An Open Letter to Our Next President about Energy Policy
Posted by Robert Rapier on April 30, 2008 - 10:00am
Mr. or Madam President,
Vice President Dick Cheney once famously quipped "The American way of life is non-negotiable." I submit that while our next president might not be so brash in stating this, the root of our energy problems can be traced to this attitude. But, nature doesn't negotiate. It doesn't appear that any of the remaining presidential candidates understand the basis of the problems we face: Oil is a depleting, finite resource - albeit one crucial for the "American way of life."
Because this resource is so crucial - and obviously not just for Americans - depletion is going to drive prices up as consumers bid for dwindling supplies. Threatening to sue OPEC isn't going to change that. Threatening to tax Big Oil into submission isn't going to change that. Mandating that we will invent new technologies to meet a greatly increased Renewable Fuel Standard isn't going to change that. These are the sorts of proposals that merely demonstrate that your grasp of the problem is superficial. And you have to understand the problem in order to begin addressing it.
Shouldn't we also consider what happens when our "non-negotiable" way of life impacts the way of life for others worldwide? What if the Saudis also consider their way of life non-negotiable? Is suing them supposed to force them to negotiate? What about the person in Kenya whose way of life is eased by the very small amount of oil they consume? Shall we negotiate with that person, or just not invite them to the table while we price them out of the market?
Let's first consider common ground that you and I may have. I presume we would agree that our dependence on oil is not healthy. It puts the economy in a very vulnerable position. It helps to enrich some countries that are hostile to us. It increases carbon dioxide emissions. I think this reflects the positions of all remaining candidates, and is consistent with my own position.
Now let's consider a position on which apparently differ sharply: Gas prices must come down. While I understand the position of the average American that we are paying too much for gasoline - what impact do you think price has on demand? Higher prices will eventually spur conservation and encourage alternatives - which helps achieve the objectives of lowering our dependence by lowering our usage. Isn't this what you want? Instead, all three candidates propose measures to bring down gasoline prices - thus encouraging consumption. Can't you see the inconsistency in your position?
This is the time to show political leadership. The pandering sickens me. So what if the average person thinks we are paying too much for gas? The average person also voted for your predecessor - so let's not presume that we must bow to the wishes of the average person. I offer the following unsolicited advice for dealing with this problem. This is how I would address Americans on this subject:
My Fellow Americans,
Spiraling gasoline prices are having a negative impact on the overall economy. Recent polls have shown that high energy prices are one of the biggest concerns of the American public. However, I have to be bluntly honest: There are no easy solutions. The situation we find ourselves in is a result of many years of policies that are short-sighted and have essentially ignored the long-term consequences of a dependence on fossil fuels - which in turn translates into a dependence on crude oil imports. One administration after another has paid lip service to energy independence, and yet our dependence has risen during each administration since Nixon. We are obviously doing something wrong. I believe I know what it is.
We have failed to truly understand why we have a problem. We have failed to understand why we are addicted to oil. We have failed to appreciate the nature of oil, and why it is so difficult to replace it with low energy density biomass. The truth of the matter is that we are addicted to oil because of the unparalleled conveniences it provides us. We sought painless solutions to our addiction. But if breaking an addiction was easy, we wouldn't be addicted.
I don't believe it serves a useful purpose to continue promising easy solutions. On the other hand, a big part of the reason that you find yourselves in this vulnerable position is because of the previous hollow promises that were made. So I propose the following measures to begin the process of breaking our oil addiction:
1. We must improve the fuel efficiency of our automotive fleet. It is an embarrassment. Here again, we have sought the easy solution: Just increase CAFE standards. Most people view this as a relatively painless solution. They think that instead of their Ford Expedition getting 14 mpg, the automotive industry has tricks up their sleeves that can push it to 24 mpg. All that is required is a bit of legislation, which doesn't affect me, the consumer. But that's not the way it works. To achieve 24 mpg, we are going to require a fundamental change in the SUV mindset.
We have fuel efficient vehicles available now, we just need to convince people to buy them. I propose to offer rebates ranging from $500 to $2000 for vehicles that achieve high fuel efficiency. I propose to penalize vehicles that achieve low fuel efficiency. I propose to phase these changes in over the next 3 years.
2. Continuing with theme of the first proposal, we need to find other ways to reduce our fuel consumption. Europe provides a useful guide here, as the average per capita energy consumption in Europe is half that of the U.S. How do they achieve this?
Primarily, they have achieved this by making fuel very expensive. Because I don't think it would be fair to penalize you as a result of the decisions made by previous administrations, I propose to make this proposal revenue neutral. The goal here is not to collect more taxes; it is to encourage behaviors that reduce fuel consumption. So here is the specific proposal.
The average American consumes 1,000 gallons of gasoline a year. I propose to increase the federal gasoline tax by $0.20/gallon this year, $0.30/gallon next year, and then $0.50/gallon in each of the three following years. The total tax increase I am proposing is $2.00/gallon. This would still put gasoline prices at less than they are in Europe, but by having a clear understanding that gasoline prices won't be going down, this will encourage conservation measures.
In order to offset the burden of these higher taxes, I propose a tax credit equivalent to the increased tax burden for the average American. This is equivalent to $200 in the first year of the tax. Those who use less gasoline than the average will actually see their overall tax burden go down. Those who consume more than 1,000 gallons per year will see an overall increase in their tax burden - and will therefore have a strong incentive to reduce their fuel consumption. For those whose fuel usage is for business use, the fuel taxes can be deducted against your business income.
3. Solutions will be required on the supply side as well. However, too many "solutions" to date rely heavily on fossil fuels, which is the very problem we are trying to mitigate. Therefore, I am appointing an independent panel of experts across multiple disciplines - environmental, energy, agriculture - to evaluate various sources for 1). Reliance on fossil fuels; and 2). Negative side effects. There will be specifically defined criteria that alternative sources must meet in order to qualify for tax breaks. For example, energy "producers" - fossil and alternative - will pay a surcharge on the fossil fuel inputs they use to run their operations. This will encourage a move away from the use of fossil fuels to produce "renewable" energy.
4. In order to lessen our dependence on fossil fuels for heating and electricity, I propose to extend tax credits for installation of solar systems, especially those for solar water heating. Tax credits for installation of wind power, geothermal power, tidal power, and various other qualifying energy sources will be extended for 10 years.
5. From my viewpoint, we need to move to a future in which electricity drives our transport systems. The electricity would be derived initially from existing sources like coal and nuclear power, but increasingly from solar, wind, and various other renewable sources. Improved battery technology and energy storage technologies are the key enabling technologies required. Therefore, I am proposing to significantly increase the funding and resources devoted to these technologies. Cash awards will also be available to inventors meeting certain key milestones - as inspired by the Automotive X PRIZE.
These five proposals are merely a start. I understand that for some of you, these changes will be painful. But the pain is coming regardless; I am just proposing to manage it in a more effective and predictable manner. For too long, we have been too passive in managing our oil addiction. The time has come for more aggressive measures.
Such proposals would not be without harsh critics, and would require strong leadership to push them through. Special interests will line up to protect their pocketbooks. Short-sighted politicians will try to protect a few at the expense of many. Will you be the president who takes a stand, tells the hard truth about our energy predicament, and pushes through measures that secure a brighter future for our children? Or will you be like the long succession of presidents who have made hollow promises and offered false solutions - only to see our dependence worsen?
Addiction can be a difficult thing to beat. But make no mistake: The path we have been traveling down is unsustainable, and the bills are starting to come due. If we don't start paying them now, we will put an enormous burden on our children.
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But you forgot the Kenyans. As Monbiot has repeatedly pointed out, if we are to reduce our energy consumption in the first world AND assume that we share energy equitably across the global population, the first world has to decrease its energy consumption by something on the order of 90%. Nothing you propose will achieve that.
I think you're on the right track but it does not have to be equitable on a per capita basis it has to be equitable initially at a resource level.
What I have proposed is that every time you build a windmill or pv panel or deploy any other alternative energy project a second version is made and sent to the third world. On a grander scale say at the small city level you effectively adopt a city in the third world thats the same size. Thus if a first world city paves a road it also paves a road in its adopted city.
Even better and more effective is the teach a man to fish approach. If you build a PV plant in the US you build one in and adopted country.
On a per capita basis your still heavily weighted to the first world but I'm pretty sure if you simply shared as I had outlined the third world would be beyond themselves with joy. Eventually they can do the same and adopt other cities and villages and share.
You can see that by excepting the real burden that a country with advanced technology and infrastructure should shoulder at first its tough but if you make it drives you to share the means of production which is critical to ensuring that everyone begins to have a livable base standard of living.
I'd say that its a extension to ELP. Economize Localize Produce Share. The last little bit is what makes the world a better place for future generations.
The American Lifestyle IS what is at issue. We not only have to radically change the auto fleet to one that is more fuel efficient, we need to drastically reduce the daily dependence on the automobile.
We need to set a goal of say, reducing VMT by 80% by 2050. To do this we will need to rebuild our neighborhoods to be walkable. We could use increased gas taxes, as proposed by President Rapier, to do this.
Of course, the automobile industry will be drastically reduced. They will argue that what is good for Toyota is good for the country. They will be wrong. Economic disruption could be offset by a massive reallocation/restructuring/rebuilding program in which relocalization and walkable neighborhoods (i.e. all necessities are available within walking distance for all, and a massive increase in telecommuting) are the main objective.
I don't think reaching your 2050 target will be difficult at all-what will be more challenging IMO is not reducing the VMT by 80% by 2050 (that is where all the energy will be spent).
In 1950 the global population was about 2.5 billion. Today it is over 6.6 billion. The US had a population of 151 million in 1950. We just about doubled and much of that was immigration from other countries where people have more babies. In 1950 Kenya was about 6.3 million. It is now about 6 times that amount. Kenyan women have more babies today (4.9) than they did in the 1990s (4.7).
No, I am not going to continually lower my living standard while other people keep making lots of babies.
Need
Greed
& Breed
are a disastrous combination.
Ralph Nader is running for President and is having no problem proposing carbon taxes, no problem calling the Republicans and Democrats on their inability to face the folly of corn ethanol policies and is starting to talk about aspects of Peak Oil no one else will touch.
I think it is time to accept his offer to be President and move as fast as possible towards energy equity on the planet.
The savings in leaving Iraq within 6 months of taking office will save some of the spiral into debt holes that are crippling any hope of our retrofitting for energy economy.
Single payer national health saves us all money as the GAO pointed out ages ago. Shifting to electric passenger rail and other transportation economies will save us from greenhouse gases our suicidal traffic messes and much ill health, psychological as well as physical.
Citizen Nader is about real democracy still and denying him a voice, the essence of what is wrong here.
Behind those dread corporations running things are bunches of us consumers shopping Walmart and Costco for the globalization margin destroying local work and individual investors shifting our funds online for that marginal gain giving corporate lobbyists the power to undermine Clean Air and Water Acts first brought into creation by Naders earlier works...
Nader only has a problem winning elections
I saw Nader speak at the PowerShift 2007 conference and he seems to get energy pretty well.
Chris
I've always felt Nader was saying what needed to be said.
I don't think we can look to the Presidency to deal with this issue. It's going to have to develop elsewhere. The oval office seems to have no elbow room to usefully engage the issue as it stands now.
Turn off your TV and just vote for Nader. It won't hurt, really! My George Bush "stimulus" check is going to his campaign.
This letter is a great report on what's to come, the potential hazards that lie ahead of us, the harsh reality that will challenge everyone, and you are right, the president ought to understand the fundamentals of this crisis.
What strikes me as ridiculous is this notion that the current administration and as well the presidential candidates are completely unaware of the situation, and thus the letter goes on to try to "teach" these media and political mammoths of the "harsh truth". The naiveté strikes me as plain stupid. It is very easy to understand that yes, the politicians do understand these fundamentals, as they have spoken between them and with big oil very frequently. The mere fact that these politicians do not "acknowledge" it, is simply and better explained by the fear of getting such message into the public. To say that the oil is "peaking" is publicly forbidden, you would immediately be labeled as a doomer and fetishist, sparking fears of socialism, just as Global Warming is. Where's the gain of votes in saying such a thing? If the net vote result is negative, they will never say it. When democrats have criticized GOP so much about its fear tactics, offering a paranoia about the "terrorists", you are just adding to GW another democrat fear tool: Peak Oil. And GOP will strike back at it. So no, they won't admit it.
So the question for politicians is not if PO is true, or it isn't. If they become president, there is little they can do to alter the fact of this crisis. They also know this. Market forces will prevail above any state action, with the most cruel of outcomes. Any presidential action will be minimal, and worse, they will pander to populist measures, as the tax break, not because it is a better move, it obviously isn't, but because their power depends on proposing such stupid irrelevant things. Only Obama so far hasn't proposed tax breaks on gasoline, but I doubt that he will resist the temptation of that kind of stupid measures.
Given this scenario, it is completely dubious the relevance and usefulness of this letter. Don't get me wrong, I support it. In the worst case, it will give these politicians the notion that a little percentage of this country does get it. It is the audience for which these politicians pander that the message should be spread. As Al Gore put it, politics are renewable resources. And they only change when the audience changes. Never before it.
The naiveté strikes me as plain stupid. It is very easy to understand that yes, the politicians do understand these fundamentals...
Personally, I think that's naive. I don't believe they do understand. The EIA and USGS are both saying that oil production is going to keep growing. Both sides believe we can maintain the status quo. The Republicans think we need more drilling; the Democrats think we need to mandate more biofuels. Neither side actually understands the seriousness of the situation, or they would be more willing to confront it.
If either party believed the threat was serious and imminent, there would be no fear in discussing serious mitigation efforts.
I think the truth is somewhere inbetween. They understand somewhat, but other voices are telling them: nothing to worry about BAU. A quote (I can't remember whose -so my apologies in advance) that it appropriate is:
"Don't expect a man to understand something on which his job requires that he doesn't". And the political application process is such that they can't afford to understand PO.
A small suggestion on bullet (2): It would be better, not to compute the expected revenues from the gas tax and set this amount into law. Much better would be to earmark the revenues to the people. That way the amount adjusts with the revenue, and corrective political action is not required when assumptions are proven wrong. It is all too easy to game a revenue neutral proposal such as your, by say overestimating revenue -and turning it into a tax cut.
Agreed. I don't think there's some big conspiracy where they all know about peak oil, but won't talk about it in public. OTOH, at least some politicians clearly do understand the problem. Republican Roscoe Barlett, for example. He may give his peak oil speeches to the cleaning staff, but they're on the record. Democrat Bill Clinton has given talks about peak oil, and Al Gore has mentioned it, too.
I think they know about it. Some of them, anyway. After all, most of them are old enough to remember the '70s energy crises. But they think we'll innovate our way out of it, as we always have in the past.
Like Tom Whipple said...politicians have so much on their plates already. Unless you can give them a solid and imminent date ("the gas stations will go dry July 3, 2008"), it won't be a priority for them.
"It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it." -- Upton Sinclair
Sorry , Robert, your proposals are totally inadequate. A 50% increase in prices spread over 5 years will reduce car mileage by about 10%. In France taxes are 70% of the pump price. You need to aim for at least $11.50 in the US just for starters. Then increase substantially each year.
By so understating the size of change really needed you are just breeding more complacency.
I disagree. The problem is defining the problem your trying to solve.
Now with that lets talk about the solution.
I'd say its Equitable ELP or shared ELP in other words the goal is sustainable economies that are energy neutral with a decent living standard for all. Obviously somehow population levels have to be brought into the issue but maybe this can be done by determining carrying capacity and developing target population levels.
A important detail but to move on.
Next you have to determine the time period in which to reach these goals. Communist style 5-10-20 year plans are a good way to at least talk about when to do things.
Then you talk about what to do.
From this approach it becomes obvious that one of the biggest problems is why are people driving all over the place in the beginning ? We need to focus on our work habits first and foremost since most of our energy expense is related to work not leisure. Can companies get satellite offices subsidized so workers can shorten their commutes ?
Can we get a national law to support commuters that take public transport ?
So instead of increasing taxes for roads. You decrease taxes for those that use public transport and redirect current taxes to fund public transport.
So say 50% of current taxes used for roads gets redirected to public transport.
Lightly traveled roads are privatized and taken out of the public domain. Same with the interstate system. We have good ways to collect tolls electronically and these can readily be made better. So toll collection should not interfere with traffic flow. This can be tied into GPS and if you put your route in you can calculate the tolls.
If you allow credit then people that don't pay their toll bill can have their cars confiscated.
By privatizing the roads we force the costs off the cities and onto the users.
You do the same for all the old infrastructure electric/sewage etc for suburbia. If you can really afford it then you get to use it.
Robert - Thank-you for taking the initiative and writing a letter that is commendable and prescient. For historical reference it will be interesting to review that letter say five years from now.
However I think you are sophisticated enough to know that the Federal Govt. is dysfunctional and deaf. National Politics is now truly a mockery of a travesty of a sham. I don't have any specific staticstics to back that up however. I read this blog regularly and I am impressed on a daily basis on the thoroughness of statistical information. I did however work for the Federal Govt for almost twenty years. Inertia overwhelms every department. Each year governmental management grows exponentially. Elected represenatives hardly mattered then and I wouldn't imagine that it has become more responsive.
The best thing that we can do is secure lifeboats for ourselves and not look to the govt. for help. Imagine Katrina...now multiply that by a factor of ?
However I think you are sophisticated enough to know that the Federal Govt. is dysfunctional and deaf.
Yes, this letter was written more out of frustration than anything. That's why I have to roll my eyes when people suggest that I am naive for thinking anything will happen as a result. Of course I don't expect anything to happen as a result. I didn't write it with the expectation that anything would change. But I do want to point out that I think there are ways to ease a rough road ahead. And someday - and it's already pretty late in the game - politicians are going to ask "What do we do now?"
Robert - Had to laugh when I read this. We were apparently writing nearly the same article--most of the same points, with a different focus--at the same time yesterday. Nicely done. Here's mine: Peak Oil: Living on the Banks of Denial.
I think all of your proposals are very sensible...which probably dooms them to never seeing the light of day.
As Leanan pointed out downthread, the fear of political suicide still seems to rule the day. Which suggests that we'll continue in our denial until we are forced to do otherwise. Just ask Jimmy Carter.
The fault for that is another question: Is it the clueless voter who won't support a candidate who tells them the ugly truth? Is it the media who favor business' vested interests above all else? Is it a lack of courage or knowledge on the part of the candidates?
As I suggested in my article, I think it's all of the above and more. If you look at society as a whole as if it were a person in the process of grieving, I think it brings the big picture into better focus.
Robert - "And someday - and it's already pretty late in the game - politicians are going to ask 'What do we do now?'"
You're exactly right about that. I'm into metaphors lately, and I think the comparison to Bradburry's "Farenheit 451" and the "Book People" is apt. In the story the Book People were attacked and persecuted for the illegal actions of reading books. They adapted by memorizing the books and waiting for the time when society would once again need books.
People in the MSM derisively refer to people who listen to blogs like the Oil Drum as "doomsayers". The truth is individuals who post, blog and follow sites like this are in fact societies best hope in the long run. For me I am grateful that places like this exist...
The politicians I know are basically confused, not diabolical. (This is not to claim that diabolical ones don't exist!) I think Al Bartlet said it right:
"For every expert there is an equal and opposite expert."
In general, politicians (and most people) don't seem to have a science-based epistemology. Thus, they rely on inputs to make decisions. If the dominant input is based on special interests via media and well-funded lobbying, then the recency bias will kick in and politicians will gravitate towards an absurd point of view.
On other other hand, I have witnessed private citizens showing up to local government meetings make coherent cases that have swung the vote.
My brother is a politician, a smart and honorable man who wants to do the right thing for people. However, he always told me that money, while not buying his vote, will buy access. Clearly, the well funded special interests have the advantage in this regard. But we have to persevere anyway.
I agree that most politicians are not diabolical, but I do not think they are confused. They understand quite clearly that their primary mission in life is to make the world a safe place for private finance capital. They do not hold this position because they are Machiavellian bastards who are willing to plunder the present at the expense of the misery and degradation of the future; They do so because they are not capable of conceiving of the social, political, and economic universe in any other terms. If they could figure out how to carry out their primary mission and, at the same time, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, reduce our dependence on oil, etc. they would do so.
