Energy Consumption, Economics, and Environmentalism
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.
Greetings Craig,
We greatly appreciate your valiant efforts toward a more sustainable world. At Semaquatics we have Plan B as our core business model which includes: aquaponics, aquaculture, rain water harvesting, solar and wind energy production, atmosphere water generation, electric vehicles, and to pay it foward offer education to ensure that “sustainability” becomes more than just the latest environmental buzz word.
Good Health,
Ron Phillips
V.P. Sustainable Technologies
Semper Aquatic Food Exports
Thanks, Ron. Keep up the good work. I really love aquaponics, btw.
What about conservation for energy and natural resources even though it basically counter productive to our current economic policies.
Jim
As long as we, as a people, are unwilling to change what we believe this world is for, nothing in it will change. We may change the form of our getting mechanisms, but it remains forgetting.
To be sustainable and to make enough electricity with renewables we HAVE to use about 1/4th energy in our homes so we have to retrofit and build much more EFFICIENTLY.
We have to MAKE these efficiency and renewable energy products in the USA especially if we have negative growth so we will have jobs, can pay the debt, have a trade surplus, national energy security………
ALOT of people watch the super rich on TV, reruns of Dallas….and lies from rich companies. This fantasy of how people live in the USA, and misplaced priorities is damaging.
Evidence shows that 90% or more of what many politicians are doing is taking money from super rich special interests and FOREIGN GOVERNMENTS for their campaigns, engaging in insider trading they made legal for only congress people , instead of doing what the scientific evidence shows is correct.
Some well known intellectual suggested taxing everyone $50, they could donate that to the candidate of their choice. Then those candidates that ran and those that pledged to accept only up to $100 from donors would raise more $ than the ones accepting big $ from foreign governments, corporations…and we would have a working democracy, pass job creating, energy saving…… policy, even if congress continues to not pass campaign finance reform.
Corporate un-personhood, speech un-equals money, elections un-privately funded – we’ll get nowhere before these happen.
As long as we think the only source for jobs is Oil and Quick ROI (short sightedness) is “Smart”. As long as we weigh success as excess and consumerism, as long as success is being able to “Hire” someone else to do our dirty work, or work where we are to lazy to do we will need Imperialism and Millennium Slavery. As long as Hollywood tells us what is success and we have a third world country to either work for us or for us to have a place to put our Nuke Waste, or threaten our Religious superiority we can have wars in the name of God! nothing will change, history proves it.
In the name of Peace, Education over profit, People over Slavery, Respect over Superiority, I rest my case. Greg Chick
The responses of all reveal the awarness that everyone must share and vast numbers of us already do. Now, how do we make the truth resonate throughout our society and how do we encourage and compell enough of us to act effectively and responsibly through non-violent means to make it a reality.Does anyone know how to persuade the mass electronic media to sell this message as succesfully as they do beer ,soap, and eye liner ?
Make integrity intoxicating, Honor smell good, and heroes out of kind giving and educated respectful People. Hollywood does not do this, there is always an attractive devil or something neutralizing most Quality role models. I think we need Action Video Games where, the player saves people, earth and is not needed to be “Heavy in the Chest” (Male or female) in doing so. Spiderman was OK, but with out the “Bad Guy” and the violence. Action does not need to be violent. I am not a Religious man, I have seen too much war over who’s God is better! for example 911 and, God Bless America! as in everyone else is a Heretic . I am not talking about tolerance, I am talking about embracement. Tolerance is a suppressed hate.
Greg Chick
You, my friend, are an amazing person. Thanks for this beautiful and profound insight.
You’re absolutely right, Hollywood made its billions by shocking us, and ultimately lowering us as moral agents. And why? What’s so alluring about cheating and blowing things up? I’ve never understood this.
” kNOWING WHAT IS RIGHT AND NOT DOING IT IS A FORM OF COWARDICE ” ANNONYMOS
Graig Why blame others and its simple as this Knowing comes from self awareness and knowing comes from various sources now this can vary .
Innovator reaches the consultant or searches partner in business or people now here craig ” you can’t fool always and everyone ” is a saying.
What happens everyone searches everyone who can join evil businesses and that ” if two evil joins then there is a sure success.
This is like a robber is chased by the crazy angry crowd while he realized that his life in danger he thinks HE SHOULD SHOUT WITH THE CROWD AND HE DOES IT.
What happens the chasing crowd continues to chasing including the real robber shouting with the crowd .
