A reader commented that she loved the quote of Henry Kissinger that I used in a recent post: “If it weren’t for the wrath of the American people about our presence in Vietnam, we’d STILL BE THERE.” (emphasis added) I used that to illustrate that we DO, despite all indications to the contrary, have an important voice in determining the outcome of our civilization.
I happened to run across this one from Noam Chomsky just now:
All over the place, from the popular culture to the propaganda system, there is constant pressure to make people feel that they are helpless, that the only role they can have is to ratify decisions and to consume.
It seems that affection for renewable energy often breaks down across political (conservative vs. liberal) lines. I’m not sure I understand how this can be. Obviously, everyone cares about the quality of the planet we live on and leave to our descendents. So I’m guessing the fundamental issue is the cost of renewables.
But, as Tom Rooney points out in his recent article Why Conservatives Are Bad on Energy, the financial analysis of clean energy is largely based on misconceptions. A recent editorial in the Wall Street Journal referred to photovoltaic solar energy as a “speculative and immature technology that costs far more than ordinary power.” The author went on to point out that the only thing holding the industry together were subsidies. Didn’t this guy get the memo? A few weeks ago, the International Energy Agency said worldwide, fossil fuels receive $550 billion in subsidies a year — 12 times what alternatives such as wind and solar get. Read More »
If you haven’t seen British comedian Robert Newman’s The History of Oil, I beg you: set aside 45 minutes and check this out.
I spend a great deal of my life looking for ways to express the imperative to break our addiction to oil, based on explicating concepts like peak oil and wars that are secretly about oil. But I never dreamed that someone with an unimaginable level of understanding and talent had done it 100 times better than I could ever hope to. Enjoy.
Thanks so much to frequent guest blogger Cameron Atwood for bringing it to my attention.
Here’s a post on philosophy — relevant to our discussion as it deals with the proper role of government in defining policy and in our lives more generally.
It happens to be the birthday of John Locke, 17th Century British “empiricist,” meaning that he believed that all knowledge is derived from the senses. He’s actually better known for his political philosophy; Locke was one of the first to assert that all people had different classes of rights, and that the role of government was to protect those rights. His thinking figured prominently into our Declaration of Independence and our Constitution about 100 years later — and for that, we all owe him our gratitude. Read More »
I just got off the phone with Michal Lenchner, whom I had met at the Plug-In 2010 conference for electric vehicles not too long ago. A committed environmentalist, Michal writes a column for the San Francisco Examiner (linked above) that’s a true fountainhead of information on a range of eco-issues.
In particular, she wrote me recently suggesting that I look more deeply into water: desalination, re-use of gray water, the energy required to move water around, and the water required to extract oil and gas. While it’s not a subject of which I have a deep understanding, it most certainly is an interesting and important one. I recall what the late Matt Simmons of Peak Oil fame told me when I interviewed him for my book:
Oil and gas exploration uses a remarkably large amount of water — and often other energy. The oil sands of Canada use just a phenomenal amount of potable water and natural gas to actually steam it out of the sands. In California, something like two-thirds of their oil supply comes from Kern County’s heavy oil, and while the San Joaquin Valley is one of the key food supply sources of America, they’re having a very serious drought.
I’ve asked Michal to become a guest blogger here; I very much hope she’ll take me up on my offer.
I like to post articles on Renewable Energy World, as they have pretty decent traffic among people interested in a wide range of clean energy topics. Today, I commented on Stephen Lacey’s piece Is the Transmission ‘Problem’ Real? in which I indicated that he’s correct: to some degree, the argument that the grid needs to be upgraded in order to accommodate more clean energy is specious.
I go on to mention that I’m more interested in renewables on a national or continental scale. And, while I’m aware that Bill McKibben and thousands of other smart people see a future dominated by individual energy farmers, each, putting his unused electrons back onto the grid, I question whether this adequately addresses the matter of scale. With our growing population of energy-hungry consumers, utility-scale renewables appears to me to be the only way to get this done.
And this is where transmission really is an issue. As we know, renewable resources are localized: the sun shines hottest in the southwestern deserts, the wind blows hardest in the plains, the mountains have the best geothermal resources, etc. A significant upgrade to the grid — preferably to high-voltage DC — is required to make this happen.
Yet, as usual, the difficulty here is almost exclusively political. In particular, we’re being told that, for legal reasons, we can’t have a national high-voltage grid. And unfortunately, the US Supreme Court didn’t help the cause in its recent ruling, either.
I really don’t understand the problem. We have national pathways for the transportation of automobiles, railway cars, natural gas, etc. Can someone provide a reason — other than sleezy politics — that we can’t use our crystal clean eminent domain laws to get this done? There should be nothing new or scary about this.
This was published last year somewhere. I take no credit for it except to share with you. It’s fun but also leaves an educational lesson.
Once upon a time the government had a vast scrap yard in the middle of a desert. Congress said, “Someone may steal from it at night.” Read More »
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