The transformation of the continent of Europe is a job of colossal proportions. The benefits of such a change can only be enjoyed in a generation from now or perhaps longer. Someone may think that this is enough to wreck the whole idea. Let him, however, remember the wars that fill the pages of history, that are still being fought in different parts of the world today.
The sacrifice
The following outlines in principle the character, work and costs of the project which forms the bulk of Part II of this book. The labour inputs mentioned later on have not been precisely calculated. Most of the work concerns demolition, construction and the manufacture of new machines and products, so the costs and quantities of labour have been estimated by a rough comparison to similar projects that have already been carried out. The totals should be compared to the present unemployment figures for Europe. It should also be asked, how many of those employed in Europe today are only ostensibly working, or in jobs that are either worthless or harmful. Finally it is estimated how many years’ wages of the genuinely unemployed the total costs equal.
Appendix 2 offers a rough calculation of the costs and wages.
Nature protection
Europe should create an integrated network of nature conservation areas and the land for it should for the most part be redeemed from private individuals and companies. This is the second of the two major reorganisations of areas which requires work and absorbs money. This nature conservation area need not be particularly streamline. The main thing is that the lanes can be retained unbroken through the continent, meandering, widening and narrowing considerably according to the occupation of land.
In order to show consideration for settled areas, the conservation area requires a highly detailed plan. The route is thousands of kilometres long and it has to be charted down to each individual village and house. The route may only make minor changes to existing settlement. At certain points it could become a narrow corridor and then widen again once there is sufficient space. Fields and commercial forests could be cheaply converted into conservation areas, but the demolition of buildings or their transfer elsewhere is more expensive and should be avoided. As the whole of Europe is very densely populated, the conservation area could never be planned so skillfully that not a single homestead in any square kilometre of it would not have to be taken over. Buildings will be demolished or their purposes changed in time, but not in a hurry. This is taken into consideration in the redemption costs.
The nature conservation project, which is described in greater detail in Part II, is estimated to cost ECU 126 billion.
Food and forests
Europe should be self-sufficient in all foods except things like tropical fruits. Agricultural land in certain areas should be relocated. In the Holland and Belgium, for example, agricultural production should be placed on a more sustainable and self-sufficient footing. The fish stock should be carefully protected and improved from its present level.
The same principles apply to forestry as to agriculture. The division between arable land, pastures, naturally-growing commercial forests and energy fields is not static and unchanging for decades on end. In the long run, it is only to the good if occasionally forests are converted into pastures, and energy wood is grown on cropland. Broad overall guidelines for such variations can be made, but they do not significantly affect costs.
Costs occur, however, when new attitudes in farming and forestry lead to an overhaul of the machine stock. A more sensitive treatment of the soil will require lighter machines and a reduction in ground pressure. It is thus obvious that the machines used in agriculture and forestry will have to be fundamentally improved over the next few decades. The stock of old machines will be gradually phased out or remodeled, so the costs involved cannot wholly be treated as extras.
The costs come from the renewal of the factories producing the machines. As a result of the change in attitudes within agriculture and forestry, the former type machines will no longer be manufactured in the old type of factories. This process of renewal is estimated to cost ECU 804 billion.
Energy
Of all the new projects, the most extensive is the construction of combined wind-solar-geothermal power plants. As important, and in fact a prerequisite for this system, is the solution to the problem of the short-term and seasonal storage of energy. This requires the construction of dozens of assembly plants and hundreds of component factories.
As demand will be tremendous, the production lines in these factories can be more automatised and robotised than in the automobile industry today. In operation and structure the wind-solar-geothermal power plants, like the factories producing the parts for them, will be far simpler than the equivalent operations in the automobile industry. A solar power plant does not need to move from one place to another quickly or slowly, directly or indirectly, uphill or downhill, accelerating or braking, in hot or cold weather, slipping and bumping, safely and always observing the traffic regulations of different countries. Thus even a factory making the panels can be much simpler and more highly automatised than one manufacturing cars.
The power plants discussed here are at three levels, and for this reason three different industrial sectors are needed to produce their components. The manufacture and installation of geothermal pipelines, the production and erection of wind turbines, and finally the making and delivery of solar panels are three consecutive if distinct processes. In size, the production chain for each of them is, for instance, the same as the refrigerator industry. Each stage in the process is thoroughly automatised, which is why it is not enough just to robotise the production of the final products. Automatisation has to be taken much further. It also requires advanced robotisation in the production of the machines making the solar panels, rotors and heat pumps. Parallel to the actual generation of energy arises the problem of energy storage. The equipment required for this constitutes a separate branch of industry.
There are two aspects to the problem of storing energy. The first concerns the disparity between the daily consumption and production of energy. This can be partly solved by pumping water during the sunny hours of the day up from old mine shafts and letting it back during the night. Underground pipelines can also be used for storage, as well as underground, thermally-insulated tanks. A far greater problem, however, is the annual disparity between the production and consumption of energy. It is necessary in Nordic countries to store some three to four months energy to carry them over the winter. The planned use of energy wood in these countries helps, but does not completely solve the problem.
