Gail -

Having had some direct familiarity with the whole environmental regulatory process, I would say that this declaration by the EPA is merely an opening gambit and little more.

Long before any actual binding CO2 restrictions are put into effect, there will be an endless chain of hearings, industry comments, lobbying, and legal challenges. The lawyers will be busy lawyering, and the consultants will be busy consulting. By the time it is all done (if it ever is done), the result will more than likely be something that is pretty toothless and more feel-good than effective.

The single thing that will pretty much neuter any EPA efforts at CO2 emission reduction policy will be the economic impact of such measures (or at least the claimed economic impact put forth by various industries and interest groups). My prediction is that the whole process will be highly political and exceedingly messy and not likely to go anywhere, at least anytime soon.

Then of course, we have the question (best answered by climate experts and not the likes of me) as to whether a relatively minor reduction in CO2 emissions from one country is really going to have a significant effect on global ambient CO2 levels and whether such efforts will just be a futile waste of limited resources that could better be deployed elsewhere.

History will mock this decision!

I agree that if we had a rational government and political system, what remains of real wealth would be invested in rebuilding regional and local social and economic infrastructure, especially where it comes to food and farms.

Unfortunately, as Gail says, this zombie system is determined to prop itself up and maintain the simulacrum of business as usual as long as possible. That includes an insolvent central banking system continuing to conjure absurd amounts of money out of nothing for as long as it can enforce the global illusion, and it includes the government continuing to spend these prodigious amounts.

Given those facts, I'd say spending the funny money on carbon mitigation and large-scale renewable infrastructure, while I agree the latter is unsustainable on account of the oil platform it requires (not to mention the pipe dream of continuing the happy motoring dystopia with PHEVs), would be an infinitely better way to run out the remaining big-dollar years than bank holding company bailouts and the Global War on Terror.

Gail,

While I share quite a bit of your pessimism, I do think that we won't see a time where it won't be possible to build wind or solar energy systems because of resource constraints. For example, iron and steel can be made using carbon from wood as both fuel and the chemical needed to reduce the iron ore (rust) to produce steel. That's the way it was done for thousands of years before coal was used. It's long been possible to make plastics from biomass, so those materials would still be available. We may find that other users of these materials would lose out in the competition for those resources, but energy is so basic that I think wind and solar would be the last to suffer. Noting this does not imply that we will be able to continue business as usual, but instead may see a return to more basic styles of living that use much less energy.

Yes, vast effort will be needed to replace enough of the existing fossil energy sources and machines which consume that energy with renewable, sustainable sources and devices. I think we are faced with an either/or choice in that spending those vast sums you mention may only be possible for a brief time as we go forward. Either we spend that "money" for more oil, gas and coal, or we spend it for renewables. With the fossil energy sources, once the "money" is spent and the fuel used, there will still be a need to continue to spend ever more "money" for the next source, be it renewables or nuclear or ??? Notice I use quotes with the word "money" as we all have learned that debt money isn't quite as real as we thought...

You wrote "ultimately the resources are physical goods, and these have finite limits", but this is not strictly correct. The material resources, i.e. the metals, etc, can be recycled if enough energy were available. They don't leave the Earth, they become dispersed and thus difficult to recover. Mining high grade ores produces low cost metals, but lower grade (i.e., less concentrated) ores are available as well, once they become "economic". Fossil energy is entirely different and once used, it can not be re-used. I think you need to be clear about this difference. There are many possibilities to cut our use of fossil fuels and thus cut our CO2 emissions while maintaining a flow of enough energy to get the job done. I would not count the engineers out just yet, since we've not really had the chance to pursue even the known technologies at the levels we already know to be achievable. We still don't have an admission by TPTB (including Prez BO) that we've got to learn to live differently, which would be needed to mobilize the vast numbers of people who must change their lives (hopefully, for the better)...

E. Swanson

As someone selling carbon offsets, I am selfishly pleased at the ruling. As someone who has been following the peak oil scenario and it's outfall, for ten+ years, I recognize that this is just another attempt to piss into the wind.

