The Biggest Revolution You’ve Never Heard of

Warning! This post contains:

one (1) Death Star laser, repurposed for boiling water
skyscrapers full of strawberries
unregulated levels of hope

Side effects may include believing in the future. Reader discretion is advised.

Some call humans a failed experiment waiting to be annihilated from pollution, climate or robots. It’s a mindset that denies our potential while also planting seeds of apathy and despair. We’ve heard it for decades, but have always innovated our way out of the “impending” doom.

A few major problems today contributing to doom culture center around energy, global warming and deforestation. Of course, declining trees contribute to warming, so it’s a vicious cycle. I believe, however, that the latest energy and agricultural tech could eliminate these problems within 30 years.

First, I need to ask a favor. I’m going to ask that you dream with me. Pessimists can pess off. Kidding of course.

Agriculture takes up half of the planet’s habitable surface and requires a web of habitat-destroying cement jungles (e.g. roads, cities, storage facilities). This piece will introduce you to vertical farming, a new industry speculators believe will replace horizontal farming in the future. This leap forward would lead to massive reforestation efforts that offset earth’s carbon imbalance.

Science Fiction turned Reality

It may sound like a pipe dream, but if you’re following the tech, then you’re already aware of the science fiction that becomes reality every day.

Nanotechnologies already exist that deliver medicine intravenously, dispose of tumors, clear clogged arteries, and stop internal bleeding. AI can now translate silent human brain activity, and tell bionic arms to act upon it. Robots can “talk” to crops now. Basically, plants tell robots, “I’m thirsty,” by releasing a chemical into the soil that underground sensors recognize. The robots then supply water until the plant releases another hormone that says, “I’m good.” This means, no more watering on a cadence. Water is delivered right to the root, which saves 40% of the water normally lost to evaporation. Subsequently …

Plants are growing 2 to 3X larger and sucking up 2 to 3X more carbon.

A team of researchers from Cornell recently discovered that plants absorb 37 billion more metric tons of carbon per year than what was previously thought. Every tree you plant is absorbing 31% more carbon than what the outdated models predicted. This suggests that we’ve been using outdated data to make global warming models since the 1980s.

Fission’s “Death Star” Laser

I read stories like this every day and can’t help but think that we’re close. Science is growing at exponential rates. Recently, physicists were researching fission, but inadvertently invented a giant “laser” (e.g. millimeter waves) that could provide endless green energy via something entirely different: geothermal (i.e. heat energy from the earth). The engineers at Quaise Energy plan to repurpose this giant leap forward for mankind. More about that later, but just know …

The biggest technical revolution of the 21st century isn’t AI or crypto – it’s boiling water.

The global economy runs on power – and for the first time, we’ve figured out how to extract it without drilling ourselves into oblivion.

No wind and solar deserts that devastate bird populations. Just Earth, doing what it’s always done.

Iceland’s been running on geothermal for decades, and their GDP per capita outpaces most fossil-rich nations. No oil. Just heat.

A geothermal revolution

Now, three breakthroughs are turning their model into a global blueprint.

1. Enhanced Geothermal Systems (EGS)
Born from ex–oil engineers, Furvo Energy uses EGS, the same pinpoint drilling tech – but instead of pulling up oil and gas, it harnesses heat. Water down. Hypercritical (high-temp) water up. No carbon. No combustion. The turbines turn just the same.

2. Geopressure
Sage Geosystems built a giant underground espresso machine that pumps water deep into porous rock. The Earth heats it, pressure builds and energy is released and used on-demand or the pressure is stored for later use. No lithium. The “battery” *is* the Earth’s crust.

3. Millimeter Waves
By a company called Quaise. Part microwave, part Death Star superlaser. No metal claws. No fractures. Just smooth, sci-fi drilling that strengthens rock as it melts into itself, which solves geothermal’s biggest demon: earthquakes.

One fission laser costs $500K to manufacture vs. $30MM for a mechanical drill. And instead of 20 years to dig 20 km down, developers are estimating that it’ll take several months.

