Scarcity Zero Whitepaper
Our world as we know it is made possible through energy and resources. As vital requirements for civilization to function, the drive to secure access to both has shaped much of human history and dominated the global order until the present day. As this drive frequently occurs under zero-sum paradigms (where each gain for one actor necessarily entails a loss for another) it spawns circumstances that present severe social and ecological impact. The insatiable demand for energy and resources is a primary cause of environmental destruction and climate change. A lack of resources is a primary cause of economic decline, civil instability, poverty, and famine. Ambitions of acquiring resources abroad are a primary cause of imperialism and war – along with the unquantifiable fortunes and lives they devour.
Resource scarcity is a core human malady and a curse upon our species.
We propose a means to solve this challenge of resource scarcity. Our strategy is to deploy the most capable energy technologies we have available into an open-source framework that both generates energy and produces resources as dedicated functions. Integrating modularity, standardization, and cooperation into each facet of system design allows the framework’s technologies to be mass-produced, rapidly deployed, and rapidly scaled. This also allows for the waste heat energy of certain technologies to be cogeneratively harnessed for the powering of other systems at maximum efficiency. Combined, this enables us to massively increase the volume of energy available to society at a significantly lower cost – enabling the sustainable production of critical resources and the deployment of systems that can both capture greenhouse gasses and recycle waste on a nationwide scale.
We have named this framework Scarcity Zero.