I see Drumbeat has this article:

Worst Environmental Problem? Overpopulation, Experts Say

Overpopulation is the world’s top environmental issue, followed closely by climate change and the need to develop renewable energy resources to replace fossil fuels, according to a survey of the faculty at the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry (ESF). . .

“Overpopulation is the only problem,” said Dr. Charles A. Hall, a systems ecologist. “If we had 100 million people on Earth — or better, 10 million — no others would be a problem.” (Current estimates put the planet’s population at more than six billion.)

Somehow, I don't see the EPA, or for that matter any other governmental agency, even mentioning the population issue.

So many of us are (or act) surprised/dismayed/alarmed when Authorities do what they are authorized to do. Not only is the EPA's (and most other Agencies & Departments') astonishing behavior intrinsic to their nature, it is the nature we deliberately empowered them to have. 'Suicidally credit based capitalistic perpetual growth for exorbitant short term gain regardless of unimpeachable logic to the contrary' is what we built the machine to do, in sickness and in health until death do us part. Well? That's what it's doing.

Anyone who has been a Capitalist or a minion of some corporation will simply not be able to create or fathom solutions so long as they adhere to the silly notions that underpin the very existence of Capitalism or Corporatism in the first place (e.g. the belief that financial profit from capital is either virtuous or sustainable, or the insane idea that an abstract incorporation is in any legitimate way comparable to a living human being.)

It is imperative that as many individuals as possible stop thinking in those old ways. Just don't expect officials and bureaucrats to do so. They can't, and they wouldn't if they could.

Gail is right. This Administration is intractably committed to the fore-doomed attempt of restoring Business As Usual. Their opaque procedures and obscure strategies are no more inscrutable than the desire for a continuing personal paycheck. Follow the money.

Doomed to failure? Well of course it is! I reckon their arithmetic skills are at least as good as yours or mine, and that's all the math that's required.

I personally view government behavior with the same attitude I watch weather reports and forecasts. The weather is often boring, sometimes lovely, and occasionally scary as hell... but in no case is it subject to human intervention other than getting ready to endure whatever nature is throwing at us.

That's where the Oil Drum shines. Best damn weather persons on the planet. When not standing in awe of the job they do we should bow in gratitude.

Gail, did you think fossil fuels would last forever?

Look at the reserves data. 1200 Gb of petroleum left. If we use it up at a rate of 30 Gb per year that's 40 years. If oil depletes at 2.5% per year in 40 years the world will still have used up 2/3 of all that petroleum.

On the contrary, this EPA announcement is the best possible news.

It means that now we need to reduce our use of fossil fuels as much as is possible in the next 40 years.

No reason to delay.

Also, you seem to think that cellulosic ethanol is an unproven technology. It is twice as expensive as corn ethanol
but otherwise do-able.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/02/090210133920.htm

http://hitectransportation.org/news/2009/Exec_Summary02-2009.pdf

The US and Canada could produce 450 million tons of switchgrass. At 100 gallons per ton, that's 50 billion gallons of E85(25% of current gasoline consumption). If this could be produced from using ~150 million tons of coal burying all the plant CO2 with CCS. E85 gets 72% of the mileage of gasoline.

http://www.fcpp.org/pdf/RogerSamsonMPEpresentationFeb0306.pdf

Gail -- how will we deal with this situation? Do we have a road map to guide us so that we can get from here to there?

I think that it is crucial to look at human nature as the larger context for these questions.

First, we do not agree on who we are, where we are, who we want to be, or where we want to be.

Second, we humans ware already dealing with the situation in two ways that fit with how we have behaved in the past.

We are squandering resources when we are able to do so. The developed world is spoiling itself to death, mistaking our fragile, brittle, and complex infrastructures with enduring habitat. Ecocide becomes mass suicide.

Just as importantly, we are dealing with "getting from here to there" by killing off people and other living creatures who do not matter to us in order to have more for ourselves.

In these ways we are making the world into a living Hell. The world is getting more violent -- not less violent. Even as the Obama administration continues, we will sell more arms, not less. We will kill, imprison, and torture more people, not less. We will shred more of our habitat each day, not less.

