Paradigm Shift. David Lipschitz letter to the Cape Times published Mon 18 Jul 2016

In case you're wondering what is going on in Turkey and Britain, watch Tracy Chapman's "Talkin' Bout a Revolution" on Youtube at https://youtu.be/EAscWLlvUKY

People are rising up against their corrupt "leaders" who have forgotten how to listen to the (their?) people. The last time this happened, the world experienced The French Revolution.

I personally believe that bloodshed is not required anymore. Talking is needed. Trust is needed.

Equanimity must be used to replace ignorance, and aversion with compassion and unconditional love on an abundant planet which a few people have corrupted by creating artificial scarcity.

People must be allowed to say what they truly think (about each other), and they must have trusted guides, without agendas, who can facilitate this discussion in a tranquil manner in a beautiful setting like the City of Cape Town. My personal suggestion is that these discussions are held inside St George's Cathedral, which was a bastion and barricade against apartheid and other past dangers.

Talking and action, with self and community regeneration, is already happening in grass-roots communities in (South) Africa, and in "awakened companies" (see book by Catherine Bell) throughout the world.

Government is not needed anymore, at least not the way it is currently structured. Something else is needed. And ubuntu and its foundation of "seeing each other for who we truly are, inside" will show us a way.

Its not the best quality photo. On the right of the left hand page is my letter as published above.
On the right hand page is Bill Gates letter.
We are finally next to each other.

City preventing mayor's power dream from becoming reality. David Lipschitz letter to the Cape Times published Wed 20 Apr 2016

At the City of Cape Town Energy Efficiency Quarterly Forum on Wednesday. March 16, Mayor Patricia de Lille said her dream was that every house should be a power station generating electricity for the grid. And another part of her dream is that Tesla and other electric vehicle suppliers come to town and we have electric cars and electric busses for the MyCiti system.

This is a dream I also have.

But the city is doing everything it can to prevent the mayor and my dream from becoming a reality.

Why? Because the city is scared of losing electricity revenue.

So they are sitting on their hands fiddling with electricity tariffs and service fees while their customers go elsewhere.

Some of these customers are talking about going "off grid", i.e. separating themselves from the grid. We heard at the forum that this will be economically viable within five years, using solar panels, batteries and inverters.

But the mayor's and my dream is that houses should be power stations. In order for this to happen, houses must remain connected to the grid. And for this to happen, the people who could have gone off grid will need to be incentivised to stay on the grid.

The first incentive: no service fee. At the moment, the city is instituting service or connection fees for all its clients. See the new "home user" tariff in the City's draft tariff announcement. Their reasoning is that people will need the grid from time to time to charge their batteries or to run high power loads, and that this grid infrastructure needs to be maintained.

What the city has forgotten is that it too needs electricity for its buildings, for its infrastructure, for its business clients, and soon for its electric buses. And in a few years' time for its new pumped storage systems that it will build as part of its rollout of new dams to prevent water shortages in future. These pumped storage systems are massive and efficient batteries. The City will need the cheap electricity generated by rooftop electric systems during the day to pump water from the lower dam to the higher dam and it can then sell this electricity at night or on rainy days to its users at higher prices.

Additionally surplus electricity generated during the day can be used for desalination, thus averting our water crisis and at the same time providing water for the dams.

And whist Eskom say that there will be a surplus of electricity in five years' time, who knows what it will cost. There is a massive shortage of electricity at the moment, and in five years' time thousands, or perhaps millions, of homeowners and business owners will have "defected" from the electricity grid and will be producing their own electricity for their own consumption, and will have physically disconnected themselves from the grid in order not to pay the service fees.

At the same time as this, with solar-electric prices coming down every year, within five years, solar-electric electricity will be cheaper than Eskom's selling prices to the municipalities.

Wouldn't the City rather buy cheaper, clean electricity from its own inhabitants than buy expensive, dirty electricity from Eskom?

Wouldn't it be much better to allow a free connection, but to tell home-based power stations that they must supply the grid when there is a shortage of electricity, i.e. when electricity is expensive and buy from the grid when electricity is cheap?

This is entirely feasible with modern Smart Meters, Time of Use Tariffs, Net Metering, Demand Response and existing battery technology.

