Energy-Related Paradigm Shifts
I’m pleased to see that blogger Frank Eggers has become active here, who writes:
As one of the comment-posters stated, too little attention is being given to reducing the need for driving . . . With better urban planning, people could often walk where they need to go, ride a bicycle, or use public transportation. But with scattered development, public transportation cannot be made efficient.
This is all true. And I do think I see the seeds of this thinking in young people leaving college with the relevant degrees to get into this subject professionally. Clearly, however, such change will be a long time in the making.
Another issue slowing down the reduction in driving is simply individuals’ resistance to change. I’m reminded of Thomas Edison, who, when he introduced alternating current in the late 19th century, recognized that it represented a scary paradigm shift for American consumers, and wanted to “mess with” that paradigm as little as possible. So, to suggest a way in which electricity could replace gas for room lighting, he put his new lights in the wall sconces where the gas lamps had been. Previously, one could only light a room from the walls, since gas lamps on the ceiling would have brought the whole place down in flames. Even though Edison wished he could show the world a breakthrough in illuminating a room with the more practical and effective ceiling lighting, he wanted to introduce no more change than was absolutely necessary.
My point here is that the best ideas of the generation and use of energy are those that call upon people to make the least change in their attitudes and behaviors. This, btw, is my chief concern about the Commuter Car in the previous post; it calls upon the automotive consumer to make a radical shift in perception, and it’s unclear to me how that will be embraced.
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Thanks, Bernard. Please see my email to you earlier this morning.
How clever he was, Thomas Edison! Electrified transportation is a parallell to introducing electricity lighting in the wall scones instead of on the ceiling. Instead of introducing EVs, a paradigm shift during all this century, we could use electricity transforming captured CO2 into methanol. Via MTG (Methanol To Gasoline) chemical industry could produce synthetic fuels fitting our recent ICEs. George Olah’s Methanol Economy Concept is huuuge!
How about we give people what they want. People want big cars and cheap energy. 95% of the people love the freedom of driving where every they want when ever they want. Maybe 5% or less of the people prefer to walk or ride bikes every where they want. There is nothing wrong with personal choice.
If someone wants to ride a bike 20 miles in a loop from their house that is fine. It is also fine if a family puts 4 bikes on their SUV, drives 40 miles round trip to do a 5 mile loop.
The point is lets spend the next 20 years building Solar, Wind, Geothermal, Hydro and Nuclear power generation so that after it is all built we don’t need any fuel for the next 2 billion years. Just maintain what we have so we can have cheap energy to power our Suburbans and Tahoes that have 100 KWH batteries. We can quickly learn to build large capacity cheap batteries that we can recylce. Or maybe Large capacity ultra capaciters or a combination.
Lets just assume that the technology will eventually end up with what people want, so lets go with the flow instead of against it.
Giving people what they want is fine to a point. However, there are times and situations where giving people what they want creates problems for others and that should be taken into consideration.
The need for gasoline and imported oil drives our foreign policy to a considerable degree. The cost of the military to safeguard our imported oil supply is not taken into consideration, especially when lives lost during military action is considered. Also, although we do not know how much oil is available, it is limited and prices are, at some point, sure to rise greatly. Using oil inefficiently will therefore impact even those who would prefer not to drive but must because of poor urban planning.
Consider also poor people who really should not be spending money on cars but must to be able to work. They would be better off spending money on better food, clothing, housing, medical care, and education but, because of poor urban planning, are forced to spend money on a private car. Also, some people are poor because lack of adequate public transportation and poor urban planning make it impossible for them to get to where the jobs are.
Inability to walk places also impacts health by reducing the ability to incorporate exercise into one’s daily routine. That is one of the factors in our epidemic of obesity.
People object to the funds used to improve public transportation but generally raise no objection to the funds used to expand our road system.
What must first happen for this major shift too happen is installing high speed internet on every street in the USA, then high speed rail between the major cities, then commuter rail out too the small towns, then light rail in the big cities, when this happens electric cars will be much more viable and other forms of transportation such as scooters and bikes, also communities will grow around the train stations to accomidate all of this.
That’s one possibility, but attempts to predict the future usually fail.