Like this worlds evil business model are in uprising and here with people you blame every thing and any thing but there is no idea of How energy serious issues getting complicated and people do earn huge profits and this don’t have any common man wont go for it Graig as many expressed.
Think of Apples i Pad or iPod its the product conceieved from MP3 technology when an innovator took his idea to The Late Steve Job Graig.
rest is history this year report is out $13 Biilion profits from iPad and iPhone is the news critics had some doubts
I mean Graig I know what is left to see this world would except in energy whether oil and gas or the other known technology to the mankind.
You vouch in short surprise is there in store for all of you here like in any ones imagination the fear factor creating never works and this is what you and others do.
While you give the product that not only satisfys the consumers and the whole worlds critics and others who simply would shut up and follow the tech in praise case in point ” APPLE ‘ products.
Thanks my best wishes and this and before blogs of your are what I find misleading to a point of no return this is very dangerous.
CK
Do we need money at all? Read more about the moneyless society: http://www.theresourcebasedeconomy.com/
read this
thanks.CK
The renowned engineer and scientist Buckminster Fuller (of Bucky-ball and fullerene fame) once said “there is no energy crisis just a crisis of ignorance” and I tend to agree with him. When one considers that the entire world’s current energy use, about 355TWh/day, falls on a little over 0.5% of the Sahara Desert then it suggests that there should be a solution and I strongly believe there is and it is plan D.
Plan D in brief says that we have plenty of clean energy but with the population heading towards 10Bn+ the crisis will be food and water not energy!
Plan D first action is that; we have to address population growth, i.e. resource demand, specifically food and water. This is fundamentally down to education, by which I don’t mean teaching the 3R’s, I mean educating ALL people about the available resources of our planet and how to deploy them sustainably in order for the human population to survive, assuming we want to.
Plan D second action is energy. Our planet (by ‘our’ I mean the whole human race) has more than enough RE resources to supply our requirements, the challenge is harnessing them in a viable way. The way to do this, I strongly believe, is to build the core of our energy infrastructure around green carbon fuels, NOT hydrogen which has too many problems as an energy source/vector. There are good reasons why there are no natural elemental H2 energy sources but plenty based on carbon (coal, gas, oil, and biomass)and I think we need to take note of a billion or so years of nature. Furthermore I also believe we have the technologies that can do this economically, maybe not quite as cheap as unabated coal and oil but viable nonetheless and cheaper than offshore wind. Part of the plan is modified Plan-B pillar 5; transitioning the transport fleet to electric, possibly plug-in but probably NOT fuel cell vehicles, due to reasons just mentioned. The economy would also shift generally to electric power which would produce clean electricity from green carbon, or carbon based fuels (easily stored and transported) that are produced by recycling 100% of the waste CO2 from the generation process back to carbon fuels using RE in locations with abundant and cheap sources. This infrastructure is a Synthetic Closed Carbon Cycle (SCCC) incorporating 100% Carbon Capture and Recycling (CCR). We already have the technologies to do this, albeit some have not quite reached commercial scale yet and some will require an increase of an order or two in production scale to achieve true economic viability. Having said this I do believe that this is doable and in a timeframe significantly shorter than nuclear fusion could achieve, if it is doable.
Finally I have to say that I have thought for many years that “sustainable growth”, economic or otherwise, is an oxymoron!
We cannot escape the fact that the future lies in our rapid transformation to a resource sustainable, diverse and fully renewable energy based world free of poverty. I am equally of the opinion that African businesses that previously have not considered the types of business risks associated with the threats of climate change might need to be encouraged to do so to determine whether their businesses are susceptible to any such risks and, if so, whether those risks are of a sufficient magnitude to require compulsory regulatory disclosures. Integrating environmental responsibility into the DNA of African businesses is essential if we are to continue to grow the African economy and create limitless opportunities for achieving profitability in a fast emerging low carbon global economy characterized by a changing global climate that will require massive investments in low-carbon programmes, processes and technologies. Unfortunately, not many African businesses already recognize these emerging challenges and are very far from incorporating them into their overall corporate planning so as to strategically position their businesses to maximally reap from emerging “green” opportunities.
When I got in the university we got a comic book with our first books as a required reading material. I didn´t understand why at the beginning, but as I grew older and began my professional life as an architect I began to see the real message behind that simple story.
Robinson Crusoe. Do you remember that story? Well after so many years, and the present turmoil in every aspect of life on earth I can forward everybody about what it really means to me, and should to you.
