I recently wrote a post critical of radical environmentalists who take rigid positions and refuse to make the tough choices that confront us all in the real world.  In particular, I stand in disagreement with people’s unwillingness to exile the tortoises from 4613 acres (about five square miles) in the California desert that would have been used for a gigawatt of solar photovoltaics, an almost exact replacement for a full coal-fired power plant.

Frequent commenter Larry Lemmert (who’s normally pretty much in my face) writes:

Craig, you are a reasonable man. I say that not because I agree with you about the desert tortoises vs. the PV panels but because you understand that trade-offs must be made to secure green energy for replacement of retiring fossil fuel sources. So many so-called environmentalists want a free energy lunch. It doesn’t exist.

Ah, a red-letter day; Larry and I agree on something. And he’s even used my favorite “no free lunch” metaphor…

Seriously, this idea of trade-offs and no free lunch is all-important; in fact, it lies at the base of my series of videos and infographics on renewable energy for young people and other newcomers to the subject. But regardless of one’s level of sophistication with the subject, it’s not an easy issue.  In brief, we need to choose between:

• Continuing  with business as usual, and subjecting the natural environment to the ever-increasing ravages of climate change, ocean acidification, etc.  The U.S. is the only major country on the planet that considers the status quo a viable option; we are  actually working against a progressive climate policy.   

• Do nuclear in a big way and run significant health and safety risks. Many of the world’s people have recently cast their votes against nuclear. Here’s a summary of this discussion.

• Aggressively cut back on our per-capita use of energy and move back in the direction of an agrarian economy. (How likely is that?)

• Fund the advancement of renewables, energy efficiency and conservation, by pulling money away from other things we think we need.

Regular readers know that I believe this last option is our only credible one, but I do freely admit that it comes with a cost.  In particular, I’m a big fan of education, especially of females in developing countries.  But how important are most of these things that we think we need? Tens of billions of dollars in subsidies to the oil companies? Trillions of dollars for waging wars whose primary missions are securing access to oil? I’m not a believer.  

No, there is no free lunch; everything comes at a cost.  Which is why our choices really do mean something. May we make the right ones.

The PBS special “Electric Nation” is a reasonably fair-minded and certainly non-hysterical treatment of the various modes of how we in the U.S. generate electricity. Personally, had I written the show, I would have been quite a bit more hysterical, emphasizing the utter insanity of our business-as-usual approach to fossil fuels and our failure to form a workable energy policy, even in the face of:

• Global climate change

• Ocean acidification

• Peak oil

• Empowering terrorist and other anti-American regimes

• Escalating rates of lung disease

Yet they were good enough to quote Thomas Edison’s famous simile regarding our shortsightedness when it comes to energy:

“We are like tenant farmers chopping down the fence around our house for fuel when we should be using Nature’s inexhaustible sources of energy–sun, wind and tide.”

To simplify where we are as a civilization and where we’re going with respect to energy consumption, economics, and environmentalism, it’s useful to postulate three broad “plans”:

Plan A:  We continue on our current course. We ignore the fact that our population will soon be growing from 7 billion to 10 billion, and that an ever-growing percentage of that population is joining the ranks of consumers. Our leaders know that we’re in the process of driving off a cliff; they may lack basic decency, but they’re long on intelligence, and they exploit voter ignorance of this core  truth as long as they possibly can.  During this time, they and the extraordinarily powerful forces that elected them desperately look for new ways of extracting fossil fuels, while obfuscating the effects on global climate, ocean acidification, social chaos, war, respiratory disease, etc.  The elite remain in power until the planet is in ruins.  

Plan B: We aggressively adopt what Jeremy Rifkin and others refer to as “The Third Industrial Revolution,” which contemplates continued economic growth by focusing on renewable energy and the many other components of sustainability. As Rifkin conceives this, there are “five pillars” at play here: shifting to renewable energy, developing buildings as power plants, deploying hydrogen and other storage technologies, using Internet technology, and transitioning the transport fleet to electric, plug-in and fuel cell vehicles. Not to give anything away, but this concept is embraced by several of the people I interviewed in my second book, due out shortly: “Is Renewable Really Doable?”

Plan C: Although we’d probably love to believe in Plan B, we just don’t see it as a pragmatic reality. We regard the phrase “sustainable growth” as an oxymoron, and find a way to cut back on energy consumption and deal with a period of negative growth, because this is our only choice. Btw, this too is addressed in my next book, and it’s the core belief of Bill McKibben and many other great minds.

My job is to pull this apart, to unravel the issues that underlie each of the three major plans.  And now may be a good time to thank you, reader, for being here, and offering your insightful comments as we work this through together. 