The problem is that any realistic response to peak oil, global warming and other resource and environmental crises must include economic contraction by the OECD countries. It is clear that we will have to drop through a wormhole into another universe (I am, of course, speaking in a psychological, metaphorical sense) before this truth can become an acknowledged political reality in our society.
I keep seeing this assertion. I believe it's false. Why can't the OECD go entirely fossil-free, and drag the rest of the world along by example?
One of the major drains on the US economy is the failure of government policy to promote exactly this end. The bulk of US production is tied to old and depleting forms of energy. Had the US made a major push to get PV manufacturing costs down and get economies of scale for traction batteries, we'd be set to sell solar panels and electric cars to the world. We'd live high on the hog on export earnings while squeezing the oil producers' margins. If you think this is physically impossible, I'd like to see you cite the facts which prove it.
Of course the full economic effect of fossil fuel depletion cannot be known with certainty in advance since technological progress cannot known be know with certainty in advance. I will give my reasons for doubting that business as usual economic growth can continue over the next several decades below, but let me say first that the strategy “”Let’s pursue BAU economic growth until definitive proof is given that such growth is no longer possible” does not strike me as being very intelligent. Since the ‘proof’ that we have reached the limits is likely to be financial and/or ecological collapse I do not understand why an intelligent person would want to follow this course of action. We have been following a similar course of action with respect to fossil fuel depletion for a long time; “Until the market gives us a clear indication that there is a supply problem let’s burn the stuff like there is no tomorrow.” In hindsight this does appear to have been a very intelligent strategy.
I should point out, by the way, that I do not regard green house gas emissions and global warning as the only human impact on the ecosystem that we need to worry about. Soil loss, habitat destruction and mass extinctions, pollution due to agricultural runoff, and so forth will continue to become worse if the whole world aspires to OECD standards of living, which standards of living, by the way, will be increasing all of the time unless major reforms occur to our economic system. Even if, within the next two decades, the global economy becomes completely decarbonized (or even carbon negative) and the human population stabilizes, I think that there are serious concerns about pursuing constantly increasing standards of living for many decades into the future.
Perhaps you will say that you do not want to pursue constantly increasing standards of living. You just want to maintain the goods and services we enjoy today while decreasing our environmental impact through cleaner energy sources and more efficient modes of manufacturing. I am skeptical that such maintenance can be achieved. Nevertheless, I would be overjoyed to see society adopt such a goal since it would be a major step towards economic sanity. My feeling is that if we could create economic institutions which can function well without growth, then they could be easily adapted to economic contraction if it was truly necessary to do so.
As for the source my doubts about maintaining economic growth in the face of fossil fuel depletion they are as follows:
The fact that the solar resource (I include wind as part of the solar resource) is large compared to today’s energy use does not matter if the cost of delivering 1 net unit of energy to the economy (including the cost of compensating for intermittency on short and long time scales) is much higher than the historical costs of fossil fuel. It is clear that the costs are significantly higher today or China would not still be building coal fired power plants like crazy. How low these costs will go in the future depends on the cost of load balancing as well as on the costs of primary generation. I have only seen hand waving arguments with respect to the solutions to intermittency. Point me to a detailed study showing how we are going to balance the load over a wide geographic area over a year long time frame with some real numbers for the amount and variety of storage required, the amount of long distance transmission required, and the amount of biomass backup required, with estimated costs. The statement that these problems will be solved at sufficiently low cost to keep global economic growth going for the rest of the century just because you believe that they will is not hard evidence.
The basis for claiming that nuclear energy costs are reasonable is more solid than for renewables, since France get 75% of its electricity from nuclear power and they have not become an economic basket case. However, unless we develop peaking nukes then costs of nuclear will go up as fossil fuels fired generation declines.
Secondly there is the problem of replacing the liquid fuel powered infrastructure (freight and passenger transportation, farming, construction, mining, etc.) with electrical alternatives. Airplanes and ocean going vessels are not going run off the grid. The daily commute to work is not the only problem which has to be solved in this regard. I would feel a lot more comfortable about such a transition taking place smoothly if we had started twenty years ago as recommended by the Hirsch Report. Peak oil is upon us and even expensive first generation PHEVs and EVs are years away from high volume manufacturing.
"What strikes me as ridiculous is this notion that the current administration and as well the presidential candidates are completely unaware of the situation . . .The mere fact that these politicians do not 'acknowledge' it, is simply and better explained by the fear of getting such message into the public."
There are likely significant gaps both in the knowledge and beliefs of elected officials and candidates for office, and also, as luisdias points out, gaps between what they know and what they feel they can say publicly without substantial risk.
But wait - did anybody happen to catch this tidbit, from an AP story picked up in the Salt Lake Tribune today? It appears that the Current Occupant himself has acknowledged Peak Oil:
"President Bush put politics ahead of the facts Tuesday as he sought to blame Congress for high energy prices, saying foreign suppliers are pumping just about all the oil they can and accusing lawmakers of blocking new refineries.
Bush renewed his call for drilling in an Arctic wildlife refuge, but his own Energy Department says that would have little impact on gas prices.
Asked what he is doing to try to get Saudi Arabia to pump more oil, Bush didn't answer directly. 'We've got to understand there's not a lot of excess capacity,' he said. Blaming "the lack of refinery capacity" for high energy prices, he said Congress has rejected his proposal to use shuttered military bases for refinery sites.
Global oil supplies are tight, in part because OPEC nations such as Saudi Arabia are refusing to open their spigots. The Saudis are pumping 8.5 million barrels a day, compared with 9.5 million barrels a day two years ago and have acknowledged the ability to produce as much as 11 million barrels a day." http://www.sltrib.com/business/ci_9101549
There's not a lot of excess capacity, indeed.
As an aside, this is actually a curious story, as the author quotes the President, then adds an analysis that ANWR drilling won't have an impact on prices (correct), but then adds the last paragraph of commentary about putative Saudi production ability as a critique of the President not putting enough pressure on them to "open their spigots," apparently - with the 11 m barrel-per-day assertion being completely unsupported. If Bush and family can't do it, if record high prices can't do it, then . . . what conclusion do you draw? In this case, this reporter's criticism of the Current Occupant appears wildly off target.
Given the close ties between the House of Saud and the Bush dynasty, the Current Occupant should indeed have a better picture of the situation that most recognize. That said, if you look at the policy positions being pushed by the administration, looming crisis will be used to justify non-solutions that benefit a few powerful players in the short term rather than the good of society in general.
Can a new president be brave enough to offer real solutions? You must remember that Jimmy Carter was pilloried and roundly mocked for his "sweater message" to the American public about energy conservation. Politicians also have long memories, and are often replaying "fighting the last war" rather than clearly understanding the next one. The fact that Carter lost to Reagan in part because Reagan sold the "new day," no resource limits story line to the public still resonates as a cautionary tale about asking the American public to re-negotiate its manifest destiny-driven way of life. Of course, it was easier for Reagan to emerge from the crisis and for the US and globe to eventually end up awash in an oil glut, because while the US had just reached peak, the world had decades to go.
Of the 3 major party candidates, only Obama has now rejected the notion of a gas tax holiday. This gives me a glimmer of hope that, with the right groundswell of public support, as president he could indeed have the courage to offer a new direction. That said, his support for ethanol and ties to the nuclear industry give one pause. Clinton's pandering to the so-called working class by joining McCain in calling for the gas tax holiday I find a distressing signal of weakness in the face of this crisis. McCain is not even worth talking about, I'm afraid, in terms of real leadership on this front. As many of us recognize, we needed a 10-fold increase in the gas tax starting in the 1970s, not a 3-month tax holiday in 2008. Nader is looking better and better all the time (easy for me to say in this deeply red state).
Good stuff, I like most of it, now we just need some leaders with some courage, but the public wants promises of limitless futures (like John McCain's stuff), and politicians will try to deliver, and fail of course. About the electricity powering our transportation. First, we need to see a real plan here. Second, you have to demonstrate, using ALL inputs in EROEI, how the plan will be better that what we have now and not the phony EROEI stuff I see on this site (the burden of proof is on you). Three, you have to explain how your Rube Goldberg notions of electric 18 wheelers (including all of the infrastructure, not just the trucks); train transport (including all of the infrastructure, not just engines); and tractors/combines (including all of the infrastructure, not just tractors/combines). Four, how much oil, natural gas and coal will be used to construct this? Finally, where is the capital to do this in an era of Peak Oil, when the piggie bank is empty and when capital will disappear as oil depletion progresses?
"...not the phony EROEI stuff I see on this site (the burden of proof is on you)"
No CJ, you don't get off that easy.
When You make a claim, YOU have to back it up. Take some responsibility. Show some of your preferred EROEI numbers, show whatever it is that you are insisting on adding to the formula. There's an active EROEI thread, as you surely know. If you have some substance to add, please do.
You're USING electricity right now, so calling it 'Useless' is clearly an inadequate choice of words. (For new readers, this is a recurring contention of his.) Electricity is mixing bread, driving nails, and pulling trains as we speak. BIG trains, which says to me that it could also be pulling BIG Combines, if it had to.. or just saving enough diesel by pulling the Big freight and commuter trains- that the available diesel is then still available for Combines for now.
We're NOT out of Money. Money is an Idea, and we're not out of ideas.. not yet.
Tag, you're it!
Bob
People on this site enamored with Excel will hate on you for saying this. Such has been my experience, anyway.
You and CJ have both insisted on other factors being included in a 'complete' EROEI. My constant objection to this argument, is the vagueness of that demand. I don't care if it's in a chart or not. I've never posted a chart at this site.
If you're talking about intangibles or unmeasurable effects that won't have 'numeric' terms that can fit on an excel chart, then they might be necessary aspects of the discussion, but are not necessarily part of EROEI. By this, I might use the 'Enery Return on Water Invested' argument for Biofuels, which largely makes Ethanol a non-starter for me.. but it is not an EROIE argument. It is another factor which must ALSO be seriously considered.
EROEI is simply, "If my body uses more energy to digest a piece of Celery than the Celery contains, then that represents an EROEI of less than 1:1, and I shouldn't count on Celery as my major foodstuff." It doesn't mean that celery doesn't have benefits to my health, just that it COSTS me energy instead of YIELDING a NET in energy for my nourishment. I do not see that the energy spent in putting on my shirt this morning, or even the energy involved in washing dishes has to carry any weight in this analysis. In the case of growing food, of course, it also becomes clear that you wouldn't count the Solar Energy as an input in 'EROEI' calculation, since I didn't have to Provide that energy, I merely took advantage of energy that is Available from the world around me. If there are externalities to my system of agriculture, or if, say I have to spend more energy GETTING TO my garden in miles traveled than this food provides, then it is an energy losing proposition.
Please just make a complete case. That's all I'm insisting on. It's not about 'hating you' or Clif, I just find that both you and Clif seem to be insisting that others provide the details that prove YOUR points, while your points seem to demand factors that you won't define.
Bob
Fair enough that you ask for some kung fu to go along with the commentary. But the question is a valid one - how do you get from 'a' to 'b' and all the infrastructure to support it? For a simple example - how much diesel and equipment run by diesel is used to build the average power station, or hydro plant, or wind farm?
I do have to challenge the money comment though. Money is a tool to facilitate trade and has to be based on something and that something is for us right now, availability of cheap energy. The British Empire was built on cheap coal, the US empire built on cheap oil. I'm straw manning a bit here, but I would like to see the correlation between wealth creation over time (and wealth destruction) and the availability of cheap energy. Is it a coincidence that US peak oil coincides with roughly with the rise in long-term (permanent) US debt?
Was it long-term and Permanent US Debt in 1929? I'm sure to many it appeared to be, and it took a few years to institute programs like the WPA to both get people to work and to try to generate some infrastructure that would also help to generate new wealth, like Hoover Dam.
As Heinlein said "Money is the Bugaboo of small minds.." .. Money exists because we created it. There are 'Real Debts' in energy, food and so on, but we have- people losing jobs who need to work, we have mountains of scrap and new materials that could be hammered into Train Tracks or Windmills or Electric Tractors or Fields of Millet, we have oil, nuclear, natural gas, sun wind and food in varying degrees that we can allocate this way or that.. Money is one name of one concept that would put these pieces together to make some of this happen.
What is the relative EROIE of Closing an SUV factory and transforming it and it's workforce and material flows into a renewable energy factory?
As far as 'ALL the infrastructure..' part of the impertinence of this demand is that so much of this infrastructure already exists.. it doesn't have to be made from scratch. Yes, it is a 'legacy beneficiary' of Crude Oil, Coal, Whale Oil, Firewood, etc.. furthermore, this infrastructure exists without having to be fully justified under the 'cost analysis' of one aspect of that world. Does the roadway that a worker drives to get to that job owe its existence to one windmill installation? Are they asking to count the worker who built that road, and the factory that built his truck? It's a demand that is intentionally 'impossible to meet', as I see it.
Bob
Hey, I thought we were talking about transportation, you know, like the transportation of food, medicine, emergency vehicles, police, nurses, meals on wheels, doctors, ambulances, construction equipment, fuel oil, and such.
I have talked previously on this site about real EROEI of the "electric economy dream," you know, like the energy used in mining bauxite and other ores, transportation and processing of ores, coal mining, train transport, the transportation to work of all the people making the solar/electric stuff, the heating of all of the buildings that make the stuff, advertise it, sell it, maintain it, the international shipping of all the parts, the Fedex air shipments, the national and international travel of the solar/wind barons/patrons, the salaries of all of the people, including sales people who earn salaries and then spend them, and thus consume more fossil energy, the maintenance of all of this, and a thousand more things. It would be nice to see this in real EROEI, instead of illusionary EROEI. Illusionary EROEI gives people the idea that all will be well if we just invest in the solar dream. I can see from the mood of the nation and the stupidity of the politicians that we will invest in solar and accelerate oil deplete and just get some useless electric energy for the waste of oil, natural gas, and coal. Useless, because as we go into economic depression, we will have spare electric power for some time. Down the road, when we don't have the oil to maintain the electric infrastructure, power will go out.......and that's it... no power means no heat for most of the nation. People won't prepare, because some talking chimps said, "hey don't worry, I got a solar dream that will save ya, so don't need to get some stuff to keep ya warm when the heat goes out."
Money is not an idea, it is a promissory note to use energy now or in the future; thus no energy means no money, nor capital. As Chris Shaw said, "Money measures the scope of dreams, but only energy can fulfill them." http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=5964&page=0
Ok, so instead of an EROEI calculation, you seem to be asking for an equation that counts ALL inputs, ALL outputs, the salaries, every activity, business and every relationship. You're really saying that evaluating this overall Economy, that Business as Usual is unsustainable. Well who isn't saying that? Only you call that whole thing 'EROEI', which is simply ignoring any attempt to describe to you what it is and is not meant to convey..
'no power means no heat for most of the nation.' - The talking chimps who are talking about solar are saying that you have to save yourself.. not that this will step up and do it for you.
'Illusionary EROEI gives people the idea that all will be well if we just invest in the solar dream.' - just by getting a positive EROEI number does not mean that 'All will be well'.. but as you seem to be driven by absolutes, I can see how it might appear that way. The somewhat positive number for CSP or PV, or Wind or other sources simply means it 'just might be a help in scraping by'.. the message is not one of BAU, and your choosing to hear that is simply your own insistence on ignoring what others are saying over and over again.
Surprise, surprise.
Three, you have to explain how your Rube Goldberg notions of electric 18 wheelers...
I have said on numerous occasions that we will always have a demand for liquid fuels. I don't see long range transport, airlines, or the military running on electricity. This doesn't mean that I think liquid fuels can come close to meeting the current demands from those industries. I believe that we will see a much smaller airline industry in the future, but one that will require liquid fuels.
This is what you said: "5. From my viewpoint, we need to move to a future in which electricity drives our transport systems. The electricity would be derived initially from existing sources like coal and nuclear power, but increasingly from solar, wind, and various other renewable sources." So, that is what I wrote about.
As for getting more electric power from coal and nuclear. Coal is peaking, and nuclear and coal would take decades to get off the ground. The development of both is very energy intensive, using lots of oil, natural gas, and coal. And no one has any idea of where the capital would come from, as energy declines, so too does capital. I'm not sure that the EROEI of nuclear is so great, and again, who will need spare electric power in the recession/depression ahead. The electric power will be there for transportation, but there are no vehicles and infrastructure waiting to do the job.
Nice job. A couple of suggestions - nits really:
1. Replace gasoline with gasoline-diesel or more generalize to all transporation fuels.
2. The Ford Expedtion is no longer made so generalize to full sized SUVs
3. Do not address it to the soon to be POTUS - address it directly to the candidates and include Paul and Nader if you wish. Then all of us can help send the letter to every MSM (paper, radio, braodcast and cable TV - domestic and international even Al Jazeera for gosh sakes) outlet and non traidtional info outlet (Drudge, Kunstler, Denninger, Moore, etc, etc, etc,)
Pete
I read the letter putting myself in the place of the average American and typical politician. My denial meter remains strong but is wavering. At this point in time this letter will not find any traction but does chisel away at the ever weakening belief that our life can remain non-negotiable. Critical mass is still some way off as it will take a few more years of pursuing dead end allys before we look straight into the mirror.
Critical mass is still some way off as it will take a few more years of pursuing dead end allys before we look straight into the mirror.
The funny thing is, I have never had any problem sitting down with someone and getting them to understand the magnitude of the problem. I have done this probably 100 times, with at least an 80% success rate. I think if I could just sit down with everyone in America, go through their questions and concerns, I wouldn't convince everyone - but I could convince a majority to get on board.
Many of the people I know understand the enormity of the problems we face. They simply don't seem to care. Perhaps the enormity itself causes them to believe that disaster is inevitable and that nothing can be done to avert it. That being the case, why obsess over it? seems to be the attitude. Just live your life and when the time comes, die. This is how my wife and my 21 year old son feels. My guess is that most politicians & other so-called "leaders" feel this same way. It's pretty difficult to argue against such an attitude. I don't think that lack of awareness is the issue; rather, the difficulty is getting people to give a damn about a future they don't believe they personally will ever see.
Many of the people I know understand the enormity of the problems we face.
I know a few who 'get it'. But to others who do not 'get it' - they have to be open to re-thinking what goes on in their lives.
If they are not open to change - no amount of talking on the topic will cause change.
Greetings from Oz.
I agree. Married to a Maths/Science teacher, but think I can get her to sit down and watch "A Crude Awakening" with me? Or turn the blasted heating down? Nah, it's all about the kids future and believing there is one that'll be as peachy as ours has been.
Something's got to give.
I wish I had sufficient reason to disagree with this perspective, however given the number of people that I have met who believe in the "Rapture", all I can say is: would they please leave as quickly and quietly as possible and leave the rest of us to sort out what is left? I have a 13yr old to raise.
My eldest is also thirteen. First year at high school, good enough to get into accelerated learning, top-of-the-class in early testing. School captain last year. Good at sport. And my son's even brainier than her. Both of them miles ahead of me at that age. Yet all I can think about is what's life going to be like for a couple of promising souls when they reach my current age in a few decades.
It's very, very worrying. 'Cause there doesn't seem to be many answers... To ANY of the big, emerging problems. Frankly, it's depressing.
Joe, there's cause for cautious optimism. Had the US switched all light-duty vehicle production to PHEVs last year, our annual increment in wind-energy production would already have been enough to power a substantial fraction of that year's sales. The 2007 installations increased wind capacity by more than 50% over 2006; at this rate, we'd be equal sometime between 2010 and 2012.
What you can do is help build the future you want by voting with your dollars. Demand and buy the stuff that will create a fit world for your grandchildren.
(Still working up the nerve to commit to buying an Aptera, myself.)
Demand and buy the stuff that will create a fit world for your grandchildren
I buy streetcar fares and walking shoes (and JazzFest tickets :-)
Alan
Thanks EP (I'm always thrilled when one of you guys - or gals - replies to one of my little posts, as much of the stuff you talk about goes way over my head and I feel like a kindergarten kid tugging on the teacher's shirt. Trouble is for people like me, who are new to PO - and I'm still not completely sold on it, by the way - and sport an Average Joe IQ, there's few I can talk to about the liquid energy problem. Familiar faces, that is. Which is kind of frustrating).