Robinson Crusoe survived a shipwreck and landed on an island; there he had to build himself a place to give him shelter from the weather and the best comfort he could provide for his family. When he needed food he had to make a fire with limited trees he had around, then he had to fish, hunt or collect what was available to him.
Well, he had limited resources, so he had to do with them the best he could- you know the rest.
He invented all sorts of machines and improved his environment the best he could.
He didn´t have electricity and other luxuries, but you can imagine.
When a storm was coming he didn´t have a Mexican siesta or tea at four a clock, he had to work, and everybody had to pitch in, a storm could destroy his home, leave him without food has and all the luxuries and every aspect of life, he could literally die.
We travel in time and space and get here.
Our modern world is in the same situation, it´s the same one.
You talk about energy consumption, economics and environmentalism, well, it all must be considered with down to earth common sense.
Energy consumption is on an undeniable rise and will never stop due to population growth and rising standards of living as it always been, the generation of this energy is what concerns us, the pollution, the water “modification”(poisoning), the toxic smoke, oil spills, the radioactive left over materials, the heat injected into the atmosphere.
Economics, well, it has to do with greed too, no measure of wealth is enough. Everybody talks about the cost of installation of renewable energy systems, but not the cost free supply of wind, water and sunlight. If you install a solar or wind system they don´t use water to generate electricity, the cost of the energy itself is cero, from day one to the future, so it doesn´t compare with whatever other system you want, cero cost versus continuous rise in oil, (oil spill remediation), nuclear material (nuclear waste management and storage) [nuclear accidents and their cost to humanity], natural gas, or whatever other fuel, no comparison.
Environmentalism: well, that´s another one, it has to do with health, a nice environment to enjoy life (quality ) and survival. Survival is there, because we need to survive to enjoy all of what God has given us, so let´s survive in good health.
There are storms coming, we need to change our conduct, our attitudes. We have to stop playing Nintendo, no naps, no TV´s, no happy hours, we have to work together to solve the problems and prepare to face the storms that are coming. Don´t bother to try to get the politicians to do something, they have their own agenda, and it doesn´t have anything to do with your or anybody´s health, survival or any other thing, we have to deal with it, all of us.
What a poignant story; great analogy. Thanks.
Thank you, everyone for feeding information into this issue in ways that clearly showwhat you all obviously care about!
Water, food, shelter all have systemic problems and dealing with these changes that have to happen must come from Hollywood as the cops and robbers theme’s and CSI everytown dominate the media.
The concept that air is yours to use in combustion or yours all al alows people to combust without any thought that the air does not belong toa anyone. Its a common resource. These extreme “republicans” are not the majority of the party, nor are they in any way based in reality of science and mathmatics, rational or reasonable thought. Trying to rationalise witha teething 8 month old baby is pointless. So to is trying to deal rationaly with this very loud majority of toddlers.
We live in a microwave “minute plus” or pocorn nation where a snack is hot and ready in one, or two minutes tops.
Faarming is not glamorous or pretty and you cant put “tits” on everything to sell it.
The dumbing down of America and the “Infant Syndrome” must be cured.
Be advised: ” they do not call television ‘programming’ for nothing”.
Solar and wind power are not a cure all. they dont solve every problem. It will take generations of work to get us headed in the right direction.
Back in the day when one would cut firewood one would need and axe. Small chips of wood would be flying out piece by piece, blow by blow. It took time. Now the Chainsaw and the “feller buncher” elliminates the need for man to ever even touch the tree with his hands or even get out of the driver seat of the air conditioned machine. These things cut drop and limb in minutes. The raw log is then ready for market in the time it would have taken to get through the bark, “back in the day”.
Machines have gotten us into a mess we hope now that machines will get us out of the mess.
Its not the Machines, its man the very nature of reaping the natural world and fishing for his dinner has evolved into dragging the Ocean floor and catching every animal ina net and sorting out what you keep and what you through back, deaad or alive the “by catch” is the stuff we dont have a monetary value for.
Growing up as a civilization is not quick nor easy. Just like the old farmer who needed fire wood and a way to keep the tree’s from consuming the water that his plants needed to grow we need to find efficniecies in “two for one” or two bird with “one stone” to move the grwoing up project along.
We need to chip away at the problem and really start educating the kids as to how this new way to live looks like, tastes like and requires.
Chipping away everyday for the rest of our lives and teaching the youth to take the ball and run with it.
We need to bring the grace of Gandi and Martin Luther King into focus around this issue. We need to be the models and drive electric cars and charge them with solar panels and wind turbines directly… on grid, off grid it matters not.