Bill Moore, editor of EVWorld.com has written a splendid article on the failure of certain of the early electric vehicle companies, in which he points out:

Breaking into the automotive business can be relatively easy; making a success of it is pretty damned near impossible, regardless of what type of propulsion system you favor: ICE-age or otherwise; and it’s especially tough if you decide to go electric. Beyond this, the reasons for individual failures are myriad and multiple: right product, wrong time, wrong product; wrong time, etc. Management missteps, unrealistic investor expectations and impatience, government responsiveness, inept marketing, unanticipated technical setbacks, product shortcomings, public resistance to change: the list is long.

I don’t dispute any of this, but let’s look at the subject from a “big picture” perspective. As a country, we’re still married to fossil fuels, and we’re doing essentially nothing about it In particular, we have no energy policy. Hell, we’re about to build an oil pipeline, the Keystone XL, right through the middle of the continent, one that may be unnecessary and that even some oil companies think is overpriced.

At the same time, we don’t have an iota of horsepower in Congress examining the big ideas.  If I (or you) were there, we’d be saying:

Here’s a list of major reasons (I’ve left out the minor ones) to phase out fossil fuels aggressively:

• National security / terrorism
• Health / lung disease
• Global climate change, ocean acidification and other ecological disasters
• Skyrocketing / crippling debt
• War which we can’t afford, and leave countless dead and wounded
• Peak oil, coupled with burgeoning urban/consumer populations globally

You can argue about the relative importance of each of these, but for my money, we’ve spent enough time arguing about this garbage already. Now the time has come for action, and we’re going to take it, regardless of what the oil companies say. We have a responsibility at this time and place in history, and by God, we’re going to live up to it.

Gullible guy that I am, I still believe that someone in a position of power will ask me to draft a plan that phases fossil fuels out forcibly over the next 25 years, and eliminates them completely by 2050.  As always, I’ll be happy to serve. 

Here, 2GreenEnergy Video Report host George Alger interviews me on the hydrogen economy: what it means, its validity, and its ramifications.

In this episode of the 2GreenEnergy Video Report, host George Alger interviews me on the phenomenon known as “peak oil,” i.e., that the world has peaked in terms of its oil production capacity. I discuss my take on this, as well as its many social, financial, and political ramifications.

Here’s another episode of the 2GreenEnergy Report, in which I’m interviewed on the subject of peak oil. I manage to squeeze in references to related subjects as well: the consequences of our addiction to foreign oil, the externalities associated with fossil fuels, long-term environmental damage, the associated costs of healthcare, ocean acidification, and global climate change.

Out of fairness, here’s a rare dissenter.

I point out three things:

1) As discussed here, the oil companies have spent a fortune creating doubt in the public’s mind about the validity of concern for global warming.  With a brazen lack of regard for the truth and a callous indifference to your health and safety that rivals that of the tobacco companies, they’ve funded sham “research” companies whose sole purpose is to build a cloud of uncertainly regarding global warming.  There’s no debate about that.

Now is it possible that, again out of fairness, those who stand to profit from global warming mitigation are campaigning in the opposite direction? I suppose so.

2) But even if the global warming hypothesis turns out to be incorrect, no one is saying that it isn’t likely. Is it sane to risk inaction that could result in complete ecological, social, and economic catastrophe?

Here is a video that I think everyone on this planet should watch, that offers cogent reasoning that mankind should take action to deal with the possibility that most climatologists are correct in their theories.

3) Again, even if the global warming hypothesis turns out to be incorrect, even fewer scientists doubt that increased CO2 levels are lowering the pH of the oceans, causing long-term damage to the fragile ecosystems therein.

I would think that this would make it intensely difficult to argue against controlling carbon emissions. But hey, I’ve seen incredible behavior from people where money is concerned before. Why should I think it will suddenly cease now?

“The debate” continues here.

In essence, rising levels of CO2 in the atmosphere causes more CO2 to be absorbed into the oceans, which in turn causes a complicated set of (mostly) unwanted chemical reactions, most directly the formation of carbonic acid. This affects the survival of calcifying organisms, damaging corals, shellfish, and many other lifeforms that maintain the delicate balance that is the ocean ecosystem.

What makes this phenomenon of particular importance is the fact that it is not disputed. As discussed in my upcoming book on renewables, Big Oil is working hard to obfuscate the global warming issue. However, there is no doubt whatsoever that rising levels of CO2 in our atmosphere are causing long-term environmental damage. Thus ocean acidification renders moot any controversy that the oil companies are working so hard to generate about global warming.