Undertitled “How solar energy can generate a basic income for everyone on Earth”, this new book by Robert Stayton rides on an apparently radical idea: that all people on Earth can earn a basic income, financed from the generation of solar electricity alone. This comes from a known scheme used to incentivize the generation of solar electricity, the feed-in tariff, but other financing mechanisms are also suggested in the book, such as combination with carbon taxes, redirecting existing subsidies on fossil fuel companies to solar electricity generation and taxing corporations from feeding on common held resources (commons).
The book is about to be released on September 17th 2019 (today).
This book, the ideas within it, is really fantastic.
Supplying all the world with an automatic income, from a sustainable source of funds (not taxes) and rapidly increasing the roll-out of renewable energy, so therefore inadvertently dealing with the global greenhouse terrible issue, is about as good as it gets. It was Buckminster Fuller who (to me) identified the process ‘precession’ where really great outcomes come as ‘side-effects’ to the straight forward approach, such as bees going after nectar inadvertently pollinating all the flowers. Dealing with climate change and greenhouse gas reduction in a straightforward manner has been a failure. Dealing with global inequality through renewable energy and solar dividends – a bit anti-intuitive as it means energy prices need to rise, is clever, because everyone needs to buy energy, therefore the ‘bottom will never fall out of the income’. Higher energy prices will encourage people to use energy more efficiently, like they do in Germany and Japan. And an educated opinion uncovers that renewable energy is completely viable to power the planet, and as technology inevitably improves it becomes more viable.
Buy the book, read the book, tell your friends.