We need to be the people that are the example. Its costs money, it takes time and we need to have mastered paitience.
Sometimes I read these blogs when I am low and need not to feel all alone inthis. Sometimes I get my recharge and my patience from all of you, Craig Shields, the folks who respond you all fill me up. You charge me and help me find equilibrium. i almost never write or respond.
Be the People who we should be, let the light and the love for home come through your work.
Thank You all for being there with me. We are not alone! Brian Reagan-
Great post Craig, thanks.
People used to think of poverty and inequality as just moral issues. They still are, but they also directly affect the health and welfare of all of us.
History tells us that civil war or social uprising occur when the gap between rich and poor becomes too large. That is where we are right now in many countries.
I agree with Nick C – the next crisis will be food and water, but without providing a reliable, sustainable and affordable source of energy to help us grow food or pump water we will driven there even faster.
Without a real focus by governments to find sustainable ways of producing energy all I can see is Plan A looming large.
Hey, Hippy,
Ditto here. we need to live time, not compress it into seconds and then down to nano seconds for a better ROI! Substance is made of People and real things, not Video bites and what we want and NOW!. “Life is what happens to us while we are busy making other plans” Jon Lennon. If life is what we want?, if not we could opt for thrills and childish error.
Greg Chick
The proponents of plans B and C need to talk: they need each other.
That there are limits to growth have long been recognized by many forward-thinking economists (“anyone who believes that growth can continue indefinitely within a finite system is either a madman or an economist”-Kenneth Boulding, 1980). Unfortunately, these are not the economists that governments have been listening to. This is particularly true when energy policies are considered.
Plan B is tenable as long as it is intelligently implemented,and these growth restrictions are recognized. In turn, the proponents of Plan C should recognize that without some action on plan B, Plan A will prevail, and will smother their efforts. Plan A, of course, will ultimately self-destruct, as a cancer cell does when it kills its host.
Whether we can implement plan B intelligently is another issue. We seem to make decisions based on bad accounting. We seem to be unable to count all the beans when we evaluate systems. Many costs are overlooked or externalized and this leads to bad decisions. We often confuse conversion efficiencies with system efficiencies. Examples:
1. When comparing electrical energy costs between renewables and non-renewables, we consider plant capitalization costs and little else. We talk about “grid parity” with coal as a “yardstick” for assessing the viability of solar or wind generation. If the cost of the coal is considered at all, it is figured in at market cost, which is nowhere near the real cost of coal, as most costs have been externalized.
2. If you ask anyone in the industry about the efficiency of a coal-fired plant, the answer will usually be in the range of 25 to 40 percent. In fact, this is nowhere near the system efficiency; it is only the conversion efficiency, and rather optimistic even as that. An evaluation of system efficiency needs to factor in the immense energy cost of mining, processing, and delivering coal to the plant. Doing so would in all probability yield a system efficiency in the single digits.
The real-world system efficiency of a coal plant is further hampered by the fact that they cannot be turned on and off at will. This results in tremendous wastage as we do not consume energy at a constant rate. Coal then must be considered as “base load” and supplemented by more agile ways of generating power, or utilities must resort to buying energy from another utility at peak load periods (at high prices) and selling energy to another utility at low load periods (usually at fire sale prices). If the utility has too much base load it can end up paying some of its bigger customers to keep using energy they don’t need, to keep a load on the plant.
Incidently, these considerations apply at least equally to thermal nuclear plants. In fact, when the fraction of available fuel energy actually used is considered, the real-world efficiency of a uranium-fueled thermal nuclear plant is typically below 1 percent.
3. We can be pretty stupid when choosing how to use energy, as well- for example using an electric-fired boiler to provide building heat. One reliable study I have seen studied such a system running on electricity from a coal-fired plant, and concluded that only about 5 percent of the coal’s heat value ended up as room heat.
I have some friends who, as former steam engineers, have taken up live-steam model railroading as a hobby. They once set out to calculate the efficiency of a typical steam-powered railroad locomotive. The result- about 2 percent.
We really need to take an in-depth look at the way we use energy as well as the way we generate it. By applying some good sense, we could get by on a fraction of the energy we use today, and every bit of it can come from renewables.
“The proponents of plans B and C need to talk: they need each other.” That’s some sage advice. And clearly, there are hybrid approaches.