[left out in the newspaper:

Net Metering means that one buys and sells electricity at the same price. I would recommend that CNEM be introduced, i.e. City of Cape Town Net Metering. In CNEM, electricity sold to the grid by home owners and other "embedded generators" is sold at 80 percent of the current buying price.

Time of Use Tariffs means that the tariff changes depending on demand and supply. And Smart Meters means that the City will know exactly how much homeowners are producing, how much they are capable of exporting to the grid, and how much they are buying or selling from or to the grid at any particular time.

Demand response means that the City can disconnect or reduce its local electricity users electricity consumption with short notice, that saving on expensive electricity from Eskom, and at the same time making the local Western Cape grid more reliable, resilient, and it's electricity cheaper than elsewhere in the world.]

The mayor and my dream can become a reality. But it needs the mayor and her committee to talk to their citizens instead of producing reports which tell the world how fantastic they are, whilst they ignore their citizens, and whilst they ignore their future.

[Also left out in the newspaper:

There is a lot of research in strategic circles of over-reliance on experts, and under-reliance on grassroots research and citizen scientists' knowledge. Experts want the status quo to stay as it is - then they can keep their jobs!! But it is time for the City to act on this research!

And once everyone is a power station, then everyone will be contributing to a healthy environment where everyone has jobs and the city remains the world's best, cleanest and healthiest city in which to live.]

Let people of SA be central in decision over fracking. David Lipschitz letter to the Cape Times published Fri 11 Mar 2016

According to your newspaper (March 10), the government will release their fracking findings today. Should fracking go ahead? Should we be concerned about the environment? Can there be compromise between environmentalists and frackers?

The problem in South Africa is much bigger than mining. We all know about the "resource curse."

Mining countries are worse off than countries without mines, even in Africa. The mining and mineral rich countries are growing slowly. The others are growing fast.

Why? Because countries without mines rely on their ingenuity, whereas countries with mines rely on their mines, and forget their minds.

Colonialists came here, initially for the bounty from our soil, and then for our mineral wealth.

They took huge amounts of money and built their empires and their houses. Think castles, chateaux, mansions, manor houses and stately homes with their hundreds of rooms, many servants, and huge grounds. And not only their rich got rich, but many of their people got rich, too.

Nkandla fades into insignificance when compared with the grandeur of these massive houses and estates.

And through all this, the masses of South Africans remain destitute, dependent on the state. If the state decides to frack the Karoo and the coastal waters around Cape Town, then the state must give the profits to the people so that the people become as rich as the state. We know that this is never going to happen!

We cannot blame the colonialists. It is a fact of the past, applicable in "white" countries and in "black" countries; applicable to white-on-white colonialism and black-on-black colonialism, applicable to religious colonialism and any type of colonisation where one people wanted something that another people had, or has.

We are in the 21st Century, a century with more possibilities for the people than ever before if we choose to grab hold of the opportunities and the future, rather than corrupting our minds by staying in the past.

So we can either spend the billions of dollars that would have been invested in fracking our gas resources to pollute our world and our minds for another 30 years - before we run out and then deal with a worse environmental disaster than the one we already have, probably with even bigger unemployment, more crime and more destitute people - or rather take the decision to immediately clean up our act and install the alternative, clean energies, that we have now.

Our costs will be a lot less. Our health costs will be a lot less. And government will be doing its job of governance, looking after the land and its borders and the environment, thus making it as clean as possible so that its people can have healthy minds, healthy bodies, and so that we can all be employed.

Britain, EU must become true partners in diverse world. Article in Cape Times on 7th July 2016

The article "Voters' remorse is so high, a new Brexit poll would have the opposite result" by Gwynne Dyer's (Cape Times, June 5) refers.

The following picture shows a gap between "your comfort zone" and "where the magic happens".




This gap is variously known as "the valley of the shadow of death" (Psalm 23), "post decision depression", "buyer's remorse", etc.

This "valley" is an incredibly scary place as one moves from one's comfort zone to where the magic happens.

Paulo Coelho refers to this valley as "the personal legend" and specifically "the fourth obstacle".

