John Shanahan

Greetings to the Schiller Institute Conference

John Shanahan is a civil engineer, and an editor at All About Energy (allaboutenergy.net). This is an edited transcript of remarks he delivered to the second panel, “The Real Science Behind Climate Change: Why the World Needs Many More Terawatts of Energy” of the June 26-27, 2021 Schiller Institute conference, “For the Common Good of All People, Not Rules Benefiting the Few!”

Hello! My name is John Shanahan. I’m a civil engineer living in Denver, Colorado. I would like to thank Mrs. Helga Zepp-LaRouche for organizing the Schiller Institute conference on avoiding World War III, and inviting me to participate.

I started my professional life as a civil engineer in commercial nuclear power in 1970, and then became interested in public education for broader topics of energy in general, nuclear science, the environment, and the human factor.

It is clear to most engineers that solar and wind power are too diffuse and incapable of providing energy for the modern global economy. So, to counter the disinformation in the media, some friends, associates, and I began a website, allaboutenergy.net.

I am determined that our knowledge will not be lost. I am helping students in Latin America, Africa, Europe, North America, and Asia learn about the importance of reliable, affordable, high-energy-density energy sources—fossil fuels and nuclear power. I have lived a total of ten-plus years in Germany and Switzerland in the 1960s and 1980s, working directly with Europeans, in German, and visited Friedrich Schiller’s burial place in Weimar.

Since 2007, my wife, friends, and I have bicycled in Europe for two weeks each year. We are familiar with the strengths and weaknesses of governments in Europe and North America, and, by extension, governments around the world. Since the 1980s, I have travelled to Latin America for back-packing and visits with friends in Bolivia. I am familiar with literature of that interesting part of the world.

The website, allaboutenergy.net, is a holistic, educational effort about energy, environment, energy biproducts, nuclear science, and their importance for the modern world. A greatly revised and updated version of the website will be released in a couple of months. We have an international board of advisors—forty-four people, from eighteen countries. The website has about 2,200 articles, reports, power-point presentations, e-books, and videos for public education. The volume of content is constantly growing. We have a newsletter that is sent to people in 124 countries.

Our mission is similar to the Schiller Institute’s. We focus on the next 200 years. The Schiller Institute focusses on however long humanity will play an important role in the Universe.

We look forward to working together, and thank you very much.