For what it's worth, I'm booked in to get a motorbike license this month. And I work from home. And I've changed the lightbulbs over. Though to be honest, at this stage it's still more about saving dollars than saving the planet.
Put some foam rubber gaskets behind your switches and outlets. This seals a major path for air to come into the house for very little time and money. Worth doing even for rentals.
If gaskets do not cover holes 100% (common in new homes, much less so for older homes) use some 3M brand Scotch tape to bridge the gap.
Much more that can be done. Have you looked at a good durable bicycle ?
Best Hopes for Energy Efficiency,
Alan
Replace gasoline with gasoline-diesel
I almost put that in there, as I do agree that we need policies in place to encourage diesels. But with diesel at over $4, I decided to leave that out.
The Ford Expedtion is no longer made so generalize to full sized SUVs
I had thought that as well, but then it looks like it is still available for 2008. When is it supposed to be discontinued?
What we need is something larger than the Expedition, something like an Excursion!!! ;-0
The Expedition is still made for now, unfortunately. It was the still vaster Excursion that was discontinued a few years ago.
Yes - correct. Brain fart and/or wishful thinking.
Pete
except that karl denninger does not ackownledge peak oil. just ask him. he is smart, but he won't admit it publicly. accepting that oil is the root of the problem would ruin his agenda I guess.
Nitpicks:
Don't your increases add up to $1.50, not $2.00? Isn't the average gas mileage currently about 20 mpg. If so, does the average American drive 20,000 miles per year? I thought it was about 12,000.
Further, shouldn't we begin by eliminating all subsidies for fossil fuels? I think that is about 50 billion per year currently.
You call for tax credits for wind but you also talk about a possible surcharge for fossil fuel inputs. Isn't this counterproductive since you will end up putting a surcharge on wind and solar.
Why do we need this panel of experts to determine surcharges? If we generally tax carbon, won't that automatically cause the appropriate surcharge for inputs? But again, keep in mind that solar and wind, for example require fossil fuel inputs.
Some would argue we need a level playing field for fossil vs renewable. I think that train has left the station. It is clear that reliance on fossil fuels must be drastically reduced. We can prepare for the future with renewables or we can just do business as usual and watch the shit hit the fan.
Oh yeh. While you are at it, cut the defense budget in half so we will actually have some money to pay for the crash program needed to move to radical conservation and renewables. If we don't change our priorities, we are screwed.
I think looking at average gas mileage of cars is a false starting point when most of those 12 or 20,000 miles people drive each year are spent at 15-25 miles an hour or less, 10 times a week.
Don't your increases add up to $1.50, not $2.00?
Thanks, fixed.
Isn't the average gas mileage currently about 20 mpg. If so, does the average American drive 20,000 miles per year? I thought it was about 12,000.
If you are referring to the 1,000 gallons per year stat, I got that off of an EIA page.
Further, shouldn't we begin by eliminating all subsidies for fossil fuels? I think that is about 50 billion per year currently.
There are no direct subsidies for fossil fuels. What is generally called a subsidy are things like tax deductions. So my preference is to go after the consumption side, instead of eliminating "subsidies" that aren't really subsidies.
You call for tax credits for wind but you also talk about a possible surcharge for fossil fuel inputs. Isn't this counterproductive since you will end up putting a surcharge on wind and solar.
To the extent that wind and solar use fossil fuels, they should pay for that. This will provide huge incentive to come up with low fossil fuel inputs.
Some would argue we need a level playing field for fossil vs renewable.
That's what a gas tax would do.
Note that I don't claim to have all of the answers here. But I want to press the issue. I am sick and tired of the pandering, and I don't see any of the major candidates addressing the issues. So for those who have alternative ideas, put them out there. Someone suggested to me the other day that we should slap a tarrif on oil imports - with emphasis on those who don't allow us to do business in their country. We do that for ethanol from Brazil, why shouldn't we do it for oil?
Maybe I missed something along the way, but $.20 + $.30 + 3x $.50 = $2.00, per the first claim.
My only concern is that this amount is not enough!
I agree that $2.00/gallon is low (especially now that crude prices have gone up so much). My suggestion was a nickel/gallon a month for 60 months (total $3.00/gallon), with an option to continue.
Assuming that we could get the tax hike passed (which is doubtful), can we get some agreement on what we would do with the additional revenues.
I favor using part of the funds to send "stimulus payments" to low income people (including those that do not drive), and using the rest to retrofit existing communities to be walkable and transit-oriented, including building the transit. Such a plan would also include shifting current gas tax revenues from new road development to the purposes that I stated.
I have no idea how close the additional revenues will be towards funding such alternate development. Remember, increased taxes will most likely result in a decrease in driving, thus a decrease in revenues for the alternate building plan. No wonder they keep building new roads. Ah, the joys of the myopic growth economy!
I don't think we should "do" anything with the revenues. After paying bounties for e.g. carbon sequestration, the entire amount of the fuel taxes should be returned to the public.
The logic behind that is simple: there are myriad ways to cut fuel requirements, and "one size fits all" policy prescriptions often miss the mark and are sometimes even counterproductive. Set the price high and let ingenuity and markets work their magic.
Set the price high and let ingenuity and markets work their magic
Yes, today's high prices are CERTAINLY working magic !
April 30
Price Elasticity of Demand
4 Week Averages 08 vs. 07
Finished Motor Gasoline. . . 9,257 . . 9,223 .+0.4%
Kerosene-Type Jet Fuel . . . . 1,569 . . 1,637 . . -4.2%
Distillate Fuel Oil . . . . . . . . . 4,257 . . 4,229 . +0.7%
Residual Fuel Oil . . . . . . . . . . . 795 . . . . 724 . +9.8% Propane/Propylene . . . . . . . . .1,037 . . 1,107. . -6.3%
Other Oils. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3,765. . 3,653 . +3.1%
Total Products Supplied . . . 20,679 . 20,572 +0.5%
France, OTOH, is preparing better than any other nation for post-Peak Oil. With a large number of PUBLIC investments.
E-P, your vision of the future is impractical and unworkable. And is far less worth living in than my vision.
...the only way you'll be able to fix things is to start awarding medals to those following in the footsteps of Bernard Goetz.
Best Hopes for a BETTER future,
Alan
Whereas for March, consumption was down 1.1% over 2007. In California, the drop was a dramatic 4.5%.
Public investment has its place, but the US public has long resented having their personal mobility taxed for trains and buses that they don't ride. This isn't about to change.
Don't connect them. Transit will gain a constituency on its own merits. The public will vote for bond issues when they feel that it serves them, and the political opposition will evaporate.
My definition of "better" includes the well-being of the law-abiding public being placed above that of thugs. I suppose you could address this by catching the thugs (preferably before they work themselves up to killing people in random attacks) and banning them from public transit.
Bravo Robert.
I imagine that others remember the bickering here a few years ago over Saudi, if the world had 'peaked', and the dangers of crying wolf.....quite a bit was between yourself and WT of course.
I'm glad that's over, but one thing that strikes me as very odd is that you both, and others that agreed with either of you, were 'right'. SA was able to increase production. However, that doesn't seemed to have helped oil prices much. Inventories have increased, esp. gasoline, but still the price has steadily advanced. Peak oil has been mentioned more and more by 'TPTB' and the media, but less and less are dismissing it out of hand or presenting it as a 'chicken little' scenario.
I find this fascinating. Of course it's not that the viewpoints were diametrically opposed, but it seemed like either one or the other would happen. Instead I guess we got a little more of both, yet as time has passed I'm not sure we're (as a nation or world) any better prepared yet we are obviously closer to some day of reckoning.
As Jeffery (sp?) and others have said, I wish you were all wrong, that it was all worrying over nothing....although I think anyone can see that is not the case.
Thanks to everyone who has contributed to the dialogue over the past few years.
You forget that there are too many people to live on renewable energy (besides the addiction to oil overpopulation is the main source of all the coming problems that we're facing). Because we eventually will to go to a 100% renewable energy society, we need to reduce our numbers with at least 50-75% in the next 50 years. We better find a way to do that as smoothly as possible before nature enforces it on us...
I would contend that overpopulation is the root cause of ALL problems we, as a species, are facing. PO, AGW, etc., are just symptoms of the problem.
This is inadequate. By my reckoning, we need to reduce human population to 1/15 its current level, in order to be within the carrying capacity (K) of the biosphere. In fact, since K has been reduced by anthropogenic damage, this degree of reduction is probably inadequate now, sans fossil fuel inputs.
Please can you provide us with some numbers, calculations, assumptions etc... If the world lives like wasteful Americans, maybe you're right. Remember there was a Swiss prof. (whose name eludes me) who posted a contribution here. IIRC, he showed if we want to live like Cubans, the planet can probably support 5 billion people sustainibly. He also backed up that calculation with clear methodology etc... So please, to both of you, how about some solid numbers with assumptions included instead of random assertions?
Please can you provide us with some numbers, calculations, assumptions etc... If the world lives like wasteful Americans, maybe you're right.
I agree with those sentiments. I think we throw around numbers about how many people the world can support without very much backing. It all comes down to the standard of living you are willing to accept.
Quality of life should be the goal not standard of living. We can live a very high quality of life with a much reduced "standard of living". Such an argument is fundamental to the necessary changes in American lifestyle.
Well, even if you're right, you've got yourself a "who decides?" problem that's unsolvable. What we can measure is something resembling GDP. All else is an arbitrary matter of taste, which in this context usually reduces to piffling point-summation systems put out by academics, UN bureaucrats, and others detached from all reality, who choose the items they count and the weights they assign them by pulling them from somewhere the sun don't shine. So, for better or worse, there will never be a "we" marching in lockstep to make the "necessary changes in [the]American lifestyle", because there is no basis for agreement on how to value apples against oranges, chalk against cheese.
Quality of life is not and need not be measurable.
Happiness is not necessarily related to the amount that you consume.
However, there have been some surveys recently to analyze how happy people in different countries are...
According to a recent study, the people of Denmark were the happiest. People of the US were considerably down in the pack and I believe that Italy was among the least happy. I think they mentioned that there wasn't any correlation between standard of living and happiness.
Such a finding is not surprising. I think that many recognize that over-consumption of material things occurs because people are basically not happy with themselves and their lives. Consumption becomes an end in itself, a cultural obsession to take the place of more meaningful community interactions.
Is it really true that (s)he with the most toys wins?
Quality of life is not and need not be measurable...
Exactly. And neither is happiness. Such things are subjective.
So some professor pulls a bunch of loaded questions out of where the sun don't shine and claims that Denmark is the happiest. So another does likewise and claims that, well, Nigeria, despite its obvious utter misery, isn't so bad either. And another does, and says that the US of A is actually pretty good.
As I said, the concept is completely dodgy and arbitrary. You can fiddle the questions on the survey to get whatever answer you want. Plus, it costs nothing for the respondents to lie, so they may well tell you what you want to hear, which is usually obvious from the loaded questions. Which is exactly why we're never going to increase happiness (or subjective quality of life) directly by collective action - no basis upon which to agree what said action should be. One size does not fit all. The best we can do collectively is to ensure that resources are available that people can use to increase their own happiness. That's where the GDP, as imperfect as it is, comes in - no GDP, no resources, starvation and misery.
Here and there, some clever individual will of course find a way to use said resources to become more miserable instead of more happy. Tough noogies: within our current systems of ethics, there's nothing whatsoever that we can do about inborn stupidity.
GDP measures include activities that make people sick and the resources spent treating (usually not curing) those sicknesses. It all follows the faulty logic of supply side economics (i.e. supply will create its own demand).
Why does the US spend so much on "health care" with such poor results?
GDP is really a meaningless measure. Just how do they keep track of all economic activity? Get real. I'd like to see how exactly they adjust such absurd reports for inflation. Such is really key to the true measurement of consumption (there's a reason that TB was called such).
Go ahead, watch it on TB!
GDP measures the fuel that we squander as a good thing. The more we use, the higher the GDP. GDP measures all the excess packaging (is it really value added?) and the waste disposal costs associated with such.
And there are many things GDP dosen't fully account for, such as home gardening, home making, home repair labor (when done by the owner), and child rearing and home education. Besides, as I wrote before, it's ridiculous to think that the government can keep track of all economic activities. What "college professors" abstractions or samples claim to account for this? And just how is the growth propaganda adjusted for inflation.
GDP is more ridiculous than happiness surveys.
Quality of life is not the same as standard of living.
It all comes down to the standard of living you are willing to accept.
Well, yes. And given that overpopulation is The Thing That Shall Never Be Named, I have to expect that we are headed straight for J.G.Ballard's Billennium. And yet, try as I might, I really don't see any point to this mindless, relentless push to cram in more and more of our number at the expense of every other known and unknown consideration.
In defence of darwinsdog: this is a blog, not a scientific academy.
There is an excellent collection of articles on the earth's carrying capacity to be found at the Die Off site, with hard numbers galore:
http://www.dieoff.org/index.htm#carrying
If he's going to post numbers like those above, it's fair to ask what his basis is.
This is a blog with a lot of science-based analysis. It's not an unreasonable request.
By my reckoning, we need to reduce human population to 1/15 its current level,
And what makes your reckoning on this right?
There should probably also be a private letter.
I don't know if any of these proposals would make a significant or even positive difference or not, and I don't think anyone else knows either; certainly politicians and bureaucrats don't have the answer since they are in the business of plunder and control, and have historically demonstrated gross ineptitude at economic management. Look at the terrible effect that the great corn ethanol mandates and subsidies have had on the lives of consumers of corn; how many deaths already?
The idea that government should increase taxes on gasoline seems to me to have the potential to cause even more immediate destruction of life. Is it wise to by government decree transfer even more wealth out of the hands of individuals, many of whom are on the margin, into the inefficient hands of government? Won't the burden of increased taxes fall most heavily on the shoulders of those least able to afford it?
Once the rate of change in oil production goes from positive to negative, we are no longer looking at doubling periods, but rather halving periods. If production falls at 3.5% then in 20 years production will be half of what it was at peak. The first halving period will be the biggest in absolute terms, just as the last doubling was the biggest in absolute terms. I dare say that the economic pie will shrink to more than half of what it is today in the first 20 years after peak, and it is that economic pie which includes the necessities of life. So facing an economic pie probably inadequate to even sustain life for many, from where will the slice come to create these grand schemes?
I fundamentally disagree with this post on two counts.
First I disagree that the collectivist approach is superior to individual solutions; my view is that government interference will only increase the human suffering, and government interference will crowd out private solutions.
Secondly, I think that the disintegration of the industrial age will come upon us so swiftly that things like fuel efficiency, mass transit, tax credits, and these dangerous mercury filled light bulbs, in retrospect will be laughable for those of us alive to laugh. The tone of these proposals seems to be bargaining to keep some sembelence of life as we know it, which I think grossly underestimates the magnitude of the imminent changes we face.
Curiously enough, I didn't see a proposal for a universal net metering law to force utilities to adapt to homeowners, small businesses, farms etc installing local generating equipment and being able to add power to the grid... why not? IMO, social engineering by tinkering with the tax code is limited in its reach, the laws need to change to loosen the grip of big energy and big car on this problem.
Curiously enough, I didn't see a proposal for a universal net metering law...
I support that. As I said, this is just a start. There are a lot more things that should be included in a comprehensive energy policy. Universal net metering is one.
I think there should be limits on the size of a homes' yard, something like a maximum of 2x the sq ft of the house. I drive past peoples homes to and from work and I can't believe the size of some of these yards! We're talking acres.
Limiting yard sizes would save fuel, save water, and reduce the amount of methane emitted into the atmosphere.
I also believe there should be severe penalties for people that use recreational vehicles. They should all have a registration requirement and should be taxed heavily every single year.
The idea that government should increase taxes on gasoline seems to me to have the potential to cause even more immediate destruction of life. Is it wise to by government decree transfer even more wealth out of the hands of individuals, many of whom are on the margin, into the inefficient hands of government? Won't the burden of increased taxes fall most heavily on the shoulders of those least able to afford it?
It seems that every time I say "revenue neutral" and "tax credits", people don't seem to understand what these things actually mean.
And if we jacked taxes up sharply tomorrow, then you are correct that the potential is there for immediate harm. That's why it needs to be 1). Phased in; and 2). Offset.
As someone said to me recently, sell it as "Tax gasoline, not income."
I still believe that a tax increase, unless it at least triples the current price of gasoline will have relatively little impact due to the fact that demand is so inelastic in the U.S. Certainly, the demand destruction has been minimal despite the high increases in prices over the last few years.
Yes, there are ways that we can minimize the pain, especially for those who consume less than the average. But this is irrelevant. A system of rationing actually has a chance of significantly reducing consumption and would help the poor and the frugal if the ration credits were sellable on the open market.
One can argue, of course, that the American people would never accept rationing. True, but then they will never accept higher gas taxes, either. In fact, it is clear that both Hillary and McCain believe that the demand and the popular position is no taxes at all.
So, as long as we are proposing ideas that have zero chance of being adopted, we might as well propose ideas that might actually work.
In the mean time, get out the popcorn and watch the show, the one where this country goes over the cliff.
Demand destruction occurs slowly, as does demand creation. US gasoline demand fell 12% from 1979 to 1982; breaking the 1979 consumption level took another 11 years, despite the tanking of oil prices.
Demand is created by vehicle choices, driving habits, living patterns, transit options and total population. The only thing which can change overnight is driving habits; turning over the vehicle fleet takes years, and the housing stock takes decades. Building transit in the USA is very slow. Population is the sticky one [1].
Vehicle choices are changing fast. GM is cutting production at truck and SUV plants, while car sales are flat or rising and hybrid sales are soaring; the Prius alone accounts for about 1.5% of US vehicle sales. This demand destruction will take time to work through the system, just as the glut of trucks purchased after 9/11 is going through the economy like a rat through a snake. But the long-term elasticity of gasoline consumption is much greater than the instantaneous response suggests, and technologies and other changes on the way will increase it further still.
[1] About the only way to cut population in a hurry (morally) would be to vote out the public officials who support illegal aliens and jail the business people who employ them, so that the influx decides that going back home is imperative. There's evidence from a bunch of places that this works; the only thing we lack is the will.
Building transit in the USA is very slow
By design. Rationing by Queue.
There are numerous examples of French mayors coming into office saying "I want a tram from here to there" and 3 to 4 years later they get to cut the ribbon.
The French (with 1/5th the USA population and low work hours/year) plan to build 1,500 km of new tram lines in a decade.
Adjust for population and workweek and the USA could build over 5,000 miles of Light Rail.
Best Hopes for Americans working with the speed and efficiency of French bureaucrats,
Alan
Revenue neutral is from the perspective of the government. An added gasoline tax would fall on different shoulders than those receiving the offsetting tax break you discuss, otherwise what would be the purpose of doing it in the first place were the same individuals paying the added gasoline tax to receive an exactly equal tax break somewhere else in the tax code for installing energy saving devices. Plus the gas tax would stay while the energy credit would be a one time shot, so it is unlikely to be revenue neutral over a span of years.
The effect of your gasoline tax must fall on users of gasoline with sufficient weight to cause them pain, otherwise it would be ineffective for the purpose you perceive as beneficial. So again, I point out that the cruel burden of your gas tax will fall most heavily on those on the bottom rung of the economic ladder, the very group who is least likely to be able to take advantage of "tax credits". So how many death might result to people already on the margin?
Are not you indulging in a Nirvana fallacy by comparing a real world situation with an ideal situation, rather than with another real world situation?
An added gasoline tax would fall on different shoulders than those receiving the offsetting tax break you discuss, otherwise what would be the purpose of doing it in the first place...
Some may choose not to change their behavior - after all, gasoline costs them $200 (or whatever) more a year - and they are going to get a $200 tax credit. But they are going to get that tax credit anyway; they net out positive if they also reduce their gas consumption. So it provides incentive to conserve without just increasing taxes. This is why I think you could sell this over just a straight gas tax.
The effect of your gasoline tax must fall on users of gasoline with sufficient weight to cause them pain...
