Member-only story
Wunderwaffen, or, technology will save us
Toward the end of World War II, Germans were told not to despair: Wunderwaffen (miracle weapons) would win the war in the end. These were under development: V2 rockets, and a multi-stage missile that could hit New York; jet fighter aircraft; the atomic bomb…
This was not simply propaganda. Hitler’s regime went all-out on producing technology that would reverse the course of the war, ever more frantically trying any project that promised to outdo the enemy. And they did produce a variety of weapons that were significant advances over Allied technology. Thankfully, the atomic bomb remained out of their reach, and in fact the German authorities gave up on acquiring it by 1942.
I fear we are in the same position. We know that the climate is only going to get worse. We constantly are being told about 1.5º increasing soon, very soon, to cataclysms if we don’t do something. People keep writing articles about new technology that will save us. You know, batteries that will power cars without lithium or charged by solar energy, not coal-generated electricity. Jet aircraft running on biofuels. Giant carbon-capture machines. Pulverized iron filings creating huge blooms of plankton to feed ocean creatures. Huge fish farms that stop the overfishing. Microwave transmission of power from solar-powered plants orbiting the Earth. Mining asteroids and smelting their…
