A New Flat Earth

The machine has never enjoyed such an advantage as
now that it can run on solar energy.  After successfully
procuring huge subsidies, it proclaims its new diet so
loudly the public mistakenly thinks solar energy is
advancing while really it is the owners of the solar
scented machine going forward and our uses of solar
energy going backwards. The proclamations of those
enchanted by solar machines appear in newspaper and on
TV.  Their synthetic lullaby is no better a serenade than
a radio drowning out Nature’s sounds.  Those in power
have put on notice the many traditional ways which are
entirely solar by leaving them out of all the many energy
censuses. Where are the clotheslines, for instance?
These censuses have become a specialty of foundations,
governments and universities.  Their large budgets must
lead to a special dollar blindness.  The charts of solar
energy usage are baffling to anyone who can see.  There
are the wind generators and solar power plants, but
where is the food we eat?  Where are the miles we walk,
the stairs we climb, the sun through the windows, the
regeneration of the oxygen we breathe, the distillation of
the water we drink?

Of course, no one needs such energy censuses. We are
being distracted.  Nature weighs, matches, measures,
fills and drains, but never bothers to count.  The numbers
of barrels of oil and tons of coal in their census may be
accurate, but the accounts of the sun are anything but.  
The energy census mistakes are as profound as the
mistakes of ancient map makers who showed a flat
earth.  None of these old map makers ever fell off the
earth, despite the maps they made, and none of the
professors who make up the equivalent of flat earth
energy charts starve to death, die of thirst, asphyxiation
or other problems their charts would make you think are
imminent dangers. The edges of the flat earth and the
borders of their solar accounting are equally absurd.  
Our planet is round; our economy part of Nature.

The energy charts which omit all traditional uses of the
sun are a symptom of our enchantment by the machine.  
The flat earth maps were misdrawn from ignorance; our
energy charts are made up amid muscle bound, machine
won knowledge.  Look at our telescopes, microscopes,
power plants, trillion dollar budgets and ever larger
computers.  We can only make these mistakes because
we live under a spell.  

Steve Baer 2006