True, we don't know what that threshhold is. But if people know it's coming, there will be more movement to fuel efficiency. The problem right now is that too many still think this is temporary.
So again, I point out that the cruel burden of your gas tax will fall most heavily on those on the bottom rung of the economic ladder, the very group who is least likely to be able to take advantage of "tax credits".
That was fallacious the first time you said it, and it remains so. Those at the bottom who are able to afford gasoline typically file tax returns. You don't have to owe any taxes at all to get a tax credit. If your tax burden is $0, then you would get a rebate check for $200. So the regressive argument in this case is bunk.
Are not you indulging in a Nirvana fallacy...
No, I am making actual suggestions for dealing with a problem. It would be more helpful if critics could suggest a better plan - instead of just being critics.
I think a much better plan would be to adopt much of what Ron Paul proposed in his platform, plus some.
End US imperialism by bringing all US troops back to the US and closing all foreign bases plus ending all foreign aid and preemptive wars. Restore gold and silver as money, and require banks to maintain 100% reserves; eliminate the Federal Reserve scam. End the income tax. Get out of the UN, IMF, World Bank, etc. Get the government completely out of all the markets - no subsidies - no mandates, just punishment of actual crimes; this means no Department of Education, FDA, Energy Department; no Commerce Department; no Agriculture Department; no FEMA; and no many other Departments. End the war on drugs. End the illusion (scam) that government can take care of retirement and health by phasing out Social Security and Medicare in the most humane way possible.
Will this prevent the energy disaster we face? In my view, not likely, but it will give us a greater chance than the "government take care of and manage us" approach. If there are viable alternative energy sources, this will make it more likely that they will be found and implemented. If there are not such adequate sources, then it will minimize what will be extensive suffering, and result in a more Darwinian selected reduced population.
The reality is that if alternatives are workable they have value, and if they do, they will attract capital; it is only when they do not have value that government forces them upon us via mandate and or subsidy. Government is force, and force is unproductive in the market place other than to punish crime.
I am troubled by several things in the speech:
1. Generalities - Perhaps, it is that I am attuned to scientific data but what I "hear" is the usual political blather without any attempt to quantify why we have to take action, eg, if we don't reduce oil usage, X and Y will happen.
2. Choices - Why were these particular programs selected? Were others rejected? Why?
3. Revenue neutral - You state that the taxes will be revenue neutral and that people will get tax credits. Lots of people pay little or no taxes so what good is a tax credit? Does that mean that people who pay little or no tax will get money back?
Todd
Choices - Why were these particular programs selected? Were others rejected? Why?
Again: "These five proposals are merely a start."
What programs do you prefer? Which ones did I reject?
Revenue neutral - You state that the taxes will be revenue neutral and that people will get tax credits. Lots of people pay little or no taxes so what good is a tax credit? Does that mean that people who pay little or no tax will get money back?
Yes. People who pay little or no taxes get money back from the Earned Income Credit. Would work the same way. File a return; get a credit.
Given that gasoline taxes are regressive, that they place a higher burden on lower income persons, why not just issue "stimulus payments" to those of lower income (including those who do not drive) to compensate for higher prices at the pump.
2. I would add urban planning needs to be revisited to solidly incorporate Smart Growth in all metropolitan areas. Suburban/exurban expansion has proven to be a major factor in exorbitant levels of transportation fuel consumption.
A well thought out letter, but not effective politically. IMO, the only way to pass costly peak oil mitigation measures is to build a diverse coalition and then use targeted language to maximize the bully pulpit(nothing happens without congress).
1. You must bring in the defense hawks who are rational about the problem (i.e. understand that drilling in ANWR, or anywhere domestically is mathematically not a mitigation measure, much less a solution.)
2. You must bring in some of the southern conservative rubes. You must use patriotic, wartime language (Oh and don't use the term "rubes") You must simply make this a "war on oil/terrorism" - you must tie the two together in a tight knot.
2. You must include oil conservation projects and technologies in the defense budget to bring in the Military Industrial Complex.
3. You must bring in the various electrical power lobbies - especially nuclear.
4. You must bring in the climate change coalition more closely and work in tandem. This should be the least difficult.
5. You must bring in Wall St. - broadly organize top corporate leadership to pressure influential business organizations (i.e. Chambers of Commerce) in key districts.
6. You must bring in auto manufactures who stand to gain (i.e. Toyota)
6. You must collect and empower the federal government agencies who stand to gain budgets. Agencies such as the Bureau of Reclamation and the Army Corpse of Engineers were tremendously effective in pulling the levers of congressional power to fund the infrastructure in the development of the West. We need a similar culture now in agencies such as the FTA and DOE and a renewal of the Army Corpse power in navigable waterway infrastructure development.
The key to all this is to get congress focussed on the oil problem and get a steady stream of bills coming from congress quickly, with provisions and pork amendments across a broad cross section of bills as well as a massive PR campaign streaming heavily across the televisions of America. That's the only way I see real action happening.
While I'd agree that its the political thing to play to the vested interests, I don't think alone that's going to be enough to pull action in the right direction.
Effectively, from where we are, technological solutions are going to be too late. Thus while you can start programmes to deal with the energy deficit (eg nuclear) you are also going to HAVE to push conservation.
While you can use the "war on" rhetoric, and point to the foreign policy quagmire of dependence on oil imports, you need something more.
My suggestion to to emphasise "improving the quality of life" of voters. The policies to do that are reduced commuting, tax support for telecommuting, rebalancing consumerism, reducing pollution etc. which you of course mention only in passing.
Its difficult to argue against a politician saying he's going to improve the quality of life of voters, even if the reality is to lower energy usage and emphasise the local.
I'd agree that modest conservation measures are the low-hanging fruit; but the more relevant mitigation measures - rail transit, electricity output, federalized land-use regulations and building codes, the tax adjustments Robert mentions, and yes, even heavily subsidized crash technological programs at this point - are going to require sacrifice in either tax hikes or reduced services elsewhere. Both tax increases (even disguised as "offsets") and spending cuts are politically impossible unless A) You have the stronger coalition of lobbyists on your side or B)the public is heavily on your side.
B) requires the public to understand the severity of the problem, which would require a massive education program. While this is needed, hence my idea of increased TV propaganda, we don't have time to wait until grassroots support passes the needed threshold for major action. Ditto climate change.
Things like telecommuting (which needs an actual legislative requirement), mileage-based vehicle registration fees, flexible work schedules, employer subsidization of transit in lieu of parking, per mile auto insurance, etc. are great ideas but even collectively won't dent oil demand enough to mitigate severe economic hardship. Bold initiatives are needed at this point and maneuvering within the levers of traditional political power (i.e. lobbyists) is extremely important. BTW, I know this is Hillary's shtick but I still support Obama because I think he's more capable of using the bully pulpit and building diverse coalitions
Sorry but I think you are whistling for B via education. If anything real understanding would likely be counterproductive to change. At the same time lobbyists are simple souls and are unlikely to be a big help (just how is a tobacco lobbyist going to buy in to any of it?)
Mass rail is likely an effective nonstarter - too slow, too expensive, too disliked in the first place.
Land-use & building codes can be changed, but only within the bounds of "B" and only with slow consequent effects.
Playing with tax is fine and usual, but you have to get some degree of "B" first. Nobody will vote for an unpopular measure like increasing tax on gas.
Frankly, although you dismiss things like telecommuting, etc. they are likely to be much easier, much faster and of much larger impact precisely BECAUSE they appeal to fixing something people hate (the commute). You have to find real actions that can be "PULLED" by the electorate, rather than "PUSHED" by government, since that's the only viable way of getting scale fast.
You have to find real actions that can be "PULLED" by the electorate, rather than "PUSHED" by government, since that's the only viable way of getting scale fast.
Let’s briefly test that by looking at comparatively scaled projects historically:
1.The National Interstate and Defense Highways Act of 1956 that created the Interstate Highway system was not a grassroots effort. It was passed by the Auto manufacturing lobby and cloaked as a national defense priority.
2.The New York Parkway system - a classic government “push” action is arguably chiefly responsible for creating America’s foreign oil dependency, as it was replicated in every post-war city to create the freeway/Euclidean zoning American landscape (aka Sprawl) There was no grassroots campaign for eliminating America’s rail transit or for building sprawl. These were entirely driven by the Auto lobby.
3. The Apollo program was successfully funded by Congress because JFK tied it to the War on Communism. Once the Cold War ended, funds for space exploration dried up. There was no significant calls for space exploration among the public then or now.
3.Probably the most glaring example: The Pentagon budget. The largest of government expenditures is entirely driven by lobbyists. The Defense budget produced The Manhatten project.
Again, I’m with you on telecommuting and the like – the easy stuff should be done immediately. But, like “Earth Hour” as a response to climate change, I disagree that these actions will get us anywhere near a safe level of reduced oil dependency.
You MUST! allow the foxes to guard the hen house.
On the other hand you could put the foxes in chicken wire cages for a long long time.
Actually, the next administration will continue to pursue the same brand of military pugnatiousness that the current administration is pursuing. They will use war to redirect the attention of the American public away from their economic and social problems. The current administration seems to feel they can get their way in the world (including its oil) if they just find the right noses to punch. I can't see that ending any time soon; our future will be about getting oil, not learning to live with less. The real world of international politics will trump any attempts to achieve constructive national and international energy policies.
Improved battery technology and energy storage technologies are the key enabling technologies required
Simply wrong.
No new technology is required to develop a Non-Oil transportation system.
Primarily, they have achieved this by making fuel very expensive
The existence of such Non-Oil Transportation systems (and buses) in the EU and Japan has as much, if not more, impact on their reduced oil and energy consumption than do high gas taxes per se. You are seeing only part and not the entirety of the reasons EU & Japan oil use is so low.
You missed the main point on this one.
I could argue that the USA would be better off in 30 years if we did NOT invent Improved battery technology and energy storage technologies
Best Hopes for using only Lubricating Oil in Transportation,
Alan
No new technology is required to develop a Non-Oil transportation system.
Can you elaborate? Right now we have an infrastructure in place in which many are commuting distances that are beyond the limits of current battery technology. How do you propose to deal with that? It's unfortunate that this is the situation we have, but I can't see technology that's available right now that can practically address this.
Step 1A
http://www.lightrailnow.org/features/f_lrt_2007-04a.htm
90% federal funding for new Urban Rail (same % as Interstate Highways)
Step 1B
Electrify and expand our freight railroads (key 33,000 miles or so first, most of 178,000 miles later), with perhaps 9,000 miles offering combined express freight (at 90 to 100 mph) and passenger service (at 110 to 125 mph).
Per discussions with John Schumann (best source I could think of) the rate of electrification could be (same level of effort as Canadian tar sands get today)
Year 1 - 0 miles
Year 2 - 2,500 miles
Year 3 - 5,000 miles
Year 4 - 7.500 miles
Year 5 - 10,000 miles
Year 6 - 12,500 miles (begin to reach saturation for high density RR lines).
Step 1C
Add velibs in every city and town of at least 75,000 population, give bicycles priority (some new tech there from a systems POV) in allocation of road space (i.e. convert 2 lane road into one way, one lane and convert other lane into two way bicycle paths and do this to every 4th road in a grid would be an "extreme" possibility. Less extreme pro-bike policies (make sure always available bike parking spaces by taking parking spaces from cars, etc.) as well. Tax incentives for buying bikes, including eBikes, eTrikes and Segways.
Step 1D
Charge a "risk premium" on mortgages that are not close to non-oil transportation. Require aggressive zoning changes to promote TOD, etc. Step 1A would help the most.
Step 2A
Take French tram building rate (1,500 km in a decade), adjust for population and work week, and triple it after "warm up" in Step 1A. Put streetcars (as the French are doing) in EVERY town of pop. 100,000 or more (and some smaller). See 1897-1916 USA streetcar building boom.
Step 2B
Promote solar hot water heating almost everywhere, conservation standards in both rental properties (cannot sell unless retrofitted, or new owner has to retrofit within 18 months)), and new builds. Incentives for existing owner occupied housing.
Ground loop heat pumps promoted, especially for oil heat.
More incentives for new renewables and steady build-out of nukes.
Step 2C
Create dis-incentives for trucking even short distances, and subsidize rail spurs (even down busy streets) as they once did. Promote trolley freight (urban as well as inter-urban. Inter-urban streetcar lines once collected oranges and apples from the growers for transfer to freight railroads).
Tear up selected Interstate highways, especially in Urban Areas. Interstate removal has been a boon for every city that tried it.
From a standing start, a lot can be done in 8, and even 4 years.
Best Hopes for No New Technology and Non-Oil Transportation,
Alan
I don't think you have a hope of ever getting 1D passed. People are going to continue to live where they are. High prices will reign in the sprawl, but reversing it is going to be slow. That's why I think you need some improvements in battery and storage technology (by storage, I am referring to storage of solar and wind power for off-peak usage).
I had never heard of anyone removing interstates. Fill me in on that.
For the most part, I support these proposals, and always have.
Robert--A part of an interstate in Milwaukee was torn down and another reengineered to make the downtown more livable.
I don't think you have a hope of ever getting 1D passed
Step(s) 1 do. And success with Steps 1 will make Steps 2 possible.
Specifically step 1D may be demanded by mortgage agencies and buyers (see already appearing delta between properties close to Urban Rail and those in Exurbia). Just an adjustment to laws prohibiting "red lining" mortgages to allow for "risk premiums".
Yesterday I got feedback from Major State DoT planning official. They Are DESPERATE to get heavy trucks off their roads, they cannot afford the maintenance anymore (fuel taxes from trucks not even close). ANYTHING to get freight onto rail is good.
Electrifying railroads as part of getting 18 wheelers off roads will be popular with 98% of population. Saving oil and reducing CO2 only helps.
Step 1A, starting to build "on-the-shelf" Urban Rail proposals with 90% (maybe 80%) federal funding is less radical than the Interstate Highway system. As oil prices climb, almost everyone of those projects listed will be popular (and effective).
*IF* a President pointed and said "This is the Way to save our economy and environment post-Peak Oil (true words)" people would turn towards it and funding would be found.
Likewise, setting up rental bicycles all over. Low cost, feel good, who is against it ?
People are going to continue to live where they are
VERY untrue from 1950 to 1970. Every (or at least 96%) of the prime commercial properties in the country was also trashed during that period.
"Better Batteries" only helps preserve an energy intense culture and environment that will face a further tightening on energy and later death a decade or two later. I think that we would be better off without better batteries (I hope that do not appear frankly) and reverse the changes from 1950 to 1970 from 2008 to 20xx.
PHEVS and EVs Suburban society might take 10x the energy of an Urban Rail TOD society.
Best Hopes for No Better Batteries,
Alan
More Later
Unfortunately, you will have to take away "better batteries" from the cold, dead hands of those who are determined to continue the happy motoring lifestyle. Further, we are hell bound to continue to live in our world of personal mobility where we don't have to mix with the proletariat and those of the wrong color. And further, driving alone is so much fun.
Intriguing, though. In any event, in a reasonably dense urban environment with good public transit, a car, much less better batteries is clearly not necessary the vast majority of the time. Proper planning could minimize the use of personal vehicles and restrict it to some kind of car sharing arrangement which already exists in a lot of cities, including my nearby town, Boulder. However, once you get better batteries, you probably open pandora's box and forget about people supporting the necessary investment in mass transit.
Best hopes for making automobile travel expensive, miserable, slow, underfunded, and dangerous.
Nobody's worried about mixing with Hindus or Chinese. "Wrong color" in this context is code for "being somewhere between hostile and posing a threat of robbery, assault or worse". People have every right to want this sort of thing away from them.
You mean, from those who want the physical safety and social peace they had to abandon the cities to find again. A few muggings or one shooting will destroy the results of a billion-dollar transit program, and the only way you'll be able to fix things is to start awarding medals to those following in the footsteps of Bernard Goetz.
A few muggings or one shooting will destroy the results of a billion-dollar transit program...
Complete and UTTER BS !
I am sure that highways are abandoned after the first carjacking or multi-car pile-up. We kill over 40,000/year and afflict several hundred thousand life altering injuries EACH AND EVERY YEAR in our pursuit of "personal mobility" and the social isolation that comes with it.
"Wrong color" in this context is code for "being somewhere between hostile and posing a threat of robbery, assault or worse". People have every right to want this sort of thing away from them.
You are countenancing racism. The only way to "keep this sort of thing away from them" is to move to Idaho or move to a gated community in the suburbs andlive exist in a white, socially isolated bubble.
And that social isolation is what will cause the FWOs to commit suicide in record numbers (an issue that I was going to bring up till Leanan removed the post).
There is a social value in mass transit missing from private cars and that is a significant "extra value". I suspect that you know nothing of this value.
Best Hopes for no EVs, except delivery trucks.
Alan
You haven't noticed that people have spent trillions of dollars over the last 40 years to do exactly that? They will continue to do so to keep crime and other social pathologies from affecting them personally, and sooner or later their outrage will lead to the repeal of the laws forcing them to tolerate the perps.
The facts are facts, and calling the messengers ugly names will not make them go away. You can say that e.g. drug arrests are slanted, but murders are much harder to hide and they tell an even less flattering story about the supposed "victims of racism".
You can persecute innocent (if boorish) members of a lacrosse team while burying news of a gang rape because the former are members of the designated oppressor class (the "new bourgoisie") and the perps of the latter are members of a designated victim class, but all it does is make people angry and discount everything in the media.
Diversity destroys social capital. The FWOs will remain relatively better off, because their resources include each other.
I had never heard of anyone removing interstates. Fill me in on that
I attended speech by former mayor of Milwaukee that got rid of one and modified/cutback another. We in New Orleans would like to drop I-10 from Canal to Elysian Fields and try and rebuild area devastated by building I-10.
Besides Milwaukee, he gave examples of Bay Area (little help from earthquake, but positive nonetheless), Manhattan and another that I cannot remember.
The Bronx was destroyed by freeways built by Robert Moses, they converted a viable group of ethnic neighborhoods into one of the worst slums by cutting them up (and no one wants to live near an auto sewer#).
Removing the toxic mess allows for regrowth and reestablishment.
# This is why locating Urban Rail down freeway medians is not such a great idea. The auto sewers chase riders away (do you want to walk over a freeway and then wait a few feet away from a freeway ? Noise and pollution :-( And the view is almost always ugly on the ride in).
No one wants to live next to the racket of rail tracks either. There's a reason that the parts of Chicago next to above-ground El tracks are low-rent districts.
Large parts of I-696 north of Detroit are covered by landscaped overpasses. I'd love to be able to wait on something like that.
The choices appear to be
The freeway is already messed up and doesn't require knocking down buildings; it looks to be our best option.
No one wants to live next to the racket of rail tracks either
Chicago is well known for their poor maintenance. Look at DC Metro for an alternative. They have several at-grade and elevated sections on the outer lines.
And I was among a majority that missed the sound of the St. Charles streetcars for a couple of years. St, Charles Avenue, with that "racket" is among the highest priced real estate in New Orleans (French Quarter and CBD VERY close).
Light Rail should do what the French do. Take two lanes of a busy street, and put grass and tracks on them, with enough left over (often) to put in two bike lanes as well.
Two streetcar tracks can carry as many people as twelve street lanes, so no loss in capacity (anything but !).
Best Hopes for Beautiful Urban Rail routes,
Alan
AND.. the apartment rental ads in NYC regularly say 'Close to trains' .. in the boroughs, these are often above-ground.
But another bit of gravy stuck on our shoes in the underground options intown Manhattan and Brooklyn at least, are that you get a handful of concerts as you go from station to station, Jazz, Folk, Blues Guitar, Chinese Opera.. looking out at the black tunnels is just a break from your book, people watching, or chatting with your friends..
Miami's elevated rail is not objectionable loud (high end condos connected to some stations) and I was there when the orange red trees were in bloom. Going about at tree level was quite enchanting.
Some of the French tram routes also look quite nice and St. Charles Avenue is the most picturesque American boulevard.
Best Hopes for beautiful Urban Rail,
Alan
I thought you were going to mention probably the most famous example - the removal of U.S. Route 99W in Portland - which is now the Waterfront Park.
Obviously a huge improvement to the city, but still not sure worth it in an energy-scarce society.
Glad to add another to the list !
Any links ?