Worried about fracking? Don’t be. The laser doesn’t fracture bedrock like current drill bits do. Instead it melts inward, keeping the rock much stronger and sealed up.

Of course, Big Oil and Coal interests are keeping a very close eye on geothermal. They’ll eventually retrofit all their existing coal and gas powered plants since the infrastructure is already there. This will cut timelines in half. Quaise Energy’s first commercial plant is breaking ground in 2026.

So it doesn’t kill birds, minimal geological impact, endless clean energy.

Together, these systems are rewriting the economics of energy – not someday – right now in Houston Texas, where power plants are already built and ... blossoming? Yes. That’s the perfect word for such a plant.

And when it scales, they’ll do what no corrupt politician ever could – make us less reliant on corrupt politicians. Make us less reliant on the Epsteins of the world.

Imagine heating your home for less than your Netflix subscription.

Give it three years and Big Oil will have to pivot. Give it ten, and it’ll make the internet look like dial-up. AI is already being tapped to find the most ideal locations to drill because …

AI’s massive energy suck will be increasingly reliant on the endless geothermal supply.

It’s why AI companies like Google and Microsoft already have plans to build their own geothermal plants. Contracts are signed. It’s happening.

This isn’t utopia – it’s thermodynamics. Endless clean energy will absolutely make it easier to live, and for developing countries to become what Iceland is today.

Ag-tech revolution, reforestation and plummeting costs

As for the agriculture problem, enter skyscraper farms. Currently, agriculture takes up roughly 46.74 billion acres of land, but that area could be reduced to a small fraction if we grew food vertically.

Supposedly, the entire earth’s population can fit into Texas if they were all families of four living on a 1/4 acre (basically the density of New York City). That’s definitely not practical, but each individual in the world could have 1/4 acre of land if spread out over the contiguous United States. Again, not possible, but it gives us an idea of the actual dimensions required for human living space. Under this scenario, people will live all over the world but vertical farms will lead to people living in smaller clusters, centered around bigger cities.

Shipping costs will disappear when vertical farms move inside city limits. The farm could even double as your grocery store. If customers pick their own strawberries, they’ll save even more. Imagine how fresh food will taste if you pick it off the vine. Currently, strawberries are picked green and ripen in an 18-wheeler. The only fruit that’s picked when ripe is frozen food. This all changes with vertical farming.

Lastly, competition will drive costs as low as they can go. All the Walmarts of the world will pass savings off to people, forcing competitors to do the same.

So why aren’t we doing this now?

The expensive energy required to power grow lights is the tallest hurdle, but the endless geothermal energy of the future will significantly cut energy costs and make lighting economically viable. Even if geothermal doesn’t win the energy war, micro nuclear power plants using thorium (salt) reactors will slash energy costs in the future just the same.

Whether it’s geothermal, thorium, solar, wind or fission, the point is the same: when energy becomes abundant and cheap, stability follows — and stability is our prerequisite for peace, innovation, and hope.

Both energy and ag-tech industries are about to take off. It’s just a matter of time before vertical farms eliminate the need for flat forest-destroying farms.

With all this in mind, I don’t believe it will take a full societal collapse to renew our human experiment. There’s too much money to be made from clean energy and skyscraper farming.

The flip side to greed is that if you can make money saving the planet, then entrepreneurs will come out of the woodwork to do it.

I believe these ideas are war-ending, inflation-killing. When our cost of living for energy and food is cut in half, when people can live more comfortably, the rest of the world’s problems become smaller. What will there be left to fight over when we aren’t fighting so hard to survive?

If the elite don’t blow us up, then it’s going to be bright. Our energy will be bright as yellow … so have hope!

No — literally, you can have it. I’m giving it away. Have as much as you like.

I recently finished a 5-year project curating all the good news in the world (and Far Side cartoons). It’s all the other tech, medical and energy breakthroughs that will save us.