This is the story of The Hurricane

It's flooding down in Texas

   -Stevie Ray Vaughn

They're trying to wash us away 

    - Randy Newman

Greetings

      Once again, the chickens are coming home to roost .   What to do?  Maybe the force?  "Help me Obi Wan Kenobi, you're my only hope".  I wonder what our only hope is now?

        I just ran across two articles that illustrate that we have a bit of a blind spit when it comes our "only hope " .

       First Robert Scribbler had a long response in comment section of his blog.   He argues against the necessity for "degrowth",  ( It was  somewhat of a straw man argument argument as it is phrased arguments gains "degrowth alone".)    He argues that wind and solar are making great strides in the field of electric  generation,  and that great leaps can be expected in transportation and industrial use a well.     But hidden away in the technical argument is the political reality. -that a world without growth is inconceivable .     In other words a technological solution must exist, because degrowth is not politically acceptable .  Here is what he says:

"But degrowth in energy consumption without renewable alternatives that are capable of filling in the economic activity gap more efficiently would crush the very economic engines that are now capable of performing a complete transformation of the energy system in ever-shrinking time horizons. To be clear, radical de-growth philosophy is little more than an argument for enforced economic austerity at a scale that we have never before seen in the 20th or 21st centuries. And politically, this philosophy would fail as soon as it got out of the gate. A fact that even proponents, if they think for just one second, would realize.

Overall, increases in societal efficiency (as a pure metric) are certainly desirable and attainable — but only on longer time scales unless your ultimate aim is to destroy economies wholesale rather than to transform them. And from the perspective of climate change, there is no way to deal with the problem effectively without a massive renewable energy build out now. For degrowth alone does not remove the very sources of carbon emission — fossil fuels — that are causing the problem.

        Similarly, Dave Roberts argues for a different technological solution,  suggests that it's time to start talking about negative emissions

Roberts seems to recognize that no amount of solar panel and electric cars can get us to two degrees, and that it would also take a additional significant "degrowth " to actually reduce emissions by the amounts needed. 

In fact the needed decline rate is so steep Roberts calls that path "ludicrous".  

"If we do not allow negative emissions into the models, they show that to hit our target, emissions have to decline at an absolutely ludicrous rate:

"Absent a meteor wiping out advanced civilization, that’s not going to happen. So, negative emissions it is!"

       So, he favors a  slightly more leisurely approach, which admittedly busts the carbon budget.  But then, technology steps in and saves the day .  We have to have "negative emissions", which means pulling carbon out of the air. .   The favorite idea is called. Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Sequestrstion.  Or BECCS

 " The idea is that as plants grow, they absorb carbon from the air. When biomass is burned for energy, that carbon is released. If you can capture that released carbon and bury it, you have a net carbon negative process — carbon is removed from the atmosphere.

To bury enough carbon to put the 2C target in reach, BECCS will have to be massively scaled up, requiring biomass planted and harvested over an area as large as India, or larger. (One reason many scientists, including Kevin Anderson, think it will never happen.) It is a truly gargantuan undertaking."

He points to a nice article by Brad Plummer, which describes how it might work in theory, but notes. 

The sober news is that this technology is still in its infancy, far from commercialization, and expected to be quite expensive.

       Another view, taken by Richard Heinberg, is that we are not going to voluntarily degrow, and that technology is not going to save the day. His most recent article is called " Why Climate Change is not our biggest environmental problem, and why technology isn't going to save us"

"Our core ecological problem is not climate change. It is overshoot, of which global warming is a symptom. Overshoot is a systemic issue. Over the past century-and-a-half, enormous amounts of cheap energy from fossil fuels enabled the rapid growth of resource extraction, manufacturing, and consumption; and these in turn led to population increase, pollution, and loss of natural habitat and hence biodiversity. The human system expanded dramatically, overshooting Earth’s long-term carrying capacity for humans while upsetting the ecological systems we depend on for our survival. Until we understand and address this systemic imbalance, symptomatic treatment (doing what we can to reverse pollution dilemmas like climate change, trying to save threatened species, and hoping to feed a burgeoning population with genetically modified crops) will constitute an endlessly frustrating round of stopgap measures that are ultimately destined to fail."

          I've been reading a new book on evolutionary psychology and meditation, which argues that our perceptions are often skewed, due to the way our brains were formed during our evolution.  And that we therefore have many fixed ideas that may have been useful for the survival of the species, in an environment totally different than this one.  For instance,  our love of junk food and drugs, our inclination toward tribalism, and "justified rage", and our  delusions about our own abilities, (we all think we are "above average")  and actions (we act rationally) .

        This got me thinking about how we look at all the coming "hurricanes" , and our faith in our technological salvation.  We all seem to share the illusion of agency - i.e.that we are in control.   Which reminded me of a piece by Eric Lindberg from a few years ago.   He was discussing  The difference between the peak oil and climate change "narrative" 

"The limits of agency in peak oil narratives becomes more visible when compared to mainstream liberal environmentalism, for instance.  The latter is likely to believe that human ingenuity and innovation, along with our technical prowess provide limitless choices and opportunities to maintain our pre-peak trajectory of growing material prosperity.  American ingenuity and our spirit of freedom, they will suggest, allow us to make history as we please, especially when confronted with great challenges.  

 Peak oilers see this view as hopelessly naïve, an expression of ideological false consciousness: it fails to understand that all the technical prowess that most people believe are a result of our ingeniousness or a free society actually have more to do with our plentiful and growing supply of oil and other natural resources.  These techno-optimists don’t, to borrow David Holmgren’s  metaphor, understand that wealth comes from holes in the ground—and worse that these same holes in the ground have made possible our freedoms, our privileges, and everything else that they value. They fail to understand that energy is the true mover of history.

Peak oil narratives are brutally aware of the limits on human agency.  What little agency humans might have can only be achieved by understanding the underlying logic of history and by accepting the limits that logic imposes.  When we realize this, we won’t try to grow the economy, develop the “developing world,” depend on genetically modified seeds and chemical fertilizers, look for a new source of fuel on Mars, and so on.  Instead we will accept the coming contractions and adapt to them as best we can.

        Luckily, we don't have very many hurricanes in Oregon.   my heart goes out to the folks who are going through Hurricane Harvey.  Here is a list of charities highly rated by Charity Navigator for your consideration.   Here in Oregon, our " hurricane" is more likely to be a wildfire.   the Chetko fire is about 5 miles from Brookings.