An energy scarce society is precisely the one that should "trim" highways down to size.
Best Hopes for fewer Interstates,
Alan
Have you ever noticed how many residences road expansion (highway building and road widening) has ruined via noise pollution?
Rebuilding our environments to drastically reduce automotive travel will also reclaim many once valuable properties.
"Tear up selected Interstate highways, especially in Urban Areas. Interstate removal has been a boon for every city that tried it."
I've often thought about what to do with sprawl infrastructure in both pre and post peak scenarios. I'm not sure removing roads, much less highways is worth the ROI (in an opportunity cost context) or the EROEI.
I completely agree with your paradigm shift from road to rail transport funding - I'd go even further and call for an immediate moratorium on all new road projects; however, even if we do that, I'm not convinced we can keep most cities solvent (and therefore society) without figuring out how to at least keep a portion of the cars running. Say, those sprawl neighborhoods within a 40 mile radius from the urban core - beyond that is likely unsalvagable. That's where I agree with Robert that electric car technology is a worthwhile investment.
Out of the OECD countries which one has the highest percentage of passenger miles by rail? Does that one move even 20% of all passenger miles by rail? My impression is NO.
If you include all forms of non-oil transportation, Denmark and the Netherlands and soon France.
"Miles" (should be km) traveled is a bad and nearly useless metric . I walk 2.5 blocks to make my groceries. Others drive 2.5 miles and still others drive 8 miles to buy groceries. My walking does not even show up in gov't stats.
Urban Rail enables TOD (such as I live in). TOD drives down VMT traveled. So if one includes avoided km traveled in teh rail column, then a majority of EU nations (and Japan) have over 20$ of VMT by rail.
The other missed point is that a Non-Oil Transportation alternative exists, unlike almost all of the USA, where many Americans are "Drive or Starve". They have a choice if oil "becomes a problem" either acutely or chronically.
The reason that the EU nations are showing higher price elasticity of demand is that a German worker may have once driven to work in 12 minutes, but recently decided to take the tram for 18 minutes with fuel costs up, environmental consciousness, etc.
Best Hopes for Fewer VMT, and those few by non-oil transportation,
Alan
Great stuff. If only human nature didn't raise it's ugly face!
There is a great risk of over-estimating the voters' intelligence. And I don't mean just the Joe Six-Packs. The IQ of even very smart people tends to plummet when they are asked to pay higher taxes. When the German Greens made a similar proposal approx. ten years ago (they suggested that gas should be priced at 5 Deutschmark/liter to compensate for negative externalities) they almost signed their own death warrant. To avoid sinking into oblivion they duly played down the proposal and it hasn't been heard of since (I think), or at least it isn't part of their central plank. Since then they have tended to focus on such world-important issues as transvestites' rights and similar free lunches.
The sad reality is that unless voting rights are restricted to TOD contributors ('and our ilk'), any politician who ventilates such an idea is going to have a very brief career.
I love the idea of restricting voting rights to peak oil aware folks - even though I agree that it would never get off the ground.
What you are suggesting is telling people a new story when what they want to here is essentially the old story. On the GOP side the story they like hearing is taxes and regulations are bad and the free market is our savior. On the Dem side its big business that is bad and government is our savior. There are a few other memes each party is dependent on. Politicians are not capable of changing the stories they tell. Really serious changes in the stories they tell us requires really serious hardships being felt by the electorate. There is a certain threshold of pain that must be crossed before the American people will demand new ideas (stories). We are still a long way from that level of hardship. High prices (taxes) won't cause these changes. Not being able to fill your tank at any price will.
Excellent summary! No amount of good intellectual vibes in the direction of our polital leaders ("we ought to look into these fixes") are going to redirect policy. If oil gets so short that we need rationing, the powers that be always have the option of blaming the Arabs, or OPEC, or the terrorists, or environmentalists, or even Chinese options contracts. The LAST thing politicians will do is abandon cherished economic and cultural concepts; after all, it's allegiance to those concepts that got them elected! The oil problem will not play out pleasantly, and no amount of social/technical/economic massaging will ameliorate the pain.
A VERY GOOD PROPOSAL!
It could even be better. The total of carbon tax and gasoline tax should be set at the exact revenue to eliminate the Alternative Minimum Tax as proposed by Congressman Rhyne. Under his proposal, all taxpayers would pay 10% tax on their first $100,000 of income, less a large standard deduction. Thus, a family of four would pay zero tax on the first $38,000, 10% on the next $62,000 and 25% on all over $100,000. Tax forms would be reduced to a post card. Thousands of complicated rules and regulations would be eliminated. There would be no interest deduction for a home or second homeowner but he would not pay a capital gain tax upon the sale. A few people, those with many itemized deductions (things like charitable giving and home and second home interest expenses)could choose to file under the current system. It is estimated that 95% would opt for the new system.
The carbon tax needed to replace the lost income revenues would be about $50 per ton plus about a 50 cent per gallon tax on gasoline. The current tax for road building would remain.
The carbon tax would encourage conservation of "dirty" electricity and the combined carbon tax and gasoline tax of about $.63 per gallon would cause a very powerful ripple effect. The $2 per gallon proposal is more than is needed. The elasticity of demand for fuel is very elastic in the longer term. Current price levels will cause a dramatic shift in consumption over time. The 50 cent per gallon tax should be staged in at only 10 cents per year for 5 years. In other words, we do not need to kill the economy to make the change. Despite the hysteria in some corners, there will be net new production of a few million barrels per day for the next several years.
Of course, the $.63 would not be set in stone. Like always, it would be the job of the congress to raise or lower taxes as required. This proposal is nice from several angles. Like your proposal, the people who decide to use less energy pay less in tax. Also, two birds are killed with one stone as the huge problem of the Alternative Minimum Tax would be fixed. The tax code that has ballooned to tens of thousands of pages would be dramatically simplified. The carbon tax accomplishes the same thing as the complicated proposals for a cap and trade system. The use of dirty burning fuel would be discouraged while the incentive to invest in clean technology would be increased.
The practicality is that only a centrist compromise can get through congress. Republicans will have to be hit with a two by four before they accept a gasoline/carbon tax. Democrats cannot stand the thought of reducing the maximum rates under the AMT. If one party is against a deal, it only takes 40 senators to stop it. There are enough centrist republicans and democrats to accept the compromise of a carbon/gasoline tax and lower maximum tax rates.
A major reason this type of proposal has a chance is that it is revenue neutral. The many legislators who have pledged not to raise taxes could go along. As such, the proposal raises no new revenue to support research and development of alternative energy sources or to subsidize transportation. No problem, every citizen will have been encouraged to consider public transportation. Since a full bus gets about 170 miles per passenger, the only subsidy a bus needs is a fair payment for the externalities of individual cars. No one knows exactly what that price is but $.63 per gallon would be a great number to test. Since wind power or solar would not pay the carbon tax, the relative attractiveness of these alternatives would be increased dramatically.
The first response I am likely to receive is that the recent increase in the price of gasoline has been much more than 63 cents without a reduction in demand. Again, fuel usage is not elastic in the short run but it is highly elastic in the long term. The average car stays on the road 17 years and it takes several years to design and produce a new car. In the USA, light trucks outsold cars for something like 10 or 12 years in a row. In the past three months, cars have outsold light trucks and yet another light truck plant is closing. In addition, the only car categories that saw increased sales were compacts, sub-compacts and hybrids. A switch-over has started.
Finally, there is another reason to stage in the tax. The Sword of Damocles hanging over the head of the public is more powerful than the immediate jump to 63 cents. The public will talk about the next 10 cent increase for 6 years. This is the old out of sight, out of mind trick. Keep the sword over head and attitudes will change quickly.
By the way, Professor Greg Mankiw of the Harvard School of Economics is a leading proponent of "Piggovian" taxes (taxes that provide payment for externalities). The name of his blog is Econbrowser.
If I may add my two cents...
You mention CO2 emissions as a current problem, but don't explore that any further. Since your proposals are entirely reasonable just on the merits of peak oil alone, there is no reason to bring up global warming. So, I would take the CO2 mention out, as it will give nay-sayers an additional angle to complain.
I like it.
You mention a tax credit to offset the higher gas tax. Many people pay only the FICA (Social Security) tax and do not pay Federal Income Tax (due to low incomes and/or high deductions).
How do these people receive anything to offset the higher gas tax?
Rick
These proposals are good in so far as they go, but they ignore a much larger issue which has to be solved if we are going to come to terms with the finite nature of the world's resources. I just posted a response to Jerome's story about the Grangemouth strike and what it implied about an out of control financial community. Rather than rewriting this content I re-post it here:
Jerome wrote (emphasis is mine):
I responded:
An intelligent energy policy is a necessary condition for coming to terms with the emerging resource crisis, but it is by no means a sufficient one. Much larger social and political changes will be necessary if we are going to find a way to live in ecological harmony with a finite world. Reducing the total volume of freight and passenger transportation at the same time that we increase their efficiency is the most obvious physical action to take in response to the fossil fuel depletion crisis. Of course, while such a response makes physical sense, it would be an economic disaster because of the peculiar structural features of private finance capitalism. If we cannot create new social and economic structures which do not 'need' growth for healthy functioning then all of the clever engineering and hard-headed policy decisions in the world are not going to save us from collapse.
Good start and I think you're on the right track.
I would add nuclear FUSION into your X-prize mix. While I am a staunch believer of the Peak Oil problem, I don't subscribe to the die-off theory. We will go through a "Dark Ages" period as petroleum runs out and renewables like wind and solar will help us weather those times; however, if we are to continue evolving and growing as a species (and while some of you may disagree with that based on moral principles, biology predicts otherwise) then the only truly long-term solution will be fusion-based power plants driving electrified transportation systems.
I don't think our goal should be to push "powerdown" and renewables as the solution, but rather to push for a solution to the peak oil problem itself. That should include investments in high technology as well as green technology.
Development of cheap, abundant fusion energy would be the doom of the biosphere and along with it humanity. It would allow the ecocidal ape to inflate its population even more and divert more primary productivity to its own use than the ~40% it already appropriates. Ecosystem integrity would unravel, biodiversity would plummet even faster and more severely than they already are. Biogeochemical cycling dynamics would be upset and oceanic & atmospheric feedbacks dysregulated. Collapse is already underway, development of fusion reactors would accelerate collapse greatly. Fortunately, enormous technical difficulties ensure that fusion energy remains nothing more than a pipe dream.
That seems a bit over the top. Cheap, abundant fusion energy would allow for the electrification of the transportation system, cutting carbon emissions to virtually nothing. The reactors themselves would produce only low-level radioactive waste in the form of irradiated structural components with comparatively short half-lives.
If you're referring to the point that humanity's population would continue to expand - possibly beyond the carrying capacity of the planet - that's a valid concern; however, I would argue that it is the mission of this forum to address viable solutions to the Peak Oil issue and not to impose constraints based on our own personal philosophical beliefs.
On the subject of personal beliefs though...There seems to be a large segment of the Peak Oil community that seems to honestly want human evolution (in this context, growth and scientific development )to stop. They cheerfully await the day when everyone is living in a "World Made by Hand". The odds of that happening (or if you prefer the pessimistic case, the odds of people peacefully accepting it should that destiny prove inevitable - and I'' admit the jury's out for now) are about the same as convincing a petri dish full of bacteria to stop expanding.
To your last point, the technical difficulties surrounding fusion may not be as insurmountable as one might think. While conventional Tokamak-style devices cost billions and have yet to achieve break even (EROEI = 1), scientists have been make strides with much smaller devices such as the Focus Fusion device which was recently presented to an audience at Google as part of their Tech Talks Seminar.
I'm surprised to the point of shocked that there is NO mention of increased public transport especially a proposal to expand Amtrak by several 1,000's %. There's more to critique, but that will have to wait.
I thought I was going to be the first to comment on this. I agree that we need to expand Amtrak in both the number of cities that it reaches and the frequency of service. When I ride the Lake Shore Limited, the hours that I get on in Syracuse 10 pm / Chicago 10 pm and get off Chicago 11:30 am / Syracuse 11:30 are very convenient. But I pity the poor SOB that uses the train to get (Westbound / Eastbound) to Toledo (5:45 am / 3:20 am), Cleveland ( 3:30 am/6:30 am), Erie (1:30am / 8:30) and Buffalo (Midnight / 10 am). They really do need several trains running that route a day so that folks can ride at convenient hours.
The only problem is that the private companies were allowed to abandon so many lines that they have little capacity to add trains on certain routes. I rode the Lake Shore Limited from Chicago to Syracuse on Sunday. Because the line is so heavily used, if one train gets delayed for any reason, the schedules go out the window. The train was late an hour each way and boy did people start complaining. "Oh my god! Oh my god! The train is late. I will never take it again!" Whine whine whine. And I think to myself, have you ever been stuck on the tarmac for an hour?
I see the train as cost and energy efficient and a more humane way to travel. I paid $158 dollars for tickets from Syracuse to Milwaukee and had I driven the route, it would have been $80 more for gas, $30 for an oil change, $40 for a back massage, no french toast for breakfast in the dinner, and close to 24 hours of hell on the interstate.
So, yes, we need increased public transport in terms of frequency and service.
And it won't come cheap to rebuild some of those abandoned lines. But the alternatives will be just as costly.
Charles
I'm surprised to the point of shocked that there is NO mention of increased public transport...
Again, as I have pointed out several times, this wasn't meant to capture everything. I could have made it 4 times longer than I did. I favor a lot of additional things that I didn't put in the essay.
I would make the letter four times shorter. Drop the gasoline tax and fuel efficiency proposals. No serious presidential candidate will propose new taxes in an election campaign. Rising oil prices will promote efficiency regardless and most people feel they have no viable alternative to driving.
I would focus on a simple message which is easy to sell: electrification of transport. Initiate a federally funded program to install overhead electric wires throughout the interstate highway system to support electric buses and trucks. No new battery technology is required and the infrastructure will save billions in fuel costs. Also, propose to build high-speed rail connections between cities in the big states like California.
No real need to discuss taxes or funding. They are minor details that can be worked out after the election campaign is over.
No one is asking the right kinds of questions. What our energy policies should be can only come from a strategic view that includes understanding the basic physics. Additionally, the strategic questions that need to be addressed cannot be just for one country/culture. This is a global issue. A global strategy for humanity is what we need.
Strategic questions at: http://questioneverything.typepad.com/
George
Here is something I found on Automatic Earth
The Pentagon Strangles Our Economy: Why the U.S. Has Gone Broke.
Pretty amazing US figure, especially when it amounts to 10 times what's spent by either China or Russia. It doesn't really take a lot of thinking to realize that it ain't for defence, partner, that's just plain offensive!
BTW Robert, thanks for the response to my propane question. On a related note, years ago I used Mexican propane while on vacation there and on returning to Canada and refilling our propane found the difference actual and amazing ... Mexico the land of light, in more ways than one (or two), happy days, happy days:)
We could always get Mexican butane for a bargain when I was at the refinery. But it has a lot of undesirable crap in it.
Butane? So that was it? At any rate it sure had a whoomp to it and you are right, occasionally there were hard spots in the flow, but even so I wouldn't mind some right now for killing those weeds in my garden.
Military spending has been an amazing way to innovate technologies which are there after brought to a consumer market. Consider the internet or Eisenhower and our nation's interstate (which, nowadays is proving to be the greatest problem of all - how we built or communities to rely on extensive transportation and suburban development but that's another discussion).
The fact that we're spending all this money on military with the underlying objective to secure traditional fuel sources is a problem. While spending these tax dollars, the military should be testing new technology (notably energy-related) that our financial community will not accept and finance on their own. Think of it as the government hitting two birds with one stone.
So, if, say, the Chinese outbid us for Saudi oil, we will use our military to stop the deal?
Not only stop the deal but expect the Chinese to pay the cost of the exercise ... jeese and I'm just watching Wolf Blitzer and allied geniuses on CNN talking about on Iraq, reconstruction and oil whadda treat, I think I will go down to the local gas bar, kick the place apart take the goods and then whine about compensation for my broken foot.
Although your open letter contains a number of interesting tactical solutions that might be applied to the Energy system of the United States, those solutions are very difficult to evaluate because the letter does not paint a very strong picture of the Future state of energy in the United States. One would hope that if some our all of these tactical solutions were successful, that the US energy situation would be better. But absent a description of that future, how does one know what tactics to chose and what tactics to discard. John A. Warden III in his Strategic Thinking blog wrote a recent piece entitled: Energy Strategy before Energy Policy. It think your Open Letter should focus more on the Strategic future of energy in the US and not a shopping list of tactical solutions. It's far more important to agree on where we want to be in 5-10 years than how we get there.
I have a two point plan for dealing with the problem:
1) Everyone on oildrum should buy a few oil future contracts. This will drive the price of oil higher and encourage alternatives.
2) local governments should implement personal rapid transit. It is the only form of transit that makes a profit and is as close to riding in a chaufferred car as possible.
Yet another suggestion for energy generation.
I lived in San Jose for many years and always thought it a great idea to "roof" the appropriate portions of the highways with solar panels. To do this privately, I thought of using US mining law--I'm going to mine solar energy--to obtain the land useage for little cost. Doing the same to the BART and RR right-of-ways is another idea. This idea might also be used to run solar along the hundreds of miles of transmission lines in the desert Southwest, or elsewhere. In a similar vein, I though it might be useful to lease the rooftops of suburban housing to establish a solar electric generation cooperative. I would provide the homeowners with say 10% of the electricity generated and sell the rest to the grid.
These would all be of use if the goal is to electrify transport and prepare for the inevitible cesation of fossil-fueled electric generation.
The notion that "living like the Cubans" is sustainable or some magic bullet is, frankly, full of crap.
First of all travel to Cuba is very easy now days. Any American can fly to Jamaica and take a Jamaican puddle jumper to Cuba. NO problem. I suggest you immediately head out of the areas for tourists and visit were Cubans live, work, and try to exist. I can not imagine anybody wanting to live in such conditions. It is difficult to get Cubans to talk openly about their lives and when they do there is little praise about living conditions.
Lastly, Cuba does not produce enough food to feed their people. In 2003 Cuba imported $256.9 million in food from the USA alone. In 2007 Cuba imported $437.5 million in food from the US. Living like Cubans without importing food would be slow starvation.
Puhkawn - Amazing! In Europe they used to call us the "Ugly Americans" and for good reason.
Example: When I was a teenager my Father was in the military stationed in the Phillipines. My family lived off base in a compound with other Americans. The locals did all of the work. All my mother did was play bridge. get her nails done and go to the O club. Out of boredom I tried to learn something about the local customs and language. I learned that our live in maid, Lita, had two years of college and had dropped out in order to help pay to put her younger brother through school. She taught me a lot and she would allow me to accompany her to market and I learned that you bargain for everything. Once she took me to her home and I got to meet her family. I was in shock. I thought they were living in some sort of Dickensian nightmare. But after a while I discovered that they were quite content with their lives and their family was very close.
A year later we were going back to stateside and my parents offerred to sponsor her to emigrate. She told us politely but firmly: Thank-you, but No Thank-you!
When you evaluate based on Americans artificial lifestyles it is difficult to be objective.
Deal with the facts from Raul no less on Cuban food production:
http://www.freshplaza.com/news_detail.asp?id=3656
Better yet go to Cuba and see for yourself. By the way, the vast majority of Cubans love Americans maybe you meed to deal with something other than stereotypes?
I totally agree ...
Cuba is being touted as the model of Sustainability ... Not when they import most of their Calories.
As far as Sustainability goes , the last person to live sustainably (at least in california) was a person named ISHI
ishifacts.com
To reduce our dependence on foreign oil, without offending domestic producers or targeting specific countries, I propose:
The Miles from Lebanon (KS) oil tax: All oil produced in, or imported to, the United States will be subject to the following tax:
$0.001 per barrel for each mile of distance from the originating well to Lebanon, KS. This tax will increase 10% per year to 2050, at which point it will decrease at 1% per year thereafter.
I would make it revenue neutral via a direct payment to each US citizen for the per capita amount of the tax revenue for that year.
