Carbon Capture and Storage
Here’s a webinar that readers may want to check out: Fossil Fuels Without the CO2: Can Carbon Capture and Storage Deliver?
My take, albeit an oversimplification of a very complex issue: Obviously it can “deliver” in some sense of the word if we invest enough money into it. But why not take that incredible amount of resources and make the equivalent investment in clean energy and efficiency? Instead of creating a temporary and iffy solution, why not handle the problem forever, with 100% certainty, while eliminating the myriad of other toxins (oxides of sulfur and nitrogen, methane, mercury and other heavy metals, radioactive isotopes, etc.)?
The answer: The coal industry has one and only one interest–burning coal. 60 of our 100 Senators come from coal mining states. Look no further.
Think about an ideal democratic republic. If an idea had universal support there’d be a virtual certainty of legislation upholding that idea. Conversely, if an idea was so unpopular that almost no one agreed with it, the chances of supportive legislation for that idea would be virtually nil.
There was a study that came out not long ago looking back at 20 years of public opinion records. It used a data set of the lower 90% of income earners, and a data set for the highest 10% of income earners. The study compared these data sets as they relate to a history of legislation over the same period.
The last twenty years illustrate a stark reality.
No matter how solid the opinions of the lower 90% of the public, for or against any given topic, the chances of related legislation passing was about 30% across the board. Public opinion – either for or against – has had a “minuscule” and “statistically insignificant” effect.
However, when the opinions of the highest 10% were compared, there was a striking resemblance to the ideal democratic republic.
If there was no support for the idea among that 10%, supportive legislation stood a near zero chance of passage. That relationship was near linear until about the 50% support mark. There, the relationship between the 10%’s opinion and legislation loosened but remained strong.
Lincoln warned us that our nation’s destruction, if it happens, would come from within.
Consider the fixated and methodical army of lobbyists, eleven thousand strong, and pouring out an average of over six million dollars per congressperson in 2012 alone. That reality obliterates any doubt about the mechanism behind the control of our legislatures. That army makes a mockery and a hypocrisy of the mere notion of a democratic republic.
Let me convey both my fear and my hope on the topic of sustainability.
My fear… The elite employ shrewdly servile advisers whose strongest motivation is to protect the profitable status quo. This they will do until what they regard as the approach of the last survivable moment.
Further, that because of that very bias, their judgment will be skewed so as to delay that decision far beyond the actual rational thresholds. Indeed, the deepest aspect of my fear is that this fatal delay may already have occurred.
My hope… A significant percentage of the people now living in every society will soon organize around truth and non-violence. These many of us will cooperate to engage in massive and widespread direct action to counter and overwhelm the forces preventing wise progress. This cooperation will persevere to evolve and implement new paradigm and a new power structure.
My fondest hope is that the resulting change will endure, for the benefit of all humankind, and for the healing of the broad web of life that will always be necessary for our existence.
The best method of carbon sequestration is to not release it at all in the first place and just leave it where it is.
As to Cameron’s comment, as I have always said, we cannot rely on the government. We must proceed in spite of the government. We must eliminate our use of fossil fuels individually and lobby and teach our friends and family to do the same thing. By not playing in the current 10%s sandbox we will make them part of the 90% and bring about a different 10% that is more aligned with our desires. Even so, I still would not wait for the government.
Brian
Indeed, bigvid, we must not wait on government.
Government is a tool to be used by the whole of humankind for the benefit of mankind. A tool may be used for good or ill depending on who controls it. It is through truth, non-violence, cooperation, direct action and perseverance that the people will again control that tool.
There are, of course, measures we can take individually that will be helpful, and should be implemented as much as practicable. Yet these alone will prove insufficient outside the force of law. The pathology of consumerism is too powerfully embedded and the lure of comfort and convenience too powerful for enough of society to be moved quickly enough toward an off-grid paradigm. An alternative infrastructure and product stream must be free of the unfair competition the elite enjoy through their control of our leadership.
A people’s government, nevertheless, remains the sole defense of human birthrights against the greed of the elite. That’s why the elite make such an effort to buy off our “public servants.”
A government of laws is made necessary by the inability of some persons to restrain their passions, and greed is among the most potent and destructive of passions. It is as a result of capitalism’s operative and historic tendencies, toward monopoly and concentration of wealth, that the government in America has become a tool of the elite against the people.
In 2012, all the elections for president, house and senate cost about $6.2 billion ($21 per American), and ExxonMobil, by itself, profited $44.8 billion that year alone. That means ExxonMobil, all by itself, could have bought all the federal elections in the country with just 14% of its 2012 PROFITS!
If corporate money is political speech, how much louder than you or me is the single corporate entity, ExxonMobil?
The same goes for ‘personal’ money. If money to be regarded in law as Free Speech, then the elite few (and their corporate objects) will scream through bullhorns while the voice of ‘We the People’ is reduced to a smothered and gasping whisper.
Bribery is predictably at the roots of all the deepest evils in American politics, and the CU v FEC and McCutcheon rulings is a boatload of fertilizer for those roots.
The greatest threat to our national security is therefore here at home – it’s the very flood of bribery capital that has taken our state and national Capitols by storm.
Consider the fixated and methodical army of lobbyists, eleven thousand strong, and pouring out an average of over six million dollars per congressperson, in 2012 alone.
Lincoln warned us that our nation’s destruction, if it happens, would come from within…
“At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.”
Good government is how We the People defend our Public Commons and advance our Common Good. Good government won’t come from people who hate government.