The EPA is one of the institutions that helps people keep up the illusion that we are actually in control and that the course of the human species on the planet is governable and capable of being organized and ordered in some sort of just and sustainable way.

We tell ourselves these lies to keep the fear and rage from flooding our minds -- and our collective media-minds -- to the point that we can no longer function for this day, this month, this business quarter, this year.

Actually, our species is not on some sort of manageable, governable trajectory toward sustainable existence on this planet or traversing the stars a la Star Trek.

We are already "Lost In Space" and we have not really left the planet. OK, a couple of folks have made little journeys into orbit around the planet. A moon trip and a tiny space station do not give us "Full Spectrum Dominance" in the solar system, let alone sustainability off-planet.

I am amazed at how many people believe that we are capable of doing anything other than running riot over the planet.

Even so, I keep plugging away at becoming more sustainable, even as I watch the Tower of Babel being built on a fault-line, designed and built to destroy the very ground upon which it stands.

I do wonder who will survive the next twenty years, if anyone.

People around me talk as though the EPA, Social Security, Wall Street, and other institutions will be restored so that life will go on for us. I am thinking that the odds for the survival of even one billion people over the next thirty years are very poor.

The road map is very clear. My guess is that Obama is the Face of Friendly Fascism as we design even more effective ways to kill and enslave people -- the same old road map being followed by leadership all over the planet.

I think the current news is a good start. Behavior will take time to change. If you ask Americans to list what is important issues, most would have very little clue. It's them that we need to change in order to make a dent in whatever environmental and energy goals we need. We all have relatives and friends -- and yet -- it's still hard to convince them what are the crisis we are facing in the next 5-10 years. I was talking to a group of friends -- we were talking about housing crisis and most thought now is the time to buy and expected the US economy to bounce back and to keep going up and up. I was trying to tell them about the energy problem but I am telling you it's not really effective. Most have no concern -- the most concern they have is all the jobs going to China.

In the US at least, the environmental concern will be a bit less urgent than the energy crisis. I know Katrina can put that to test real quick but an energy crisis would affect the whole country way a lot more. So Obama must rank different crisis and attack them: economy, health, energy, environmental. During Bush time, all of these problem got pushed away or not addressed seriously. We think we can make up lost time in 100 days -- we wont. It is not like I put a lot of faith in Obama to solve everything -- but whatever he can do, he need to put some thinking and responsibility back to Americans; he needs a lot of help. There are many things will be tried -- and some of them will fail and lessons will be learned.
This country is a capitalist system and we saw how "inefficiently" it has been going in the last 20-30 years. We might want a different system where resource is needed to be allocated in order for us to adjust to 2050. Instead of keeping a system where "growth" is rewarded, a new system where efficiency and sustainability is the buzz words.

What I am saying is the US is not ready yet -- how and when to say it in a way that people will GET it. I am expecting a few shocks before it starts to sink in.

Even with another Katrina-like event in the US I think most of the predicted delaying tactics will eventuate. Australia's cap and trade scheme is not supposed to start until July 1st 2010 but conservatives have worked themselves into a lather. They predict the end of civilization no less. Freebies are being handed out every month as the countdown draws near; funding for 20 carbon capture projects being the latest. A Senate inquiry is listening to all kinds of submissions on the scheme ranging from fine tuning to total abandonment.

Therefore I doubt that administrative action will really make much difference. Politicians are too timid to pass tough laws. I think there will be emissions cuts anyway due to the economic slowdown but not as much as James Hansen et al would want. However those unforced cuts could still be higher than what governments would impose under a barrage of lobbying.

Thus I see three scenarios for emissions cuts;
high - what climatologists want
low - what is politically doable
intermediate - what will happen anyway.

Solar thermal plants have only been expensive, basically hand built protoypes to date. Crank these up to mass production and you would expect manufacturing and construction costs to fall markedly.

Lets face it they are pretty basic in technology and as for construction, though you need some pretty fine tolerances and positioning, doesn't fall into the sort of complexity and difficulty as seen with some other alternatives (pretty minimal in concrete, steel, etc, requirements as well). The EROEI calculations would be interesting.