Robert well said : YOU should become a politician ! (The future party)
This planet is starved for people who are able to see beyond today ... let alone "all the way" into next week.
very interesting but disappointing discussion. I am an old man who has been following the PO issue for 30 years. I believe we have peaked or are very close. With the momentum at which we are moving and the type of leadership we have had in the past few years, i am frankly quite depressed. several years ago i began to look at civilizations which have faced similiar situations and while
Rome and Greece took many years to fall they were not facing problems even approaching the one we face in the USA and the world. The best model i could find was the Cuba situation in the early 90's and while i do not know all the details somehow they came together as a people and have managed to hack out a frugal life style. Most of the suggestions i have read above is just working on the margins of the problem we face IMHO. But then hell i don't have many better ones. some things i have done in my life which have made a difference came from having energy gentle on the mind. For example little things like a solar clothes dryer, wood heating, very limited air conditioning (Florida resident), organic gardening, a chicken tractor, trip planning, walking when feasible, etc. (My wife has filed for divorce on three different occasions during the past several decades.)
It would seem from what i have read above the solutions are complicated and politically volatile. if we are going to take this government route then why not go all the way. Reduce and enforce the speed limit significantly, close major portions of the interstate system or cease all repair and maintenance on same, prohibit inefficient cars, appliances and toys, convert tractors and trailers (as in semi trucks) into people movers, mandate real energy education throughout the educational system, begin moving people back to the land, etc. This is where we are heading if the Cuban model is any indication.
A few years ago i read H.T. Odum's last book, A Prosperous Way Down. He lays out the whole thing and his concluding line is very interesting. "It remains to be seen whether the social mechanisms will be conscious, logical, emotional, ritualistic, regimented, or by some means that we can't imagine." He states somewhere in the book that a Democracy is the best way to innovate for the future so i wish we had one so we could find out. (Forgive, its cocktail hour for the elderly. Don't you just hate us for being such procrastinators.)
This harsh critic will vote against a candidate for any office that offers a similar proposal and will urge others to vote likewise.
Ah, but what will your suggestion be when all the "approved" candidates are suggesting the same thing?
That will be a problem. I'll just have to decide which one is most likely to be mugged by reality and change course.
But I won't worry - political aspirants come and go. Democracy works its way through most problems eventually.
Physics has more votes than the people, and it always votes last.
Some people are just plain unreachable, and one of those is the President of the US. Even a memo regarding middle eastern commercial flight students in Florida failed to get any attention from the oval office, so I doubt very much that this letter, however well intentioned, will reach its mark. In fact the president is so unreachable that even though approval ratings hover around 30%, every single individual that attends one of his press conferences or speeches has been hand picked to clap gleefully, providing a photo-op faulty notion of a 100% loyal and thankful following.
Well;
Thanks, Robert R for your efforts, and for staying in the fray today. Hope I didn't waste too much bandwidth arguing some overworn themes..
My Congressman sent out an email about his floor speech last night,
http://allen.congressnewsletter.net/mail/util.cfm?mailaction=clickthru&g...
and I sent him this letter, while my five-year old had to take care of her own brushing tonight. I hope this turned out legible and sensible, not that I, as you, have much faith that it will change the status of his thinking.
Figured I'd toss it into the till, both there and here, and see what comes of it. (Hope I got the details right. Angola??)
Bob
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Dear Congressman Allen;
Thank you for your advocacy regarding Energy Prices in Maine. I am in strong favor of a rollback of the tax breaks given to the OilCo's as a wise first step in rectifying an imbalanced energy policy in the country today.
However, I am not convinced by the 'Speculators' and 'Price Gouging' theme. I'm no fan of the major oil companies these days, and I have no doubt that unsaintly business is surely going on, but the primary reason for the windfall profits they are enjoying is more likely a real supply issue, and not just a manipulation of the energy markets. Russia, Mexico, the North Sea fields are all in decline, and Saudi is pumping a lot of water to get their oil out of the ground. I think Angola is the only OPEC producer with any production growth now. We've been flat for three years, while a production spike this winter might be the record, we'd have to find several 'Brazil's' to catch up with the declines of Cantarell, Alaska, North Sea and the rest as those mature fields deplete.. (and Brazil won't deliver, either, until they can work at 6 miles deep and 500 degrees F.) Our truck drivers, commuters and petrol-heated homes are not going to be protected by a thrust at the 'middlemen'. We have to get our people OFF as much Fossil fuel as is humanly possible. Luckily, with the way we live, there are a lot of ways we can reduce our Imported Energy Demand.
We have to get off these burned fuels anyway for critical pollution and climate purposes, and we have to stop sending Millions/Billions of dollars out of the State and the Country just to be able to function, to run our homes and our industries. All these issues are coming to a head, as energy, climate, environmental degradation and economic stress seem to all be heading at us simultaneously. All of them are tied intimately to our profligate energy use and dependence, while we know there are a multitude of tools available to change this course. These tools can also create renewed industries in Maine and in the Country. I think this is a message that will strike a chord out there. There is ample work to do- in restructuring transportation to get off this dependence on long commutes and redundant shipping, redesigning communities to promote transit and bikable/walkable neighborhoods, in smart appliances, in truly energy-efficient housing stock, in Wave and Tide power..
I don't intend to let Exxon, BP or Shell off the hook on all of this. The warnings about oil supply have been masked, mocked and downtrodden by those with an interest in making a killing with a constrained supply scheme.. but that doesn't address the question of what to do about this dwindling supply itself. We have to get this ring out of our noses, Congressman, for a host of reasons. It is portrayed as some 'Impossible' goal, but it isn't; it's just unprofitable to those with the most expensive megaphones.. profits that are killing the rest of us.
With my best wishes, and thanks for your attention,
Robert R Fiske
------
Portland, Maine
A picture is worth a thousand words.
Too bad the full shot of the F-250 4X4 Offroad is not shown - with a V10 ICE no doubt.
Pete
A gas tax holiday does offer a valuable benefit, one obviously not considered by the candidates proposing such. It deprives the highway building industry of a good chunk of their annual revenue. When revenues decline, new highway projects are either canceled or delayed.
When highway building money gets really tight, the monies will be better prioritized and go toward maintaining the existing, essential road system rather than continuing to expand roads into exurbia and widen interstate highways to 6, 8 and 10 lanes, for the traffic counts that will shortly deplete away.
So maybe the peak oil crowd should vociferously support such a holiday, maybe it should even be made permanent. Is there anything that would lead to an alternative transportation system faster than depriving the highway builders of revenue?
I dunno. I think it's just as likely they'll raid some other fund to replace the highway money. The societal "we" seems to think that schlepping goods and people around is so intrinsically valuable for its own sake that the transportation sector as a whole should receive gargantuan subsidies at the expense of everything else. Hence we have not only cities falling all over themselves to subsidize airports and highways, but right here on this board we have calls for public transit, which is also staggeringly expensive to provide, to be given away for free. Maybe the much-loathed economists are right, and Job #1 in balancing this part of the economy is to yank all the subsidies.
I know what we would do in California if the Federal highway money dried up. We'd pass a bunch of bond measures to pay for it. It's free money right?
(I think many Californians actually think this is free money, not realizing that actually, it ends up costing almost double. This has led to a big chunk of our state budget going to service old debt. This leads to the state hurting for cash. Which leads to more bond measures to pay for what we think we need. Rinse and repeat. Insanity.)
Her campaign has come down to this, one last pathetic attempt to pander. I believe she was accompanying a man on his 50 mile commute. Hillary's policy is apparently to enable the unsustainable American way of life. The truck wasn't even the man's so this makes the statement she is making even more disgusting. Oh, and there was a cavalcade of SUVs accompanying her. Way to go Hill. And no doubt that 18 cents is really going to make a difference for someone commuting with an F-250.
I haven't read all the comments yet but I wanted to say Robert that your message is damn way better than the 3 candidates. I vote for you since this is my #1 issue in the world today. I think you attack the problem correctly for the most part. I am wondering if it is aggressive enough. Would like to see more nuclear buildout and a timetable for righting the ship.
I think you're wrong. Let the market work. That's all the government needs to do: insure the market works and get out of the way.
Tax increases, tax credits, incentives, panels, tax breaks, surcharges? Are you nuts?...
Capitalism works. Let it work! Believe in it!
>>>Capitalism works. Let it work! Believe in it!
How do you know?
It hasn't really been tried.
The mixed economy which seemed so sucessful is now beginning to realize the resource constraints of a world with FINITE natural capital.
Everybuddy knows (or should know) that government paved the way for the suburbanization of America. The military cleared the way for settlement and the government subsidized the era of the railroads and thus the beginnings of the "oil age". It will take an equally bold collective effort to rectify the problems that the road building and road using mentality has created.
But we should simplify the tax system. However, increased gasoline taxes with rebates to low income people (including those who do not drive) coupled with ear-marking revenues from such a tax increase to rebuild walkable and transit-oriented communities is the way to go...
>>>insure the market works and get out of the way.
Huh?
This poster is pulling our leg.
If not, please explain how a government would "insure the market works". Are you talking about corporate bailouts, social security, unemployment insurance ? The key word I guess is INSURE rather than ASSURE. If so, I agree that the latter two that I have suggested are worthwhile functions of government.
If not, please explain how a government would "insure the market works".
Protect the property. Sanctity of contracts.
If you don't believe capitalism works, I offer to buy you a one way ticket to North Korea, if you promise you'll never come back.
A 2 hour 43 minute troll.
...that ol' time religion, hey? If Capitalism works so well, then why does it always seem to sink to greed, cupidity, avarice, and selfishness (just like every other economic system, by the way). I used to believe in that "let it work" stuff, until I saw how "it" works in the real world. Example? What are the oil companies doing with the huge profits they are earning from the high demand for the shrinking supply of oil? If the market "worked" souldn't they be pouring money into massive emergency research programs for alternate fuels? Auto companies are still trying to foist huge SUVs and pickups on the public. If the market "worked", shouldn't they be ramping up new high-volume production lines to produce new fuel efficient cars and trucks?
Maybe we can get enough windbag Wall Street types together to inflate the sails on our new wind-powered ground cars...
30 years ago I would have said you're sick... I had run away from a place like that...
The oil companies are owned by their shareholders. I'm not sure what they do with their profits, but I know what they should do with them: they should be given to the owners- the shareholders.
And NO, they shouldn't be pouring money.. . and so on
if that investment does not make money for the shareholders.
Also,
I would think the "alternative energy companies" would be much better at making a profit from alternative energy, while the oil companies should be better at making money from oil.
Same thing for the auto companies. They should only make cars they can make money on. If they do not ramp-up...blablabla
is maybe because they can't make money.
But, you see, the oil companies are the ones that have the money that can be used for research...doesn't that make research their responsibility? Otherwise, what does "let the market work" mean?
The answer to your first question is NO. I cringe when I read your question...
The fact I have money do not makes research my responsibility.
The oil companies , as any other companies, are created by their shareholders.
When these guys decided to create/own a company, their only purpose was to make money- as many as possible. The company has only one "responsibility", one purpose: towards the shareholders.
The rest -you know taking care of employees, environment, other "stakeholders" .. blablabla- are MEANS. Not purpose.
"Let the market work "
means allow the companies to achieve their purpose: protect the property and enforce the contracts.
If there is money to be made in research, research will be done, don't you worry.
Sorry, but the needed research wasn't done, the needed investment isn't being done. The vision to get it done just isn't there. It's too late, and the market hasn't work...however, I admire your confidence that is will, even at this late date...we should revisit this issue in a couple years. If by then we see the market working, I'll buy you a hamburger...at a Wendy's or McDonalds, of course...
The market works celticoil.
Not perfect, cuz' the government is not doing his job.
But it works. Research is getting done: hybrid vehicles, electric vehicles, new diesel engines, pebble reactors, nuclear fusion, coal to oil, oil sands, THAI, deep water drilling, horizontal drilling, CO2 injection, fracture stimulation, hydrogen and fuel cells, ethanol..
Some in the wrong direction, most of the time due to government meddling (ethanol from corn comes to mind), most in the right direction...
When the market stops working, that's when our survival will be in question.
YOU and people like you are the ones whom I'm afraid of.
It's YOU who could stop the Engine of the World.
And if YOU win, there will be no hamburger, no Wendy and no MacDonalds.
Actually, you don't know who I am, and being afraid of me is a bit over the top. I am a retired man of 65, who raised a family of three, has been married for 42 years, lived in the same house for 40 years, held a job at a bank for 25 years and a telephone company for 16 (and given my era, served in the military in my younger years, as most of us did). I have worked hard, have been broke, and somewhat well off, though never rich. I'm happy to be retired, and love living simply. Apparently you think I am a raving revolutionary because I disagree with your theories. You also seem to think I don't want us to "survive". Why, when I have three productive, hard working children, and two new grandchildren? But, I believe that things will not hold together with the same economic "ol' time religion" I described at the beginning of this discussion. We must change our approach to our problems, and I don't see the current "faith in the market" approach working. If, in the end, it does, great. If it doesn't, and we don't take appropriate steps because we trusted in a failed market system, we are up S. Creek, as Patrick McManus once put it. I trust you want to see things work out also; so, just hope your approach is the right one, because it is the approach we are now taking...
I wasn't as lucky as you my friend. I was born on the other side of the Curtain. Not in USSR tough.
No, I don't think you're a revolutionary. I AM. You're the majority. I don't believe you don't want us to survive. You just act as such.
I agree we must change our approach, but the direction you push towards is wrong. I came from that future.
I don't agree we're taking my approach. I think we're going your way. My approach gets less then 5% of votes these days- just see Ron Paul's numbers.
YOU get the rest: Clinton, Obama, Mc.Cain, Nader - they all after your votes.
You've been so fricking lucky to be born here. What made this country great was the trust in the future and Capitalism, the go-getter attitude, simple rules based on property rights.
I watched YOU in disbelief, how you were trowing all those away, all the good things you were the envy of the world for. And get infected with the deadly virus of socialism, asking for government intervention, losing trust in future and yourselves, asking for more rights but less work, from the engine of the world turning into a looting machine...
I want to take you back, friend. It's not too late.
...my word...I think I'll go fix dinner...
And if YOU win, there will be no hamburger, no Wendy and no MacDonalds
Hallelujah !!! Praise be to God !
Are you sure ? Do you promise ?
When the market stops working, that's when our survival will be in question
The "market" has already failed. There is a very good chance that the all Time Peak in World Conventional Oil Production was May 2005. World oil exports are definitely down and not going back up. Now we are waiting to fall off the production plateau and wait for oil exports to tighten a bit more.
How many Hummers, etc. were sold since May, 2005 ?
All of the concepts listed will not arrive in time, but Global Warming will. They simply do not scale up in time.
The Canadian tar sands are being developed at "Maximum Commercial Urgency", and almost every new project will be delayed and WAY over budget. Not enough, not nearly enough. And when natural gas in Canada (source of 15% of US NG consumption) runs short, tar sands may have to throttle back a bit.
The market HAS failed, as has gov't policy (except, arguably, in France, Sweden and a few other places) that is why many question our survival.
Best Hopes for a Better Directed Market (ain't no such thing a a free market),
Alan
"The "market" has already failed. There is a very good chance that the all Time Peak in World Conventional Oil Production was May 2005. "
Hallelujah !!! Praise be to God !
Are you sure ? Do you promise ?
"All of the concepts listed will not arrive in time, but Global Warming will. They simply do not scale up in time."
Hallelujah !!! Praise be to God !
Are you sure ? Do you promise ?
I would give a 66% probability (rising every month, six months ago 50% probability, maybe 20% probability 18 months ago) that May 2005 was the all time high for conventional oil production (or within data gathering error of 200,000 b/day).
So I am NOT sure on that one.
I am 99% sure # that alternative sources of supply will not arrive in time and quantity to prevent a significant dislocation of our economy. Perhaps with rabid conservation we can prevent Great Depression II, but that is the only realistic hope, and it is a thin one.
So I am sure on that one.
Best Hopes for Making the transition as quickly and with as little suffering as possible,'
Alan
# The 1% (being generous) chance assumes a late Peak (i.e. 2012, the latest possible date since no major projects except tar sands are scheduled after that date) and either
1) a breakthrough (probably two or three needed) in say, algae diesel, batteries, etc. in the next year or (maybe) two and a non-market urgency implementation (see war time)
and/or
2) The steps I outlined above in this thread, starting 1/21/09 and other oil users doing the same world-wide.
Dear Reactionary,
Are you familiar with investment portfolios and stock trading? Are the stockholders of an oil company necessarily people who made money in the oil business? Are people and companies who made money in the oil business necessarily investing those profits and dividends back into the oil business.? Do you understand the concept of risk diversification and corporate conglomerates?
Is the military industrial complex "free-market Capitalism"? Were the railroads and highways begotten from a "free-market"? Was the space program "free-market"? Is the USGS "free-market"? Are land grant institutions "free-market"? Is medical research "free market"?
You are naive at best.
Maybe I could buy you a one way ticket to Iraq and let you insure that the "free market" develops. But you have to promise not to come back. Maybe you could help assure that the oil in Iraq gets into the "free market".
Over.
"Are you familiar with investment portfolios and stock trading?"
Very familiar with both. Came here with nothing, made my first million from investment many years ago.
"Are the stockholders of an oil company necessarily people who made money in the oil business?"
I did. Not as much as the CEO's but that's something that has to be fixed. Government not doing his job - "protect property and enforce sanctity of contract" issue...
"Are people and companies who made money in the oil business necessarily investing those profits and dividends back into the oil business.?"
I did when I thought it was profitable. And the companies too.
"Do you understand the concept of risk diversification and corporate conglomerates?"
Very well.
"Is the military industrial complex "free-market Capitalism"?"
NO. It is a cancer on our Capitalism. It does not grow only on capitalism. USSR had it too.
"Is the military industrial complex "free-market Capitalism"? Were the railroads and highways begotten from a "free-market"? Was the space program "free-market"? Is the USGS "free-market"? Are land grant institutions "free-market"? Is medical research "free market"?"
They should all be "free market". Railroads and highways should be private. Space program- private,if anyone wants it. Same with USGS and medical research. I don't know what's "land grant institutions".
The rest of your comments...
Military Industrial Complex is a cancer, but "Capitalist" firms flourish under the largesse.
You certainly miss the point about the various non-free-market sectors of our economic history. To say that they should be "free-market" disregards the enormous profits privately gained and reinvested, and the shaping of our built environment, that were made with government subsidies.
I, too, would favor privatization of all roads. Make them all toll roads and see what happens...However, I don't think many would take the financial risk. Besides, who would the money be paid to and at what price?
Same with USGS. How much work, knowledge, and information was given to the oil companies at taxpayer's expense? Certainly such continues. How would you structure the privatization of this entity?
I agree that the space program is a terrible waste of money. However, again the point is that government financed the program, and "Capitalist" companies gained both directly and from consumer products that they brought to market from technological advances from the space program.
So you see, your little fantasy world never existed and never will.
The idea of turning all the assets over to Capitalists ignores the role of government in creating not only the assets (but in the case of roads, they should also be viewed as liabilities) but the profits that have enriched the Capitalist class.
Hmmm...I'm planning my next trip. Let's see, North Korea or Iraq?
"You certainly miss the point about the various non-free-market sectors of our economic history. To say that they should be "free-market" disregards the enormous profits privately gained and reinvested, and the shaping of our built environment, that were made with government subsidies. "
And where did the government subsidies come from? Didn't they come from taxes? Taxes paid by the Capitalists? You know, the 10% of population paying 90% of the taxes?
"I, too, would favor privatization of all roads. Make them all toll roads and see what happens...However, I don't think many would take the financial risk. Besides, who would the money be paid to and at what price?"
Let the market decide.
"Same with USGS. How much work, knowledge, and information was given to the oil companies at taxpayer's expense? Certainly such continues. How would you structure the privatization of this entity?"
How much was given? Do you have any data to support your claims?
How to structure, you ask? Sell it! Accept bids for it!
"The idea of turning all the assets over to Capitalists ignores the role of government in creating not only the assets (but in the case of roads, they should also be viewed as liabilities) but the profits that have enriched the Capitalist class."
The government, the Bushes, the Clintons and the other parasites never created anything.
Have a nice trip to North Korea!
Where did you get that 10% paying 90% figure?