A more sophisticated way of storing energy is to dissipate water and use the hydrogen obtained as a fuel. This would also help solve the problem of storage as hydrogen could be pumped along the same pipes as natural gas. The Japanese Genesis plan envisages the transfer of supraconductive energy from one side of the globe to the other, and from the south to the north. The costs estimated in the detailed energy plan are ECU 9 502 billion.
Recycling
The recycling industry is intimately related to the nature of materials. If materials are divided into metals, polymers, mineral aggregates and composites, then recycling technologies must be developed for each of them. This allows for a parallel recycling system for products. To begin with, the final stage in industrial processing – the conversion of materials into products – can be retained in its present state. The production of raw materials changes first, with an increasingly smaller part of them originating from nature, and an increasingly larger part from waste and scrap. Thus the collection of waste, old products and scrap will become more important and also industrialised.
This will require the building of product dismantling plants and new factories throughout Europe over the next few decades. There will be as many of them as those now producing machines, equipment and vehicles, and their capacity is cautiously estimated to be about half of existing assembly plants.
The cost of introducing new recycling technologies is estimated at ECU 1 165 billion.
Transport
Even in the future a limited number of planes will be needed, likewise ships. They will still be oil fuelled. Land-based passenger and freight transport will be completely electrified. Vehicles will no longer be powered by the internal combustion engine. The transportation of passengers will operate on a four-level basis around a trunk line network of high speed trains. This will be based on a somewhat abbreviated version of the existing rail network in Europe. The geometry of the tracks will be upgraded to make them suitable for trains travelling at 500 kilometres per hour. The longest journey in Europe will then only take eight hours.
The main lines will consist of four tracks with high speed trains only running between terminals. People wishing to board and leave these for intermediate stations will be served by the second level of passenger transportation. This consists of feeder trains running on the outer two of the four tracks, which continue at a slower speed, depositing and picking up passengers at the numerous intermediate stations.
The third level consists of cybercabs, automatically-controlled vehicles powered by underground electric cables. Cybercabs can be hired and are part of the public transport system. They vary in speed and are used for short journeys within urban zones. Europe will need some 80 million of these cybercabs. Existing roads and streets can serve as routes and only few alterations are needed to lay the cables and create an automatic transport network. No changes in the geometry of roads is required.
The fourth level of passenger transport consists of old fashioned muscle transport in all its forms – bicycles, scooters, sleighs, skis and so on.
The extra cost of upgrading passenger transportation in the way outlined in Part II is estimated at ECO 7 520 billion.
The transportation of goods will be totally separated from passenger traffic. Once the cycbercab system is introduced, the existing road network electrified and automatised, the outmoded combustion engine-driven cars will disappear from the streets. This will mean that long-haul lorries will also disappear. To replace them, a network of pipes will be built under the roads in which to convey goods the length and breadth of Europe. These are vacuum pipes in which goods will be fired at great velocities using magnetic levitation technology and precious little energy. Short-haul, smaller deliveries will be made in electric cybervans. The cost of the freight pipeline and other systems of transporting goods is estimated at ECO 6 270 billion.
Data communication
An efficient data communications network and storage system will be built for the whole continent. People will have public and private operated polymedia screens in their homes and carry mobile videophones. Every opportunity will be taken to reduce the amount of physical communication from its present level. The building of this transcontinental telecommunications network will cost about ECO 2 302 billion.
Eco-villages and eco-cities
Experimental eco-villages will be built throughout Europe, some in pristine environments and others revitalising existing sites. The costs involved are minimal.
Traffic in all major cities will be reorganised along the lines described above. In addition, water and waste management systems will be upgraded, so that water is completely recyclable and all waste reusable. Giant energy generating plants will be built outside the cities and food supplied through radial pipelines. The cost of placing urban water supplies on a recyclable basis is reckoned to be about ECU 100 billion.
Manpower
At present there are more than 20 million people unemployed in Europe. In one generation, their work input would be about 600 million man years at a cost in wages of about ECO 27 000 billion, which compares favourably with the total cost of ECU 27 789 billion for the above mentioned projects. A good fifty per cent should be added to both figures because, in addition to wages and direct investments, there are always indirect costs which have not been included in these calculations. Even though the totals are very similar, the bases for them are approximately the same. Had different grounds been chosen the difference would have been greater. It can, however, be concluded from the comparison that the costs of investments and available price of labour are of the same magnitude. Nothing else is required at this stage.
It should be noted that after the great transformation it will be essential to re-evaluate the nature of work. If the attitude to work is still the same as now, the unemployment problem will be many times greater due to the high degree of automatisation in the megamachine. The new age, however, will bring with it new attitudes and so the idea of unemployment will lose its meaning.