They also seem, on the face of it at least, to offer reasonable scalability (though I'd been interested in analysis from any others about this), offering greater flexibility in placement, regional power delivery ,etc.

How does one deal with this situation?

Both the utopian and the doomerian positions are theoretical possibilities with low probability, so both can be dismissed out of hand. It would be a wonderful miracle to find an unlimited source of energy; it would also be a miracle, but this time not so wonderful, to have a complete collapse.

So, we're somewhere in between, trying to muddle through. You seem to want some major, Herculean, project to deal with disadvantageous climate change (DCC), but that, too, is a theoretical possibility with no clear and definable danger--except somewhere in the future, near or far. DCC is not a clear and present danger for most people. Major projects are not undertaken without the stimulus of some catalyst--some direct event that "forces" people into action, and without some "leader" who makes the call to action. Witness Roosevelt and the Declaration of War after Pearl Harbor, even though carnage was being wrought for years before that.

So, unless and until we have a clear and present danger--like an immediate rise of sea levels, or dangerous famines (which may be closer than most think)--the best we can hope for are "democratic" decisions, in other words BAU, foot dragging, and modest actions.

One deals with the situation by trying to be prepared--conceptually--for whatever comes along. This country will probably keep muddling along with economic and environmental policies of modest aims and results and experience a slow but steady decline--unless, of course, some miracle event occurs. Given the extensive resources this country has--a lot of it in landfills--and its enormous capacity for self-deception, I'd guess that we could see a good ten to twenty years of decline before the country suffers real pain--and still no great action will be performed barring those miracle events.

Give a man a half bottle of Brandy and Benedictine and tell him it's all he will ever have again, and what does he do? Nurse it along for as long as possible, or down it, chuck the bottle and search for some alternative--or just do without?

We're not going to conserve; that's futile. Carbon trading is just another bubble and scam. Electric cars may do for the next 20 years, but what then?

I see a fundamental problem with the civilizational collapse model where long range trade stops: At far lower levels of per capita energy usage in the late 18th century we had continental trade, continental railroads, and big steel mills and other industries producing complex manufactured goods.

Seems to me the proponents of how Peak Oil will cause collapse need to reconcile their thinking with late 19th century America's economy. How far down is our per capita energy usage going to go? How will that level compare to our energy usage in, say, the 1890s? We ran rail with coal. We'll still have enough coal to do that.

Why does specialization of labor collapse so far that highly refined parts cease to be manufacturable? I don't see it. I feel a convincing case on this has not been made.

The first 50-60% reduction in Carbon (equivalent) emissions are cost neutral w/o even looking at the externalized costs of GCC, so odds are when looking at the overall costs, including the externalized ones, GHG emissions will be cost neutral or cost negative. Granted, this is for society as a whole. It will certainly be cost positive for the FF industry.

We don't know for sure yet, but the impression one has is that the intent is to try to maintain business as usual, through more investment in technologies which will allow automobiles to have higher mileage and utilities to emit more CO2.

Allowing utilities to emit more is the opposite of what the legislation you're referring to would do, so I don't think that's a very big concern.

Over the next fifty years, the amount of resources we will have available for investment is going to be headed down rather than up.

That depends on the resource you're referring to. Will chemical energy resources decline? Probably. Will that prove unbearably restrictive given the majority of use compared to alternatives? Probably not. We'll probably see less sprawl, and less inefficient use oil, but that's a far cry from going back to farm animals as beasts of burden on a large scale.

As for government attempts to cut CO2 emissions and Peak Oil: There's an obvious overlap between efforts to cut CO2 emissions and efforts to get us off of oil before oil production starts declining due to declining reserves. Efforts to increase energy efficiency will make it easier for us to get by with declining amounts of oil for example.

However, there are also importance differences in optima strategies for cutting CO2 emissions versus preparing for Peak Oil. A general attempt to cut back on fossil fuels usage will overemphasize cutting non-oil fossil fuels whereas the reduction we most need to prepare for is a reduction in oil usage.