Here is a piece from Mr Coelho's blog:

– And what is the fourth obstacle?
– After unearthing your dream, using the power of love for support, spending many years with the scars, a man realizes – from one day to the next – that everything he always wanted is right there, waiting for him, perhaps the very next day. Then comes the fourth obstacle: the fear of realizing the dream he has fought for all his life.
– That makes no sense.
– Oscar Wilde said that we always destroy the thing we love the most. And it is true. The simple possibility of achieving that which we desire causes the soul of the common man to be filled with guilt. He looks around, and sees many others who have not succeeded, and so he thinks he does not deserve it. He forgets everything he overcame, all he suffered, everything he had to renounce in order to come this far. I know many people who, when they are within reach of their Personal Legend, make a series of silly mistakes and do not attain their objective – when it was just one step away.

Britain and the British people have voted for their dream.

Their politicians have no idea how to implement the people's dream, but the people have spoken.

"Global economic recession" and "currency devaluation" and "leaderless political parties" and Martin Shultz, president of the European Parliament saying that "the Tories have taken us hostage" are all blame and scapegoats.

It is time for the British and EU to roll up their sleeves and become true partners in the new globally diverse environment.

I wrote about it in my last Brexit article published, "Only by being unified in diversity can we truly be free: (Cape Times, July 1)​.

Only by being unified in diversity can we truly be free. Article about BREXIT by David Lipschitz in Cape Times on Friday 1st July 2016

AS USUAL, the naysayers are out in force, telling the world's people that the world is about to disintegrate and we should all start praying and packing up our businesses and lives, heading for the hills.

Brexit, Britain exiting the EU, might not be as bad as some would believe.

We live in an over-centralised world where the people at the centre channel all the energy and funds via themselves, raking off commissions and other monies for themselves. Corruption is rife. Palms are greased. And the money laundering is incredible.

Imagine a world where Britain separates from the EU. And then, imagine that Britain itself "disintegrates" like Czechoslovakia, which become the Czech Republic and Slovakia.

Imagine that Britain becomes England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland - four separate countries.

And then, imagine that these countries disintegrate further and England's counties become countries called Leicestershire, Lancashire, Nottinghamshire, etc.

Imagine that these "new" "city states" want to work with each other to better each other for the betterment of mankind, not for warlike reasons.

Each "shire" has unique capabilities. Each "shire" has unique inspiration and motivation. Each "shire" can "muster" its people in a unique way to be "better" - "shire" people. More fulfilled. More energetic. More resourceful. More at peace with each other in their own "local communities", connected by the "internet-super-highway" (Jeremy Rifkin).

At the moment, all these "separate" people are lumped together in a community called the EU where everyone is meant to be the same. But difference should be celebrated, not inhibited.

When one looks at nature, one sees millions of colours, millions of smells, millions of shapes. Almost nothing is the same as the next thing. And yet, we humans are all trying to be alike instead of celebrating our humanity by being who we truly are.

Men and women are really different. Blacks and whites have different value to offer society, knowledgeable about different parts of an increasingly complex and diverse world.

Different religions can and should work together for the betterment of all. Different countries and societies have different human capital, different systems that should all contribute to a new "whole." And even West and East have different ways of viewing science, with the West preferring a "proof" approach, and the East preferring an "observation" approach.

We live in a "connected" world where anyone anywhere can "be their own boss", accessing the internet and trading with anyone anywhere on the planet. This "flat" (read Thomas Friedman's book Hot, Flat and Crowded) world makes everyone "appear" to be the same. It appears that we all have the same opportunities. It appears that we all have the same markets. It appears that we all have the same resources.

Yes re opportunities. Yes re markets. No re resources. Small communities of resourceful communities have changed the world, and this is what we need today.

In fact Margaret Mead said "never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has."

Nelson Mandela, the Madiba (father) of our modern South Africa, celebrated difference. He intuitively knew that by celebrating the uniqueness that the 11 different "tribes" of South Africa has, and by keeping our languages and cultures separate, that we would "thrive" in this diverse world. Only by being unified in diversity can we truly be free. Many people said that we should have one South Africa with one language. They are wrong!

Single monoculture crops are failures waiting to happen. Whilst planting a single crop might mean a huge profit in the event of everything going well, a "bad" year could spell disaster.

How much better to sow a field with multiple varieties of corn and multiple other crops that co-exist with corn. Any single point of failure is covered by the diversity planted on the field.

Brexit allows us to celebrate difference, whilst being part of a diverse, integrated-whole. We should applaud the people who have taken this painful decision and support the processes that will come out of it.