I have been a member of the DKos community since 2004 and I have participated here in fits and bursts over the past decade. My activity here has tapered off in recent years but I still visit the site often to get caught up on news that I find relevant to my view of the world. I particularly enjoy the many posts here related to climate change as they tend to be factual and honest, two traits I respect a great deal!
I will admit that when one is factual and honest about climate change, it becomes increasingly difficult to be hopeful that the necessary changes can be implemented in time to prevent disaster. I have often felt despair when I see the dangers the planet faces and my inability to do anything about it. I get angry when I see the ignorance of so many people who have been bamboozled by the "global warming is a hoax" crowd. I get frustrated when I see governments around the world continue to pacify the fossil fuel industry and do absolutely nothing to reduce CO2 emmissions while every year that passes, the situation we face becomes even more dire.
When it comes to climate change, the only emotions I have had are negative ones and feeling helpless was right at the top of the list.
Until now.
SolarCoin has given me the first ray of hope I've had since 2007 when I first watched An Inconvenient Truth.
Join me below the orange photon and let me share my SolarCoin story with you. And maybe, just maybe, some of you may also catch a glimmer of light peeking through the cloud of CO2 that hangs over us all.
I'll start with a little bit of background. The person I present to the world (aka my resume) is nothing spectacular or unique. I'm 44, female, married, no kids, Engineering degree, MBA, CFA Charterholder, blah, blah, blah. Anyone really interested in that can read my LinkedIn profile here: Joely Balazs
I currently work as a property tax assessor for Service New Brunswick and I am most assuredly part of the "over-educated underpaid" demographic. But I am happy, I love my husband, my bills get paid and I'm healthy. I try to live my life according to the "happiness = reality - expectations" formula. Reality is a fairly tricky variable to adjust and change because there are many external factors involved. I used to spend a lot of time trying to change it to no avail. However, I've become quite skilled at managing the expectations part of the equation because that is the one variable I have complete control over. My expectations of life were much higher when I was younger than they are now. Age can do that to a girl, I guess. :) But since reality wasn't budging, if I wanted to be happy, I had to lower my expectations.
I'll stop there. I could write a whole diary on why I am who I am today and tie in my personality, my upbringing, my family influences, gender issues, etc.. But that's not why I'm here. I only present a brief look at who I am to provide some form of context. I have come to discover that in Cryptoland, trust and honestly are a BFD yet those qualities are sorely lacking. Nuketeacher did a great job describing Cryptoland in a previous diary so I won't re-hash it in this one.
Now down to business: What is SolarCoin?
In a nutshell, SolarCoin is a digital currency in which 1 SolarCoin represents 1 MWh of solar electricity produced or §1 = 1MWh. So it is a digital currency backed by electricity. When it comes to money, having a currency backed by electricity is probably the most optimal structure because of it's utility and economic stability versus gold or debt.
A paper written in 2011 by the two creators of SolarCoin, Nick Gogerty and Joseph Zitoli describes the economics of this far better than I can. I would urge anyone interested in high level research of this concept to read that paper.
My educational background in engineering and finance combined with being a geek is what afforded me the opportunity to recognize the sheer brilliance of what the SolarCoin Foundation is trying to accomplish here. There are still many hoops to go through, Bitcoin has been around for five years and is still forging the path to change the way we think about money. SolarCoin has adopted that technology but is attempting to add a better foundation layer while at the same time promoting the adoption of solar energy around the world.
There is still much work to be done to get there. The project is laid out over a 40 year time span and it's just in its infancy today. That's why I have decided to put so much effort into helping it succeed because I believe that if people can be incentivized to adopt solar power and the "network effect" takes hold, then we actually might have a shot at increasing solar generation quickly enough to combat the predominant power sources that are only continuing to pump CO2 into the atmosphere.
I wrote a diary back in early March about SolarCoin that provides a bit more detail, feel free to check that out as well: SolarCoin: Do you generate solar?
I don't want to bog this diary down with too much technical detail, we can deal with much of that in the comments. Anyone interested can make the journey down the rabbit hole and determine for themselves if this is something they feel is important enough to sink their teeth into. I happen to think it is.
I have been doing due diligence on SolarCoin since it came to my attention one cold night in January while lying in bed reading twitter posts about bitcoin. I'd been following bitcoin for a while at that point trying to understand all of the intricacies, the history, the technology, the value, the people involved, etc.. Bitcoin and the cryptocurrency space is absolutely fascinating on many fronts, but particularly the social aspects. The individuals that drive the message are varied, to say the least. There are techy folks, libertarian types, fake libertarian types, progressives, geniuses, idiots, capitalists, entrepreneurs, objectivists, anarchists, scammers, criminals, gamblers, doubters, believers, investors, miners, idealists, pragmatists, etc.. The mass of people involved in bitcoin is quite something to witness. Trying to filter through all that noise to get an understanding of the technology itself and what it can mean for the future was daunting. As I gained more understanding, I bought into the technology but felt that something was still missing.
SolarCoin filled that gap for me by being backed by a MWh of energy. As people begin to claim their coins for solar energy already being generated and the value begins to rise, the incentive will become apparent for others to adopt solar and claim their coins, and so on and so on. The steadily dropping costs of solar also adds to this cycle of growth and amplifies it further. It is conceivable that, if this happens, we can get to a point in a few years time where CO2 emissions start to drop as solar adoption ramps up. We could avert disaster. The framework is there, we just need to do the work and get the message out. If we let fear, uncertainty and doubt rule the day, it will never get done. It's up to us to make it happen and do our part.
That's why I'm here today sharing this story. I have finally found the means through which I don't have to feel helpless anymore and I would like to invite all of you to join me on the journey. It will be a bumpy ride but we can make it happen, one photon at a time.
In closing, I would like to share a YouTube video I made of three interviews from the Bitcoins & Gravy podcasts about SolarCoin. It's a little over an hour and I was interviewed first due to a scholarship I am awarding next month to my local high school. After that, the two creators of SolarCoin were interviewed. Please take an hour of your time to listen to it. Do some research and come to your own conclusions. Post here any questions you may have and I will attempt to answer.
As an added incentive to get the ball rolling (and to have a little fun with this), I will send §12 to anyone who posts a SolarCoin address in the comments so you can get a feel for how all of this digital currency business works. That represents the amount of energy needed to power an average home for a year. Just go to the SolarCoin website, download a wallet, sync up with the network, find the receive address (starts with an 8), copy/paste that below and I'll send you some SolarCoins.
Thank you for taking the time to read this diary. :)
Other diaries on DailyKos related to SolarCoin: How Green is Your Money? Uniting Economic Populists and Environmental Activists with SolarCoin