An emphasis on cutting oil first would:

- replace oil for space heating. shift to heat pumps.
- electrify rail.
- develop tech and infrastructure for electric cars.

where we need to be headed for true sustainability.

Gail, you seem to have a model in your head for where we need to be headed for true sustainability (and what that means). Please share that with us, or we have no basis for understanding your arguments.

In addition, what are your plans to achieve true sustainability and how are you progressing on them?

My own plans have been to reduce energy consumption dramatically, grow most of my own food supply, and consume less material items overall.

Our house is passive solar (woodstove backup) with solar PV, which greatly reduces our building energy consumption. I telecommute and carpool (with a 2000 Honda Insight), which greatly reduces my transportation energy consumption. We have a 20'x80' garden and have replaced our standard landscaping with 60 fruit and nut trees/shrubs, which help to localize our food consumption. This is not a brag, but a communication of what we believe are steps in the direction of greater sustainability and a means to show others that people really are doing this.

Communities need to avoid the worst of Peak Oil by transitioning to a relocalization of goods and services. A number of communities are actually doing this now, referred to as Transition Towns. Read how they are accomplishing this;
http://www.transitiontowns.org/
http://transitionus.ning.com/

Read this short list of current Transition Towns.

One way to prepare for Peak Oil: Make use of all fossil fuels more expensive. This approach appeals to people whose only concern is global warming.

Political problem: People hate high prices.

Possible political solution: hide the fossil fuel price increases in regulations that make the fossil fuels cost more for industry to use. This hides from most of the public what is going on. The state of California is pursuing this approach. Not sure it will work since political opposition will build as some of the prices become visible to the public.

If we indirectly make fossil fuels more expensive I expect more of the cost to fall on coal and therefore on electric prices. That would tend to shift some demand toward oil.

Fourth generation biofuels: they'll work some day. But that day is too late if Peak Oil has already happened.

The whole world needs to undergo an energy audit. Even something as crude as http://www.withouthotair.com/ would be a start, as the numbers would at least be within an order of magnitude of reality. Nations or higher levels of organisation should adopt energy budgets.

EROEI seems to me to be a very important concept, as is the concept of net energy. International standards for measuring EROEI need to be defined and adopted.

I'd like to see tables of, say, energy required to make a tonne of steel from iron ore versus a ton of steel made from scrap.

The underlying economic assumptions of infinite resource inputs and infinite waste sinks must be abolished. Humanity operate at such a scale now that nothing can be taken as "effectively" infinite, even when it is plentiful.

"Sustainable" anything is literally unattainable. Dump the concept. Get over it. "Renewable" is a better idea. Some proportion of revenue from expoiting any resource should be diverted towards investment in its replacement. Exploitation rates should be set according to audited estimates on the amount of expoitable reserves still remaining. Imagine if The Middle East couldn't sell energy unless its URR estimates were regularly audited.

Marry models of climate change to energy production and generation models.

Starvation, or at least malnutrition is very possible. We take this age of plenty for granted but in the 20's and 30's malnutrician was endemic in the UK. Rickets was common, heights (one of the best indicators) low. Plus all the infant mortality, other shortage indicators, etc (some people have thoerised that without fish and chips scurvy would have been endemic then).

And this was in a country, which at that time, was the centre of the World's greatest empire.

Lord Boyd Orr did a famous study showing the deprevation being experienced by large part of the population, not changed until scientific rationing was introdued in WW2.

So malnutrition in the US? Yes. It already exists now and will grow, firstly due to the GFC and as food prices grow due to input resources limits (e.g. phosperous, then later oil and others) plus rising population.

Plus there is the issue of nutrients and calories. Pople may be able to get calories, for a fair amount of time into the future in the US, but will they be able to get the nutrients needed? Some people are probably marginal already.

All this can be reduced by careful planning and, if necessary rationing. But there are no signs of that as yet. Note the British elite only worried about nutrition for the 'lower classes' when it became obvious that the healthier, fitter German soldiers were so superior physically. Then they later worried about potentially healthier fitter Russian ones .... later after the need for mass conscription disappeared they lost interest.