Homes from Dirt; Energy from Dung; Clean Water from Piss

Yes, it is true. It is possible to provide solid shelter, clean water, and reliable electricity from dirt, dung, and piss. Can you think of many places that significant numbers of humans live where there is not ample supply of all three?

Dean Kamen--successful college dropout, inventor extraordinaire--provides the means to make energy from dung or other bio-combustibles, and pure water from piss--or any impure water source. The ingenious devices that provide clean water and plentiful energy can be mass produced cheaply, and transported anywhere.

Houses from dirt are rather easily made using small portable machines to compress earthen brick. I made many such bricks of earth in helping to build such a house in the mountains of the western US. It is a house I would not mind living in myself.

The missing ingredient is food--but where there are clean water and plentiful energy, it is quite possible to grow food.

Wealthy inventor Dean Kamen does not hesitate to drink his own urine(!)--once it has passed through his patented "Slingshot" purification system. He does this in front of audiences to convince them that it is possible to do away with water-born illness around the globe. Would George Bush or Nancy Pelosi drink their own urine to help make the world a better place? Interesting question.

There should be no shortage of clean water, no homeless people, no one without electricity, no one without food. The only real shortages existing are shortages of intelligence, ingenuity, cooperation, and tolerance for other religions and ideologies. Dean Kamen has provided the ingenuity for plentiful freshwater and energy--no matter how remote the village. Ingenuity for building solid earthen homes is within the grasp of almost anyone--even a social science professor or journalist.