An alternative to battery electric vehicles would be vehicles with engines running on an artificial liquid fuel. It may be that they’d co-exist with electric cars and be used where electric cars have insufficient range. On the other hand, the range problem of electric cars could be solved; part of the solution could be a battery exchange program. Surely improved public transportation would be part of the solution. For electric cars to reach their full potential, we need abundant clean energy.
For some occupations, the need to commute could be reduced with applications like skype.
In any case, we cannot continue with business as usual.
It is interesting that human thinking is so well endowed with going beyond what appear to be impressive boundaries, and is simultaneously trapped in the webs of fear, uncertainty and doubt (FUD) – euphemistically referred to as conservative. Our susceptibility to FUD is so well accepted that companies invest in expertise within the psychological sciences so as to best proffer their particular views. All very interesting in an academic kind of way, but not likely to evolve in the near term. Anyone with an agenda can, of course, avail themselves of such technique. Peak oil, skyrocketing energy prices?
In carrot and stick terms, I think of the above as the stick. What might be the carrots of change? I consider the author’s observation on the efficacious nature of incremental change to be a valid generalization. Smaller carrots?
In the interest of keeping my post akin to a drunken walk event, I provide a bit of a personal sidebar.
Like many, I am a member of a health club. I can go there and move a lot of iron and other materials in a reciprocating motion, ostensibly to my benefit and to the detriment of the club’s HVAC. I can also pay a gardener considerable amounts of money to move rocks and other portions of my property for the benefit of my aesthetic sensibilities, and considerably more so for the gardener. A few years ago, I came to the conclusion that those rocks were irregularly formed exercise machines, and that I could combine these activities in some measure, both profitably and health-wise. I still have a gardener and I still belong to a health club. What happens in the two venues has however evolved, and continues to. I would also add that the stick in this analogy would be my doctor threatening me with a quadruple bypass, although that has not yet happened.
We don’t easily drive little eco cars, ride bicycles, walk or take public transportation every single day of the week. We can however dip our toes in the water, most especially when there are other threads of self-interest making themselves apparent. There is no question that others will have more interest in my electric bike when gas goes over $4 (stick). If I also present the electric bike as an opportunity for fun and optional exercise, it gets an even better reception. My electric car? At the moment, that’s early adopter stuff, and as we know, early adopters don’t need targeted marketing. They are usually the ones in line at 2am in the morning. I do however use that car as a means of show and tell for the good things coming, and I predict that many of the people around me will be quite receptive to the Nissans, Mitsubishis, Chryslers, Renault, BYD, what-have-you electric cars a year from now. It will all seem a bit familiar.
Hello Craig,
Thanks for the Energy-Related Paradigm Shifts.
Ten years ago, I was reading a book from Alvin Toffler.
The book was written in the 80’s and this problem was analysed.
Educated people will be more able to adapt to the future.
They will be able to work at home, get food from the garden, water from the roof, electric power from the Sun or wind, to solve the mobility problems and to choose better politicians. They will prefer EV’s without gasoline or hydrogen.
Blockade the Sun or the wind is impossible…
Thanks, Best Regards.
Manuel Gama
“And I do think I see the seeds of this thinking in young people leaving college with the relevant degrees to get into this subject professionally”
That’s part of the problem: we have become so accustomed to ‘buying’ an education, or ‘buying’ someone to do our work for us, or ‘buying’ a car to go to the mall to buy a new car. Now, we are looking for ways to ‘buy’ a ‘green’ job that is mostly greenwashing of a typical consumerism job (building mass transport to move people instead of teaching them how to stay home in the first place).
It’s the buying and traveling to someone else’s market-based coercion system that takes us away from our place and our land. No high school that I know of is teaching kids how to stay in their place and make it better. They are all testing kids to get them into colleges someplace ‘else’.
The problem is that our minds are set on selling something away from our place (including our children) and not putting the same value back that we have ‘harvested’. Our kids leave to join the march of “progress”, our food production (from petroleum) displaces hand labor, and our lives are determined by our jobs, which are what we do to make someone else at least twice as much money as we get paid, usually at work that is organized to increase consumption.