I can't quote a source but I think that you are full of what makes the grass grow green!!!
Send me a post card from Iraq!!!
And where did the government subsidies come from? Didn't they come from taxes? Taxes paid by the Capitalists? You know, the 10% of population paying 90% of the taxes?
I am pretty capitalistic. I worked in the oil industry for the last half of my career to date, so I am pretty familiar with the concept. I have defended the oil industry on here to the point of being subject to some pretty nasty attacks. So, I am certainly not the Communist you portrayed from your first post.
But, capitalism does not value the negative externalities of oil consumption and subsequent depletion. If we fail to manage that - and I expect we will continue to manage that - then you will see some hard times that government intervention, in this case, had the potential to mitigate.
May I suggest France, the center of dirigisme ?
See just how miserable and down trodden their lives are, with a GDP/person higher than the USA, all of August off (plus 2 more weeks), 37 hour work week, terrible food (McDonald's is subject to occasional terrorism attacks there from jealous Michelin star restaurateurs) and bad wine. And extremely primitive nationalized health care.
TGV trains over most of the country (and 3 more under construction), velibs (first 1/2 hour free), many new trams systems and more in the works, nuclear power and promised 5 million solar water heaters and more wind turbines.
Oh, and ugly women too !
Best Hopes for the USA !
Alan
Greed, cupidity, avarice and selfishness may be one way to describe what others might call healthy competition. Market forces are at work here. No manufacturer is going to produce a product that doesn't sell just because it seems like the "right thing to do." By buying stock in an oil company, I hired that oil company to make a profit on the money I invested in/loaned to them. If they don't, my money goes somewhere else. I think that's how Capitalism works.
There is estimated nearly TWO TRILLION barrels of oil in shale and sand here in the U.S. Market forces are now making it profitable to reclaim that oil. The key word is profitable. If a company could show it's shareholders a profit (there's that pesky word again) by building tiny little Spam Cans with little pee-pee wheels and little pee-pee engines, they would, but they can't, so they don't. My 4X4 is going to be around for a long time. BTW what does AL Gore haul his big lard butt around in? Oh yeah, a Suburban.
COMRADES, I read with terrified interest the article and some of the comments until my gag reflex overwhelmed me. I heard of people like you, but until now I thought it was just another urban legend.
I must have stumbled into some kind of parallel universe where Jimmy Carter and Ralph Nader are held up as cultural icons, where life in Cuba seems to be something to strive for, where allowing the infrastructure to go to hell (ala Cuba and any other Commie rat hole)
is a good idea and raising already punishing taxes to even higher levels seems to be the answer to all of our problems.
Just thought I'd check in to tell you you're not alone, there is life, real life, outside your communes and coffee houses. Now I'm back to my bunker to load some more ammunition.
Speaking as a former Republican (age 19 till age 52, then GWB cured me), it takes several steps to get to such a change.
Consider the implications of -6% less oil every year for the USA. Iraq has shown that just going out and grabbing more doesn't work well.
And no substitute liquid fuels or magic batteries appear. Declines are too fast for small cars to be built and bought fast enough to "make it work out".
Too many Americans are "Drive or Starve". They cannot put food on the table without driving.
First the economy goes to the Bush Recession, then the Great Depression II, and then things just get worse.
So far US gasoline use is *UP* +0.4% over this time last year. What will it take to reduce it by -6%, once, twice, a dozen times ?
Best Hopes,
ALan
A couple of years ago, the leadership of this site said that oil production had plateaued. Several big projects will start production this year and next. Production that plateaued at 65 million barrels per day will soon be plateaued at 92 million barrels per day. Where is the next plateau?
Hardly a day goes by without the discovery of more liquids somewhere. Today the announcement was the discovery of 210 billion barrels under the Deccan Traps of India. Sure, it is under 2,000 feet of rock, but so what? The price is up enough to make it highly profitable to drill through the rock. Four mile long horizontal fractured bores in North Dakota are producing impressive results. Brazil is busy determining just how massive the latest find is. 5 x10^30 methanogens are busy converting waste to fuel. There is no long term shortage!
Alan - first note that "F-150" and "luscar99" registered within minutes of each other, and given the writing style are very likely the same person. Likely said person is not truly interested in discussing this issue.
As you know from my previous comments I am a believer in rail, but in particular private rail, as in general I do believe that people are much better in running their own lives than being managed by governments, and that theoretically the family (and not a bureaucracy) is the basis of a society.
However, you bring up a very important point that even RR's letter undervalues - that the change in lifestyle is not just because of a decreasing baseline of energy, but also that the accustomed growth in total energy consumption will be gone too.
Where Robert fails (as perceived from his theoretical speech) as a politician is in the ability to manage peoples' expectations. And furthermore, even if people come to expect that their children will not live in a better world than they (and this has often meant expecting more material wealth than anything else, even social issues such as reducing racism and wars), that alone is not a formula for success, for then the problem becomes one of motivating positive actions and hoping the populace doesn't fall into a mass of defeatism.
This is what so many of the cheap-shot-pundits (who take potshots at our leaders) all too often on these forums also overlook - that to be a great leader is a very rare phenomenon. That is why the Abe Linkcolns and W. Churchills in the world are held up so highly - they are rare. When faced with a true national crisis they held together nations through to the end.
Any politician, if indeed democracy has any usefulness, has to be limited by their constituency. Otherwise you might as well have dictators. Thus it is no wonder that our leaders today take marginal steps - because that is all the constituency will allow.
IMO the very best thing a President could do is use the authority of the office and by executive order direct the various agencies (EIA, USGS, etc.) to submit their estimates to peer review by outside scientists and engineers (and the public), make the process public, change the estimates where logic and data requires, and then present the results to the public as the best picture of what the truth really is.
When GWB during his press conference the other day harped on drilling in ANWR he did so because there is a substantial national sentiment for "drilling more", which can easily be observed on any comment board amongst the hundreds of thousands available for perusal. When GWB chose to use the term "addicted to oil" he knew it would communicate to the public, given the culture of therapy that has been so prevalent in America these past couple of decades.
So, here is hoping that, whomever our next leaders will be, they will be able to communicate the nature of the problem clearly, and move the electorate enough to be willing to sacrifice for the future.
And another, 2 hours 11 minutes for this one.
Two words.
New Urbanism.
New Urbanism is a good Architectural Concept.
The problem is how will influence the allocation of development funding to this end?
Robert:
Sorry if I missed it somewhere above, but I'm wondering if you have by some means sent this directly to the three candidates and to their campaign headquarters.
No, I don't expect them to actually listen. As I wrote earlier, this was written more out of frustration. The public doesn't want to hear that they may have to sacrifice (even though they are having to now as gas prices start to bite) and they aren't going to vote for candidates who ask them to. So the courageous politician who could implement these policies doesn't really exist, as far as I can see. If you really are that courageous, people aren't goint to vote for you. Promise them flowers and candy - and make them believe it - and you're in.
I suggested that up top a bit, but re-iterate it here as well.
I recall Dr. James Hansen sent a letter to the Australian PM recently - as a concerned US citizen not as a NASA scientist.
For whatever it is worth - and it probbaly ain't much - I emailed The Carter Foundation and Michael Moore about this thread.
I/we too are preparigng although not as fast as I'd like (more family convincing to do), but will be prepared. Given that, until I have to pick off the raging mobs at the front door I'll also work to try to avert it.
Pete
An open question to Robert Rapier and similar to something I once asked Alan Drake and Jeffrey Brown: Is there a line in the sand somewhere that will cause you to decide that trying to save civilization is no longer the best way to save your family? If yes, what will you do instead when we cross that line? If no, why have you not considered the "unthinkable"?
Note: To paraphrase Alan's and Jeffrey's responses quite some time ago, both of them basically said (with caveats) that they think it may be better to do down with the ship than not. Alan did hint at alternative emergency plans though if things turned far enough south. And yes, I am paraphrasing both.
Anyway, Robert may or may not choose to answer my questions here but I do hope he at least thinks about them.
Is there a line in the sand somewhere that will cause you to decide that trying to save civilization is no longer the best way to save your family? If yes, what will you do instead when we cross that line? If no, why have you not considered the "unthinkable"?
I am putting my escape hatch into place. Note that I expect that I will need it, but it's there just in case. Until the day that I see that the Doomers were clearly right - and if some posters in this thread got their way, then the Doomer scenario will be much more likely - I will continue to look for solutions. I hate to see people suffer, and even though there are worthless people out there, there are also a lot of good people. As long as I believe that, I will keep trying.
I grew up pretty self sufficient. It was not easy (no air conditioning in Oklahoma in the summer is not fun), but to me it beats the alternative of going down with the ship.
I did map out the ideal post-Peak retreat (hint: with decent medical care and social structures until the last, and self sufficient in food & energy) and how to "fit in" (high school math and/or science teacher for several years, be known as "nice old Drake" by young adults in my later years. And provide good advice as post-Peak unfolds (something of community value even as muscles wane).
But even minimal efforts in that direction would weaken my greater efforts (I cannot do everything) that will benefit more than just one person in his last 20 or 30 years. So I have made the decision to not pursue the best choice for my individual survival.
Best Hopes :-)
Alan
Just as an aside: I think it was actually George Bush Sr. who said "The American way of life is non-negotiable." This was at the Rio Summit in 1992.
However, Cheney later said something quite similar: "our life style is not negotiable, and we will do whatever we have to do to maintain it, period".
To FuturePundit:
We just about doubled and much of that was immigration from other countries where people have more babies. In 1950 Kenya was about 6.3 million. It is now about 6 times that amount. Kenyan women have more babies today (4.9) than they did in the 1990s (4.7).
BS. People immigrated into the US from all over the world. Kenyans are just one nationality among more than 150. Also, immigration is not why the US population increased, but only one factor. And you've benefited from the phenomenal economic growth the US had which was only possible because of immigration - remember that!
No, I am not going to continually lower my living standard while other people keep making lots of babies.
Sure you will. Like the author of this post said, nature does not negotiate. You'll be forced to changed your lifestyle and eventually pay the price of $10 per gallon of gasoline like everyone else - or give up your car.
tizzle;
It will keep the replies more organized if you reply to the comment itself.
I think you misread what he was saying. 'Kenyan mothers' doesn't mean IN AMERICA, he's probably talking about Kenyan Population growth, apart from US pop.
Of course you are right in the second point. He doesn't have to adjust anything. It will be done for him. There are things we can do to try to stabilize our commumities and immediate conditions, but the pressures of the rest of the world will still be there if your community has to buy from or sell to the rest of the world.
Bob
rptizzle,
You misunderstood what I said about immigration. I'm making the point that some countries have enormously higher rates of population growth and their poverty and lack of resources comes in large part from that high rate of reproduction.
No, I have not benefited from total economic growth caused by immigration. That growth as diluted per capita GDP below what it would otherwise be.
To be more precise about lowered living standards: I'm not going to sacrifice to help feed hungry people in countries with population explosions.
Sure, the high price of gasoline will lower my living standard. But I was responding to arguments that I see as amounting to "lets eat less meat so that others can make more babies". I'm not going to do that.
You guys are a scary bunch.
America has issues and this entire world faces challenges, maybe bigger then ever before.
Bad governments here and in many other places do make these issues worse.
But if the alternative is YOU- the author, and YOU- the average poster here,
Now I'm really scared.
Your "solutions" remind me of a time and a place I thought I have left behind, behind the Iron Curtain.
And no, I’m not the same with F-150.
I’m encouraged though by the fact that I have so easily met another sane person.
luscar99
Thanks for your candor.
'Let the market work. That's all the government needs to do: insure the market works and get out of the way.' The markets are reactive, and they only react to money. They do nothing to anticipate human needs that aren't reflected in the bottom line. A car accident, to the market, is simply 'activity'.
Enjoy your clean(ish) drinking water and your seatbelts. The market fought against them all the way. If Nader isn't a cultural icon to you, who is?
Best,
Bob Fiske
Enjoy your clean(ish) drinking water and your seatbelts. The market fought against them all the way.
I was shaking my head and thinking the same thing as I read that. There are numerous examples, and the burning of fossil fuels is one of them, where pure capitalism does not value negative externalities.
But what's amazing to me is that people are actually equating raising fossil fuel taxes and encouraging the adoption of alternatives as similar to Communism. If that's the case, all of Europe is Communist.
And of course, for those who think the earth is a giant sphere filled with oil, and that Global Warming is a farce, then of course these proposals aren't going to set well. I can only imagine that these are the views of some who think these proposals are "scary." I would say that they can enjoy their alternative "bliss", but it isn't like they can enjoy it without dragging the rest of us along.
You imagine wrong.
I don't think Earth is "a giant sphere filled with oil",
though I'm not 100% sure, the russian abiotic theory is wrong.
As for the Global Warming and especially its causes, I'm still thinking about it without having a clear opinion. There is just too much noise and too many crooks with big mansions and Chevy Suburbans involved. Not sure we have the data to come to a conclusion, and definatelly I am not ready yet.
Well I am glad that you are thinking about it.
Your experience within the Sov Union can be a valuable perspective, but it doesn't mean that 'Corporate planning' is the proper antidote to 'Politburo planning'.. be careful that your reaction understands this. 'The cat who steps on a hot stove will never step onto a hot stove again.. but she will also never step onto a cold one..'
None of the extremes has the whole answer.
Bob
A conservative consensus of the world's leading scientific associations concluded that there was a greater than 90% probability that the observed Global Warming was caused predominantly by human activity.
That effectively ended the debate for any knowledgeable observer.
Best Hopes for Accepting Scientific Fact,
Alan
If it was for the "leading scientific associations" to decide
the trains wouldn't be running today.
Sounds eerily like Mussolini, dudn't it?
Your reply makes no logical sense to me. Whatever point you are making did not connect.
Alan
Having just returned from a week-long trip to Bangladesh I have seen a brief glimpse into the kinds of failure that energy shortages can impose on the weakest economies. Bangladesh is a country which until recently was energy self sufficient. Now I freely acknowledge that Bangladesh was never going to win any medals as a role model for the economy while it could meet its energy demand; the predicament it is in today is grim.
Energy supply is running at somewhere around 20% below demand most of the time - due to a mix of insufficient maintenance of systems, poor planning, corruption - all the usual addressable causes. The recent elephant to show up is the slow decline of domestic production versus the growing energy demand of the populus. Load shedding is now frequent and unannounced. Daily temperatures are 35 C plus. Garment factories and fertilizer factories have been some of the hardest hit, as they take the brunt of the energy cuts as the interim government orders supply to be diverted to the cities and urban dwellers.
Everyone knows that food poverty is only a short step behind many Bangladeshi families. That reduced fertilizer production may start to impact next year's crops. Water quality and supply is also reported to have reduced in some areas. Fuel prices - price capped for many users - were increased by the government while I was there. They were doubled over night (8.5Tk per cubic metre to 16.75 Tk). Taxi drivers and buses were asked not to raise prices just yet, but they did, and some arguments ensued. Long queues were at many stations, and others were just out of gas. Life is tough for most Bangladeshis and those at the bottom struggle desperately.
Back home, on my desk in front of me, is a front page news story story from the Daily Star, 27/April/2008. The picture shows 10 children and two women, soaked in filthy water waist deep in a muddy ditch, holding sieves half full of mud and swollen, rotting rice. The caption reads "Women and children of low income group scavenge through a ditch in Haalisahar of Chittagong for rice yesterday. Rotten relief rice was dumped there two days ago." Elsewhere the children are quoted as saying 'they shouldn't have throw the rice away - it did not taste too rotten to us.'
http://www.thedailystar.net/story.php?nid=33995
Apologies for being a little off topic. Words fail me.
Words fail me.
I left the reply open for several days, trying to add something.
In the end, I can only agree.
Alan
Huh?
Everything you enjoy now is the product of a man who wanted to make money, clean water inclusive.
You're looking at the government for solutions? Rare cases when government intervention does not generate outright disaster...
At best we're left to deal with plenty of un-intended consequences...
I don't have any icons. Maybe Ayn Rand comes close.
I actually like Nader and especially Jimmy Carter. I like their honesty and their integrity, if one can use those words speaking about a politician. Better grade then most out there.
But I respectfully disagree with many of their opinions and methods.
Cuz’ I know exactly how it ends…
Luscar;
You're reading a thread about writing to the government, so maybe that has made you believe that we're all about asking Washington to solve this for us. This is far from the case, and the posters here are hardly homogenous enough to rate all our 'solutions' in any one statement.
People are promoting battery companies, businesses of all sorts.. looking for industries that can be growing as we find tools to attack this with. It just sounds like you see Communists around all the corners.
"Everything you enjoy now is the product of a man who wanted to make money, clean water inclusive."
It sounds like the guy who sees 'Sex' in all the Rorshach Inkblots, and the Doc says 'Why do they all remind you of sex?' And the guy says 'What? You're the one who put up all the dirty pictures!'
People do lots of things for their beliefs and for other people, and if they happen to get paid for some of these efforts, it hardly follows that these accomplishments are some kind of 'Market Triumph'. Believe me, my parents were Arts teachers. Music and Theater..Their students even look at ME differently because of the effect my folks had on them, and showing them how humanity is FAR more than just 'Living on Bread Alone.'
Bob
"Believe me, my parents were Arts teachers. Music and Theater.."
Dear Bob,
Boy, that's a pretty poor reason to believe you.
I would like to base my trust in you on something that YOU have done, on some special insight or experience YOU might have...
Besides, these "Arts teacher" credentials - how should I put it, so I won't offend you- aren't really something I would based my trust on in a issue related to economy, markets, science or technology.
Now, if we would be taking about Ceaikovski or Chekhov...
I didn't mention their careers to somehow prove my societal assertions, but as an example of how people do things for reasons far beyond just money. That's all I was asking you to believe.
Do you revere Chekhov and Tchaikovsky because they are Russian heroes, or because they were devoted to expressing truths about their world through completely symbolic and fictitious forms? Were they created by the markets? Surely Artists sell their work and many would like to become famous and rich at it.. but a great many also persevere without ever getting that brass ring. Are they the only humans whose work isn't simply a function of Money?
Offend me? Like I said, my parents were Arts teachers. Being revered on one hand, and then equally Undervalued on the other is just another expense in that position.
Bob
I do not revere them. And I'm not of russian origin. You misunderstood. I was talking about a possible discussion where your parents qualifications would have given me a better reason to believe what you or they might have had to say.
Did your parents work for money? Did they accept anything in exchange for their effort?
Money is just an instrument that makes easier the exchange of the product of our best efforts.
"Money is just an instrument that makes easier the exchange of the product of our best efforts."
Now that statement makes sense. I am not against money, but there are decisions in our lives where the priorities of profit and business do not lead to useful or healthy decisions.
There was a great image at the culmination of 'Metropolis' by Fritz Lang, where the Heroine united the opposing forces that had torn the city to pieces and left poverty and riots, where she concluded that 'The Head and the Body must be connected by the Heart.' (Paraphrased from distant memory at this point)
The fantasy of 'Free Markets' is probably an outgrowth of the almost free fuel that built it. (including slave labor, colonization and stolen natural resources.. a 'gift by God', no doubt) But unchecked power, whether Soviet's so-called Communism or the American Libertarian dream of 'No Regulation' is bound to run out of control. Maybe that's the source of this 'Peter Pan Syndrome' of the Juvenility of the industrialised world, thinking it's all-powerful and immortal and not willing to accept that it's in a relationship with others who have the right to set some terms of their own. It seems to be the same conditions that beset a teenage male whose body finally has the strength of a Man, just not the restraint or wisdom to apply it well, and he races out to see how much power he can expend.. only as a people, we've had that much MORE power at our fingertips. Does this offer us a chance to grow up now?
Yes, my parents worked for money. Well, they Earned money. What they worked FOR included a number of other things.. you guess.
Bob
And what would you say about Chekhov's and Ceaikovski's music and writing teachers? The unknown ones, who just had some kids in a class, and hoped that some of them would 'get it'?
Penny for your thoughts..
Bob
Everything you enjoy now is the product of a man who wanted to make money, clean water inclusive.
Everything you enjoy now is the product of a man who wanted to make money, clean water inclusive
Factually wrong. Potable water and proper sewage are VERY much the result of gov't agencies.