Hi Craig;
Some additional comments persuant to my earlier transmission:
As I believe I have mentioned on previous occasions, our Ontario Liberal government has been persuing a policy of adding solar and wind power to Ontario’s grid, and closing down coal-fired plants. As usual, changes such as this always challenges somebody’s real or imagined self-interest. The most recent rants: smart meters and time-of-day utility rates are a money grab, solar is too expensive,
wind generators make noises that are a threat to human health, privatization is driving our energy costs up, we need to add more base power (this last probably meant to read “more coal and more nuclear”).
When I read this last one, I remembered talking to a Sun Edison spokesman during a conference and commenting that our problem was too much base load capacity and not enough peaking capacity. She agreed with me.
Since I have been on the “smart meters” and time-of-day pricing my average per-kWh rate increase is trivial and my monthly energy use has gone down rather than up. The latter is probably due to the landlord’s replacing my 40-year-old refrigerator, but I certainly don’t feel gouged by energy rates. As for the noisy windmills, there are 5 of them within an easy walking distance from my sister’s house. She doesn’t hear them, nor do I when I go to visit her.
Our federal government is on a different tack. Mr. Harper et al seem bent on ramming thru the Northern Gateway pipeline project. The proposal is to run 1600 km (1000 miles) of pipeline through pristine British Columbia wilderness to deliver tar sands crude to tankers in most hazardous waterways, along an environmentally sensitive coastline. The area has been off limits to tankers since a previous incident in the area.
No one in B.C. wants this. The native aboriginal tribes who own a considerable portion of the land don’t want it. But our PM dismisses all opposition as a bunch of enviro freaks and interfering foriegn interests.
This afternoon I was listening to a talk show on CBC. A caller identified himself as a tar sands worker. He highlighted the stupidity of sending crude off to foriegn lands on the West Coast while importing oil on the East Coast. He suggested that it would make better sense to refine and use the oil in Canada, pointing out that the jobs created by the pipeline were few and temporary, while many more permanent jobs would be created by creating some refinery capacity in Canada.
My question: if even a tar sands worker opposes the pipeline, then who wants it, besides Mr. Harper?
It’s this kind of shortsightedness and stubbornness that is one of the biggest reasons that our energy crisis persists.
I spend a great deal of time discouraged by the current situation and thought process of the masses and politics. I am firmly convinced that government will not be able to help and is generally not inclined to help. Even if there are a few good politicians that want to do good, they will be thwarted by the rest. I read articles about how Canada wants to become a major oil supplier and how certain politicians want to attach another try at getting the Keystone pipline approved to other nonrelated legislation. But even more discourging than that is going down below the articles and reading the comments. It rapidly becomes clear to me that there are a very few people that think we should reduce our consumption of energy or even curtail the waste or that can imagine getting their energy from anything that they don’t somehow light on fire. The “drill baby drill” crowd is alive and strong. I become firmly convinced that “Plan A” will be the norm even well beyond the point where it becomes painfully appearent that this plan is unsustainable.
For some reason I have always been a minimalist. Almost everything I own is somebody elses trash. I buy old used cars and run them to the end of their lives because have the knowledge to do this. I don’t have or need the latest and greatest anything. I am always trying to use less of everything. I do research and projects towards this end. I have been personally implementing plans “B&C” in every way possible to the best of my ability with no illusions as to whether policy will shift in my direction or not. I am sure it will not. There is nobody for me to talk to face to face so I seek out like minded people in places like this in an effort to learn and share as much as I can to advance the effort. I talk to everybody that will listen about what I am doing and what is possible but there are very few people that have any interest at all. I keep at it anyway. I am convinced that people like us will have to do it without any political intervention and likely most of the time in spite of it. It would be nice to have some help and support but I am sure that will never come. Don’t get me wrong, I still write my politicians all the time about all the issues but in the end, all we have is us. I wish us good luck. I offer my knowledge to anyone that feels it would be helpful. This is all I can give.
Brian
I read this blog, in part, due to the extremely thoughtful comments left here. This topic was one of the better ones.
That said, here we go.
Plan A speaks for itself.
Plan B – Luv ya (seriously) ! Unfortunately, the majority of the thinking is math challenged.
Plan C – sustainable growth *is* an oxymoron. Maybe someday there will be technology… no, check that. Such ideas were formerly known as perpetual motion.
The visual (for myself) is the X axis being energy consumption, and the Y axis is developing technologies or techniques that allow for maintaining the same basic standards of living for an increasing population. The shape of the curve is a rising, decreasing slope asymptote. That’s our reality.
Everything is relative, The unsustainable trajectory of today is a faster end to a better curve. No one is suggesting that Sustainable = Perpetual Motion. I think your being a bit too much like a CPA here. We need improvement, not fountain of youth.