I read a lot of this crap and I’ll tell you what we need and will use. An electric car with a 60 mph speed and at least a 60 mile range. When we can buy that then I’ll have one and so will others. Stop this crap about 25 mph cars and 30 mile range which take 8 hours to recharge. It’s called get real, folks! WWR http://wwrutland.wordpress.com
Which is more important for the future of clean energy: Science or Politics?
A very good question, While both can be critical mass tipping points in the current energy paradigm, given a breakthrough of science or an energy crisis. In todays world neither has the legs to turn the corner without a huge push by a commited public, and the operating word here is committed, and I will tell you why.
First the Science; Electric technology has been available and in use in large parts of Asia and Europe for the last decade, and I am not just talking about NEV’s here but a fairly mature market in most ways including battery development that is not perfect, but very advanced compared to the US Car yahoo’s.
(WW Rutland Wrote: I read a lot of this crap and I’ll tell you what we need and will use. An electric car with a 60 mph speed and at least a 60 mile range. When we can buy that then I’ll have one and so will others.) ..WWR I have seen them, driven them, been asked recently to help market them, there available and their coming.
I have personally been to dozens of E-factorys in Asia and they have been at it since 1995 in terms of R+D and market breakthroughs with vehichles that can reach 80-95 mile ranges and speeds that hit 80 mph and battery warrenty’s of 2 years plus, and some have e-mailed me that they have or are getting their DOT certifications. Its our automakers and media that don’t promote e-awareness or availability.
Now lets talk politics: you would think that a grave energy crisis would have America up in arms demanding something be done, given that there were realistic alternatives available. Well If I remember right, oil hit $170.00 a barrel and gas was at $4.50+ and climbing, the public was screaming bloody h*%ll.
This was a perfect storm scenario where both the public will, and the necesary available technology was avaliable to capitalize and manage change via the reactionable crisis (simular to the crisis in the 70’s and again in the 80’s) in which politicians given fortitude and character, could have made a difference with a variety of alternative sources.
As someone who is finishing up the final touches on rolling out the country’s first ‘All-Electric’ dealership I am counting on the enlightened few, and in particular the next generation to really drive home the reality of electrics as a wholly capable Industry! (yes I am convinced that Electrics not hybrids are the real direction America should be pursuing, Interested? e-me at : rawni(at)sbcglobal.net))
Until the American public can remember longer than what it ate for breakfast this morning, until politicians can say no to the lobbyist’s lining their pockets from all the energy and auto players in the US. When the media here is not held in the hands of a select few who don’t want to wake a sleeping public, America will be relegated to second world status in the new age of clean energy!
RSA
Better Urban planning that facilitates and endears walking, bicycling and public transportation commuting to the populace is perhaps the healthiest way to urban development. Mistakes of the past is now being corrected and the benefits are most appreciated in African urban centers currently undergoing renewal such as the city of Lagos. The greater majority will remain without cars for a long time to come given costs and poverty levels. Taking that mass of the populace into consideration in urban planning recommend facilitating walkings, cyclings and efficient public transportation modes.
I completely agree, for what it’s worth. I join you and a great number of other readers who point out that the best approach to energy is not consuming it.
I had the pleasure and opportunity to have lived in Taipei for three years with absolutely no need of a car. If you did have a car it took you longer to find a place to park than it would of taken you to walk or take public transit. There was a supermarket in the basement of the building I lived in, and two others within a 3 block walk. My gym was a twenty minute walk away, a good warm-up and warm down, and a beautiful public park just a block away. Everything from restaurants, theaters, and department stores were within 15 minute walking distance. Relevant public transport was near by, taxis, buses, and rail for further trips. Route buses would come by every 10 to 15 minutes. It was really a pleasant experience living in a city like Taipei with the population of a Los Angeles all within an area of less than a tenth of LA. It was designed and laid out very well.
Sounds terrific. I’m reminded of how having to be responsible for driving and parking a car in a city like Washington DC, San Francisco, NYC feels like having a ball and chain around one’s ankle. And when I’ve been foced to rent a car for trips that include Paris, London, and Tokyo, it feels even heavier. I’m sure Taipei is like that in spades.