And in one notable instance, an engineer refused payment for his invention, wishing it to be used for the public good.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wood_Screw_Pump
Best Hopes for A. Baldwin Wood,
Alan
Robert: The gasoline-tax offset by tax credit strikes me as a really good idea, one that would make a desperately needed increase in gas taxes politically palatable and economically sensible. My only reservation about it is that it would punish those who don't file a tax-return: low income or retired folks who aren't required to, and illegal immigrants. There could be some unforeseen consequences there.
The other thing to mention is that the tax credit should be periodically (annually?) revised based on actual fuel consumption. That is to say, if EVERYONE were to start consuming less fuel, then a tax-credit based on today's consumption would be too large and thus actually have the unintended effect of subsidizing gasoline consumption. If fuel consumption dropped, then the tax credit would drop. Which would be the goal.
But basically, it's a brilliant idea. So please push it in more venues that this one.
Though I can understand the emotions, I find it hard to credit the cynical, hopeless comments in this thread (and others) that say we can't move our government and such. Such comments boil down to "I don't care enough to do anything about it." If that's true, if you really don't care, why bother to read and post at TOD?
I would consider that a feature, not a bug. A substantial amount of fuel consumption is driven by urban sprawl to get away from the social pathologies created by unconstrained growth, and illegal immigration is a large part of that. Also, their presence in the USA increases total world demand. Push 11 or 20 or 30 million illegals back to their home countries, and the natives would enjoy cheaper fuel and shorter commutes.
Comments by John L. Barker on 1 MAY 2008 on “An Open letter to Our Next President”
Overview: I mostly agree with the suggestions in the letter, however, I see them as focused on local solutions in the United States for the next 10 years or so, instead of on the long-term global requirements for the next 50 to 200 years. Therefore, I composed a separate note on a potential energy policy for the country, and the world, for the 21st century, where I see only nuclear options. If we are going to ask the public to pay for dealing with the energy problem, then let’s propose solutions that will work for centuries, not decades. The following paragraphs are my reactions to the specific proposals in the “open letter,” including a major amplification on the proposal for a federal energy commission. My proposed energy policy note is at the end, followed by a copy of the “open letter.”
Gas Prices and Gas Reserve: I agree that there is no sense in trying to force gas prices down when higher prices will encourage our search for alternatives to gas. While unmentioned, I particularly don’t like the concepts of reducing or eliminating the relatively small eighteen-cent federal tax per gallon or for tapping into our oil reserve to try to control the price. We need even more tax for the roads and infrastructure and the people who use it should pay for it. Paying for it is clearly better than adding more to the $10 Trillion national debt that we are passing on to our children. However, we may have to consider a short-term solution such as subsidies for diesel fuel to reduce the cost of trucking or we may loose the current backbone of our economy. Our gas reserve should be just that, a reserve for emergencies, which are inevitable. With people hurting, this does call for political leadership when what people think they want is lower prices, which unfortunately will not solve the problem of limited oil reserves.
Fuel Efficient Rebates: I like the conceptual proposal for “rebates ranging from $500 to $2000 for vehicles that achieve high fuel efficiency. I propose to penalize vehicles that achieve low fuel efficiency. I propose to phase these changes in over the next 3 years.” However, there is nothing magical about the suggested size of the rebate or the period or method for phasing them in.
Federal Gas Tax: I concur with an increased federal tax on gas: “The average American consumes 1,000 gallons of gasoline a year. I propose to increase the federal gasoline tax by $0.20/gallon this year, $0.30/gallon next year, and then $0.50/gallon in each of the two following years. The total tax increase I am proposing is $2.00/gallon.” Again the numbers are negotiable and probably need to be automatically tied to perhaps half the cost-of-living (COL) so we don’t need new legislation with changing prices. Tying the tax to perhaps half the COL has the benefit of addressing changes in the COL without significantly contributing to an increase in the COL.
Compensating Federal Tax Credit: Since an increased federal sales tax is “regressive,” I like the proposal for “a tax credit equivalent to the increased tax burden for the average American. This is equivalent to $200 in the first year of the tax. Those who use less gasoline than the average will actually see their overall tax burden go down.” However, assuming electric cars become available, I would phase the credit out with time to increase the pressure on people to go electric to avoid the increasing price of gas. At some point, we have to feel the pain or we won’t change.
Alternative Energy Tax Credits: Tax credits for an alternative to gas are probably a good idea, such as “credits for installation of solar systems, especially those for solar water heating. Tax credits for installation of wind power, geothermal power, tidal power, and various other qualifying energy sources will be extended for 10 years.” Numerical amounts and timing are negotiable.
Inventor’s Reward: Cash awards for key inventions is a good idea. However, the concept needs developing. One significant advantage of such awards is that they can be put out quickly, in parallel with any studies or even an existing program, and at a small fraction of the cost of the program. Furthermore, this is the entrepreneurial approach to getting creative new solutions that are not bound by the entrenched bureaucratic thinking of both government and science. Creating a prioritized listing of such awards might be one of the suggested outputs of a funded energy commission study.
Federal Energy Commission: I consider the expert study idea as the most important of the suggestions in the “open letter” but that it is underdeveloped as stated: “an independent panel of experts across multiple disciplines - environmental, energy, agriculture - to evaluate various sources for 1). Reliance on fossil fuels; and 2). Negative side effects. There will be specifically defined criteria that alternative sources must meet in order to qualify for tax breaks.” The topic of the study needs to be thought through more clearly since the benefit can be no greater than its objective. What is clear that without a federal, or more appropriately, an international plan for dealing with our energy needs for the next century that we will only inefficiently approach a solution to what has become an urgent global need for action. For problems such as this that require threshold investments in research and infrastructure beyond the capacity of companies, the “market place” is only a potential contributor to the solution after a product has been identified to put on the market. In addition, since most federal studies are a political way of avoiding dealing with the problem, I would want to see teeth in such a study, including: 1) a sizable research and staffing budget for the commission, 2) a fixed time for reporting back to Congress with specific legislative and executive proposals and timetables, 3) a funded independent review of the proposals by the National Science Foundation within a fixed period of the final report, 4) members of such a commission being required to produce a publicly available on-line quantitative annual report card to Congress on the progress on each proposal that would include additional recommendations, if necessary, and 5) a separate post-report “Sunset” commission to evaluate the effectiveness of the proposals and recommend to Congress a time for closing down the commission.
Conclusion: My problem with all of these “open letter” suggestions is not that they are too bold but that they are not bold enough. My answer is a “Manhattan Project” for energy with a significant fraction of our national budget spent on it to develop new fission plants and controlled fusion plants. If a federal energy commission is formed by Congress, and/or the new President, then I would hope that examining this idea would be one of their objectives.
“Fission, Fusion and Fuel: An Energy Policy for the 21st Century” by John L. Barker (1MAY2008)
The United States (US) faces the same problems as the rest of the world. From a humanitarian point of view, these problems need to be faced collectively. Human-created problems relate to climate, water, food, and energy. If the global population keeps increasing then the problems only get more difficult, so let’s assume that the world population levels out at about 10 billion to avoid the unsolvable problem of an ever increasing population. The proposition presented here is that all of these problems relate to the need for a thousand to a million times more energy than is currently generated in the world. The proposed solution is controlled nuclear fusion with energy distributed as electricity. Since controlling fusion is a significant applied research problem, enhanced nuclear fission is proposed as an interim source of energy. The assumption driving the large increase is that everyone is entitled to a minimum standard of living that is probably obtainable if there is enough energy, assuming other resources become available globally through recycling. Such a large energy increase requires a non-solar solution, since solar energy reaching the Earth has a potential for less than a hundred to a thousand fold increase before it’s drawdown starts to negatively impact climate. This means that most “renewable” energy solutions will not work in the long run. It is past time for the US, as the biggest per capita user of energy in the world, to take the lead in developing a policy that has the potential for dealing with this problem. It would be nice to start with the next President, but the real lead has to come from public demand. Since this is a global problem, there is no reason for the US to shoulder the full burden. What is important is for the US to recognize that it is in its own best interests to work with other countries on a collective solution to the energy problem. Such a change in energy policy might be summarized as transitioning to electricity as a fuel and from nuclear fission to nuclear fusion as the source of the energy to generate the electricity.
Why does a large source of energy effectively deal with potential climate, water and food problems? Firstly, it is important that humans not mess with climate, at least not yet. We are only at an early stage of the scientific modeling of climate and climate change. It is best if we understand climate before we start trying to change it. Unfortunately, humans have already seriously changed the chemical composition of the atmosphere and composition is one of the critical drivers in climate. Human society as we know it would not survive in a world that is significantly different in atmospheric composition or temperature. The biggest human-induced change in atmospheric composition is the continuing linear increase in the “greenhouse” gas carbon dioxide (CO2), that currently is nearly 30 % higher than in any ice core records of the last 600,000 years. This human-induced increase in atmospheric CO2 over the last hundred+ years is largely related to burning of fossil fuels and the reduction in forests. Our high standard of living has been built on the use of cheap oil and coal. Now we need to stop burning fossil fuels. We can afford to stop burning fossil fuels if alternative energy is readily available, as proposed by fission and fusion plants around the world. Secondly, drinkable water is a minor problem if we have enough energy to pump seawater underground and evaporate it, leaving the salt in the Earth and pumping the water back up to the surface. Thirdly, except for the fact that we are polluting the oceans as a source of food, food from grain or rice can probably sustain any reasonable food demand as long as we aren’t trying to solve our energy problem with biofuels. The problem with food is primarily having the political will to solve the global distribution and sharing problems. Therefore, climate, water and food problems can all be reasonably addressed if energy is not a problem. This is a problem that the public understands better than the politicians. Everyone knows we need clean air to breath, unpolluted water to drink, and enough food to eat. What most people don’t know is that the availability of plentiful energy from fusion is a potential solution to most of these problems.
There is essentially an infinite supply of deuterium in ocean water to fuel nuclear fusion. A large governmental research effort is needed to develop controlled fusion because the cost of such research is too high for any company’s research budget. Three of the major intensive variable thresholds for controlled fusion have been reached independently, namely a sufficient temperature, density and pressure for a sustained period of time. The extensive variables such as total required size and mass are presumably manageable once the intensive problems are solved collectively. Therefore, it would appear that this is a classic example of expecting a successful applied research development effort if the money and people are made available. This is such a critical item for our long-term security that it probably justifies building a new civilian entity, perhaps out of the military budget. The problem of nuclear waste is significantly less difficult for fusion than for fission because of the shorter half-lives of the radioactive by-products. It is impossible to estimate how long the research and development effort would take since it is research, even if it is presumably applied rather than basic research. Assuming a national, or even a global, effort, developing controlled fusion is still likely to take decades. Fusion may be the only long-term answer to our energy needs.
While we wait for fusion, many new ideas exist for better use of our limited sources of uranium for fission, including several breeder reactor designs. The major problem for use of fission is nuclear waste. If we agree that fusion and fission are the best solutions to the energy problem, then we have to come to grips with the waste problem. One possible solution for disposal of nuclear waste is to build extremely large expendable underground mass spectrometers with nuclear waste as input and usable individual nuclides as output for various types of energy sources. By concentrating the waste, it becomes useful. Eventually the facility itself will become sufficiently radioactive that it will have to be robotically decommissioned as nuclear waste into yet another new mass spectrometer. However, the public does have to accept the risk of transporting nuclear material from one part of the country to another. If the concern is high enough, there may simply have to be a dedicated transportation system for nuclear waste. We already know several ways to efficiently generate electricity from nuclear fission plants and therefore this is a feasible alternative while controlled fusion energy plants are being developed.
Transition to fusion technology will not be easy. Building on our experience with nuclear submarines, we could transition to nuclear energy for ships. Hydrogen technology might be a solution for fueling planes since it potentially addresses weight, energy and pollution problems. We can use fission to transition to electricity as a fuel for cars. With sufficient nuclear energy, heating and air conditioning can be supplied with electricity. Once these changes are made in transportation and heating sectors, solutions in other energy sectors should be more obvious. Prioritization of funding of such a huge effort could be task of a federally funded energy commission.
If everyone on Earth enjoyed the same per-capita energy consumption as the average American, total human energy use would be about 2200 quads/year (vs. ~400 quads/year today). The Sun delivers this much energy to Earth in less than 4 hours.
The estimated 72 TW of wind energy available world-wide comes to about 2100 quads/year; as it is already in electric form and does not require conversion losses, it's equivalent to over 6000 quads of fossil fuel. The potential of solar is considerably greater than wind. Humanity can do quite nicely on renewables if we get started early enough and seriously enough.
Americans demand that we keep the status quo. (not me, not you, but all the others)
Do you expect politicos to circumvent their will, and get reelected?
We need a huge fee on engine displacement and dry weight of each vehicle. Bought and licensed or tabbed. ( at one point CC displacement limits , 2 liters would be good)
(Trucking is a whole diff. issue and would be directly addressed as such).
Many countries regulate this way. Simple, and not fooling around with Robin Hood BS.
To hell with you and “a few eggs must be broken” .
Why is it that everyone on here (mostly I guess) cries TAX ?
To tax is to destroy. Ah, but it is so simple , until April 15th.
Shrink the cars, by mandate. ( CAFÉ presupposes that the Government knows how to design a car, now that is a side slapping joke , what fools).
Next mandate ( I hate, them but they my be necessary):
All engines must turn off after 3 seconds idling. (ambient air ECU monitored thermostat in car keeps occupants safe) ( huge savings in liquid fuels )
One more ( mandate or incentive) did you know Honda has a lean burn catalysis system ? That if used, will allow all cars to operate in Lean burn mode and with a huge saving of fuel. I would mandate, “that for every new car sold, that MFG, had to upgrade one old car.” ( 16 year turn over bull is just that)
( new ECU (or ROM pack) and new CAT-con).
The New car buyer is paying for this.
Goals:
Conservation by direct edict.
Conversation helping people insulate their homes and convert to the new CO2 heat pumps that are so efficient.
Ending the IRAQ subsidy for Europe. Let Europe police that area of the world.
Make a vacuum there and just watch them scramble (yah!)
IMPORTED oil( USA) all savings of fuel would be deposited to SAR.
We would do that , and all oil not used ( imports will be flattened , not dropped at first) and the excess will be pumped in the Nat. Strategic oil reserve. “SAR”
Until we have enough for our future.
We would only drop imports, when we could clearly not let Crude OIL PRICES fall. Hording its called and It WILL GET popular world wide.
Re-commission the Texas rail road commission ( hahahah,, read all of Yurgins books !)
Any excess ( ramping as SAR fills ) would be used to build our new Rail System, everywhere. ETC ! Building the future. The better good for all and the future for our citizens.
The key is to use as much oil as we can ,(hording it) so we do not cause the world price of oil to drop (Jevon’s Paradox ). Any drop now will only make the end come sooner.
-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox
----------------------FLASH --------------------------------------
Another tack is to forbid using national oil and import it all.
( Now that will be a carbon reduction of huge proportions; $200 a barrel over night.)
The Nationalization of our Oil companies ( pure evil and I did not say it , I am not here)
Then we have our SAR all done with a stroke of a pin for our future children.
We could do this by buying out the companies ( hah)( or offering to pay for the current oil at a daily rate and volume , extrapolated to some end, all paid at the pump)
The oil companies get 2 choices, maybe 3.
• Buy out.
• Rent to do nothing. ( they get to startup some day)
• Imminent domain , a theft.
I’m just a mechanic and do know a few things about efficiency.
How we do it, is up to all of us.
Hope you find this interesting.
I think oil is still dirt cheap. I do ! Dollars , energy density is till very good , huh ?
PS , check out the quasiturbine , amazing and you can even buy a demo. not vaporware. Google it. wow.
While I see great merit within your proposal, and greatly applaud the initiative of actually dealing with fossil fuel dependancy, I feel that there is one aspect of this whole debate that you, and almost all of your predecessors of this cause, have left out; namely, repercussions.
The economies of a number of Middle Eastern, Central American, and Eastern European nations, including but not limited to Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iraq, Qatar, Venezuela, Colombia, Equador, Mexico, Russia, and Ukraine, are entirely or largely dependant upon their large oil or gas export markets. Should any large western nation, particularly the United States of America, significantly decrease, or indeed cut off, their oil and gas dependancy, these nations, and many more other ones, will suffer an economic collapse due to the severe reduction in their primary marketplace.
It is true that, in the case of nations such as Saudi Arabia and, to a lesser extent Qatar, they owe their status as one of the world's wealthiest nations to their natural gas and oil reserves, and could likely afford to develop and occupy a new market niche should their export industries fail. However, let's look at the other side of the coin, shall we? In the case of Russia and Ukraine, the entire reconstruction of their nation and uplifting of their people from devastating poverty has been entirely and solely due to their ability to export natural fossil fuel resources. Should they lose this precious place in the global market, their nations will undoubtedly collapse into complete and ruinous poverty, the likes to rival the poorest African nation. This will in turn have a flow-on affect of intolerably large numbers of refugees fleeing to the EU, which will in turn place undue economic stress on the vast and growing economy that the European Union presides over. A drop in the EU economy will have a resulting impact upon the EU markets, which will in turn have a heavy affect upon, amongst others, American markets.
Now, while despite this evaluation many of you may be thinking along the lines of "Screw them, save our own bacon!", the fact remains that our current global economic marketplace is one of complete cohesion and interlocking. Meaning that what happens in one major sector of the marketplace has direct and almost immediate flow-on effects in other major areas. Anybody remember the 1991 Asian Marketplace Collapse? The devastating collapse of the markets and economies of over half the nations of Asia was directly linked to a rapid and significant decline in the American market. But the collapse also affected Europe and Australia, not just Asia. The more recent American Sub-Lending Crisis has had sizeable and direct negative impacts upon the markets and economies of Australia, as well as, once again, various Asian and European nations. The sad irony behind all of this is that it was the United States which was the primary proponent behind the push for a fully integrated global marketplace, the idea being that the US could dominate such a marketplace and gain a greater economic advantage through it. And it is this exact same integrated marketplace, now being taken over by rising economic powers such as China and India, that is indirectly forcing America to continue some of its more 'unhealthy' addictions. For, should America cease use of fossil fuels, no matter how slowly it was done, a number of both significant and insignificant economies around the world would collapse or go into major recession. And it doesn't matter how far away in terms of measurement these economies are, in terms of the dollar, distances are moot, and the negative economic backlash of such a move would be felt heavily in the United States within a year, at the outside.
The natural depletion of their oil and gas reserves will out pace any conservation efforts by the USA or elsewhere.
So not a problem (other than they will run out, see Mexico and UK).
And the Ukraine mines some coal, but imports oil & gas. Lower competition from the USA et al is a good thing for them.
Best Hopes,
Alan
Right on! Let us also not forget the big elephant in the room:
http://lamarguerite.wordpress.com/2008/05/02/special-fossil-fuel-interes...
There needs to be some more anti-lobbying efforts towards the special fossil fuel interests!
Actually, Russia's untapped oil reserves under the Siberian tigre (light woodlands) are apparently amongst the largest in the world, and will last for over a hundred years. You are correct in your claim that the current oilfields, the Caucausus, will be depleted before major conservation efforts largely impact oil consumption, but Russia will still have enormous reserves upon which to draw. Indeed, their currently largely untapped Siberian reserves are estimated to be larger than the remainder of the Middle Eastern reserves. As for Ukraine, they have oil and gas reserves, but thanks to Russian pipelines already existing in Ukraine due to the Cold War, it is actually cheaper for them to merely use Russian oil or oil through Russian controlled transit routes than it is to expand upon their relatively minute mining infrastructure for themselves. That doesn't mean that at some point in the near future, when the already strained Ukraine-Russian relations reaches an untenable situation, they won't opt to construct their own reserves and end their dependenceon Russian fuel. And should Ukraine do that, you can be sure that there will be a host of former Eastern Bloc nations that will be eager to end their own Russian dependency, particularly those that Russia has blocked oil to in the past when strong-arming them.
As for the UK, they, and any other western nation, do not enter into the equation here. The UK, and Australia might as well be thrown in here too, has a developed economy already that can, and will, survive quite reasonably without the support of oil. The problem I was referring to were those nations without developed economies who would not be able to do so.