Greg Chick
Arlene, you missed out PLan D see; Nick C – January 29, 2012 at 4:50 am
The inefficiency designed and built into the economy today is a wasting luxury. Whatever profit it may have generated for specific interests, it was never in the general interest.
Squawking aside, it will be an easy sacrifice, and will advance the cause of saving the environment while maintaining prosperity.
Following up David Behn’s efficiency discussion:
Actually our situation is much worse than your (technocratic) discussion, although it is appreciated. Please note that photosynthetic efficiency, which stored ancient carbon, occurs on scale at maybe 1%.
What the sixth extinction and climate sciences seem to be indicating are that western definitions of energy are based on basic fraud. We have economically designed for explosives-of-war (“fuels”) as “energy.”
Take the efficiency equation of Energy Out divided by Energy In. When humans define lithosphere substance as “Energy,” the placement of this substance, via combustion or fission heat, in the denominator ends with a result that is Undefined. A mined substance has been corruptly placed in the denominator. In other words, the result is worse than meaningless. That is why the entire ecology is beginning to be overcome from disease, destruction and death by climate due to massive historic (yet invisible carbonic acid) contamination.
Conclusion: lithosphere matter is not true “energy,” except via human ignition, especially as ordnance. Thus we have a transport system based on poisonous explosion and unaccountable societal waste that begins with “carbon footprint.” Also, please note the $half trillion annual nation-state subsidies (a negative carbon tax) for “fossil fuel” (IEA, 2011 etc.). Similar large subsidies are used for uranium and atomic fission, which is legally indemnified from “free-market” liability. One might say, we have been indemnified from harm (so far), with exceptions.
So, have a nice Arctic and nuclear meltdown from the hubris of nation-state, strategic, centralized, power planning based on an “energy system” of explosive contaminants (uranium and lithosphere carbon). The recent centralization of wealth may be the elite’s plan of survival for unfolding climate chaos. Talk about “gaming the system.” Corruption are us, for the entire system, including most profoundly The Energy Racket. Call it a Fools and Fuels-of-War Economy. What is not sustainable will collapse, by definition.
Thanks for your comments, James.
I was quite aware of your first point (I add that what we have used in the last 150 years has taken the earth more than 1500 years to generate), but my dissertation was getting a little long.
Pursuent to this, I might add the following: just outside Ottawa we have a peat bog, with a nice nature trail. An explanatory sign along the trail tells us that the bog contains enough energy to supply all of Canada’s energy needs for 150 years,but points out that it would be difficult to extract by current methods. The next sign tells us that the bog would take more than 5000 years to regenerate. Will some energy company read the first sign and ignore the second? Fortunately, the bog is currently protected. It had better stay that way.
As for your last comment: living so close to the Arctic, 60 percent of Canadians are well aware of the melting Arctic. The other 40 percent closed their eyes and voted for Mr. Harper. He somehow pulled a parliamentary majority out of that. Enough said.
Thanks. Your time-scale needs some geologic revision. The Carboniferous Era, when much of coal from early forms of trees derives, occurred about one-third billion years ago. In the Middle East, petroleum derives from ancient seas that enclosed this area which allowed remains of single cell marine organisms to fall and gather over many millions of years, as precursors to hydrocarbons.
On any human scale of time (even one thousand years) the concept of fossil fuel regeneration is a fallacy. The very definition of “fuel” is a human construct, which I am suggesting derives from militarism and is directly counter to just and sustainable economies.
Craig,
What about “plan D” which incorporates some of all-of-the-above:
First, look for new ways to extract fossil resources so the economy CAN bridge the gap to a renewable energy paradigm.
Second, invest heavily in viable and sensible alternative energy technologies (similar to your “plan b” without the hydrogen or the electric vehicles).
Third, invest heavily in conservation technologies to reduce consumption and waste.
Fourth, invest heavily in distribution of contraception and family planning training for the third world.
I vote for “plan D”.
I’m sure others may support a “plan E” or a “plan F” – though I don’t know what those might look like.
The point is you can’t just say: “this is our only option” with any legitimacy, and you cannot lump all alternatives – regardless of how economically viable and/or non-viable they may be – together and say “if we don’t invest in ALL of these then we’re going to have to watch civilization die… it’s all or nothing…”
🙂
“Craig,
What about “plan D” which incorporates some of all-of-the-above:”
We seem to have a second Plan D!, does this Plan D include the first plan D? re. Nick C (January 29, 2012 at 4:50 am)