, pinched along the way by grey rocks. This was the land of the Tlingit for at least 10,000 years. Theirs was a highly developed social structure equal to those found in Europe. Spanish contact in 1775 dropped their population by about 80 percent, with typhoid fever, scarlet fever, and measles. The Russian fur trade changed their lives even more. It began after Vitus Bering’s 1747 expedition and “discovery” of the Bering strait. Sea otter pelts were the incentive. Other fur was also sought but sea otter pelts were the most coveted. It is the warmest fur. It has the most hairs per square inch of any animal fur. An adaptation that allows it to live in the extreme environments of Alaska. Unfortunately for the otters its fur can be made into the warmest of coats. By 1799 the fur trade was thriving. It involved the forced labor of the indigenous people. Their local knowledge of the animals and their hunting expertise were essential. This industry brought significant change to the native communities, disease, dependence on trade goods and inter-tribal conflict. Russia traded furs to China and Europe. When competition for pelts and political factors involving Russia affected their ability to continue the trade, Russia sold Alaska to the United States. The US had been pressing westward and getting involved with trapping, fishing, mining, logging and homesteading. In 1867 the US bought Alaska from Russia for 7.2 million dollars. In 1788 the US entered the maritime fur trade; sea otter furs for Oriental goods. By 1801 the US controlled the fur trade at its height and Boston was at its center. When a major discovery of gold was made in 1896, Alaska became the gateway to the Klondike gold fields. Purple mountains are passing by my window as we glide to our next port. I can watch this ‘movie’ before I go to sleep. It stays light till around midnight and never becomes completely dark. The sun is up at 5:00. Locals describe the endless darkness of the winter months as depressing. “What do you do?” “Watch movies, watch TV.” Native people used the long dark Winters to create. The memories of summer beauty and important events, documented in beadwork, carved figures of animals from walrus bone, charms for hats and masks, hand made fur garments beautifully beaded with flowers, leaves and animals, scrimshaw pipes of bone, a crown for a baby beaded and decorated with carvings, two white pom poms hanging from thin leather strips on either side. The intensive summer hunting over, food dried and stored. Time for handwork, music, story telling and conversation. While the mountains and sky silently hover near in all their variety and beauty.

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