EV NV

I'd love to save the world

but I don't know what to do

so I leave it up to you

    - Ten Years After

We were waist deep in the big muddy

And the big fool said to push on

    -Pete Seeger
 -----

Greetings

      If you are thinking about getting an electric car, in order to help slow climate change, like I am,  it's worth taking a look an this interview. (Below) .  It helped me think about it in a different way. 

     Here's what I'm thinking.. As everyone knows, our situation isn't too good.  We've got a small carbon budget (perhaps smaller than we think), and we need to reduce emissions immediately., and probably  by 10% each year for ten years, in order to have any chance is staying under 2 degrees.

    So should I buy that EV, and cut my annual  emissions substantially?  Would that help?   

      Let's use the numbers from this study  (rounded to make the math easier)  The ICE has a life cycle footprint of 24 tons,  the EV 19.. The emissions associated with production of the vehicles (including mining and smelting) are 6 tons for the ICE and 8 for the EV.   The emissions associated with operation of the vehicles are about 1 ton /yr for the ICE and .5 tons/yr for the EV.       (If someone has a better study let me know)    

     So, over the life of the car, the EV has a lighter footprint.  That's good.    But, when you buy a new EV, the carbon is "front loaded". Half of it comes in the first year.    So, in year one,  my carbon emissions will not go down , but will rise from .5 tons  to 8 tons - by 1600 %!    , In fact, the EV wouldn't start saving carbon until year 15!.  (Assuming I could keep my  6 year old ICE running another 15 years.)    If I was a first time buyer, the math would different - but because of the EV's higher emissions in making the car, it still wouldn't do better than an ICE until year 8.

     So, what?  The EV is still better isn't it? Yes, but...  The problem is, we don't need to reduce carbon emissions  in year 8 or year 15, we need to do it now. 

    Probably switching the fleet to electric would have been a good policy 20 or 30 years ago.  Then we had plenty of carbon to spend , because our carbon budget was bigger.  But we spent all the carbon.  And there is very little in the bank.   

 I'm not sure we can afford an EV

      So, as my friend Dorthy says about her Prius, " The only thing green about this car, is the paint job"

     

     

 ---------

Power Shift Away From Green Illusions

Monday, 08 April 2013 09:25By Steve Horn, Truthout | Interview

Every day, the news about climate change and the harms that are sure to accompany it gets worse and worse. To many environmentalists, the answer is simple:power shift. That is, shift from fossil fuels to clean, green, renewable, alternative energy. Well-meaning concerned citizens and activists have jumped on the bandwagon.

The problem with this simple solution: Things aren’t as simple as they seem, and "there's actually no such thing as a free lunch" when it comes to energy consumption and production. Further, what we're often sold as "green" and "clean" is actually neither. In the spirit of these inconvenient truths came a timely and provocative book, perhaps missed by many, titled, "Green Illusions: The Dirty Secrets of Clean Energy and the Future of Environmentalism," by Ozzie Zehner.

As Zehner writes in the book's opening pages, "...this certainly isn't a book for alternative energy. Neither is it a book against it. In fact, we won’t be talking in simplistic terms of for or against, left and right, good and evil ... Ultimately, this is a book of shades." The book does show some of the "shady" sides of the clean energy hype and in so doing, dampens the hype around it.

Having recently read the book myself, I decided to contact Ozzie and ask him follow-up questions. Below is a transcript of our email conversation, which unfolded over the past few months.

Steve Horn for Truthout: If you had to give an elevator pitch to someone about what's wrong with the current US environmental movement, what would you say and why?

Ozzie Zehner: I would say that the environmental movement has relegated itself to cheerleading and mindless chants and that it's time for us to step away from the pom-poms. I encounter a boundless enthusiasm for creating positive change when holding dialogues with environmental groups. Unfortunately, the mainstream environmental movement is channeling that energy into an increasingly corporatist, and what I call a "productivist," set of priorities.

Now I admit, it's difficult to say we've ever had a truly transformational environmental movement, but if you go back 50 years, activists were at least on a far better path. Prominent environmentalists were living modestly, challenging dominant economic assumptions, and imagining durable strategies for human prosperity that were more in tune with the non-human planet. That humility has largely eroded.

The modern environmental movement has rolled over to become an outlet for loggers, energy firms and car companies to plug into. It is now primarily a social media platform for consumerism, growth and energy production - an institutionalized philanderer of green illusions. If you need evidence, just go to any climate rally and you'll see a strip mall of stands for green products, green jobs and green energy. These will do nothing to solve the crisis we face, which is not an energy crisis but rather a crisis of consumption.

Can wind/solar ever actually replace the fossils or is that the wrong way to think about the energy/climate conversation to begin with? If so, what are some of the right ways to start thinking about this conversation and what can be done to salvage what looks to be increasingly horrific runaway climate change?

There is an impression that we have a choice between fossil fuels and clean energy technologies such as solar cells and wind turbines. That choice is an illusion. Alternative energy technologies rely on fossil fuels through every stage of their life. Alternative energy technologies rely on fossil fuels for mining operations, fabrication plants, installation, ongoing maintenance and decommissioning. Also, due to the irregular output of wind and solar, these technologies require fossil fuel plants to be running alongside them at all times. Most significantly, alternative energy financing relies on the kind of growth that fossil fuels drive.

Take, for instance, President Obama's new Energy Security Trust. It aims to expand offshore oil-drilling operations in order to provide a tax base for alternative energy technologies, which will in turn lead to economic growth. The irony in the President's proposal is that it exposes how alternative technologies rely on economic arrangements that are themselves reliant on fossil fuels. And, if they work as advertised, these energy technologies will spur the kind of growth that will increase pressure to extract and burn fossil fuels well into the future.

There's a misconception that once alternative energy technologies get off the ground, they can fly on their own. But alternative energy technologies are better understood as a product of fossil fuels. It's notably more expensive to build a wind turbine today than it was a decade ago. Biofuels rely on petrochemical fertilizers and energy-intensive agriculture. And even though subsidies are driving a perceived rapid drop in solar technology costs, the larger expense of an installed solar system lies in installation, cleaning, repair, insurance and other low-tech costs, according to the largest database of field data from California.

The high cost of wind and solar technologies brings to light the fossil fuels behind the curtain. If we want to address climate change and the many other consequences of energy production, there's no evidence that lower energy costs and growth are a step in the right direction. The answer is straightforward, really. We'll need to greatly reduce both consumption and the number of people consuming over time.

You mention "productivist" and "corporatist" both here and in your book. By that do you mean neoliberal? Is the problem that the current green movement, if you want to call it that, has little understanding of the fundamentals of the current socio-economic order?

Neoliberalism, the idea that unfettered markets of privatized resources leads to prosperity, is just one human arrangement that falls under the larger umbrella of productivism. It's tempting to simply focus on critiquing markets and wealth accumulation.

There are many injustices in that realm, to be sure. But we might also talk about human procreation, the work ethic, alternative energy production, or numerous other productivist pursuits. Within these narratives runs a common theme - that which is produced is good, and those who produce it should be rewarded. This creates problems on a finite planet, to put it mildly.

Our planet has bounded resources and limited ability to absorb the impacts of human activities. Challenging the dominant neoliberal model can help to justly share those resources and risks. However, the precarious stories around growth and productivism are larger than just neoliberalism or capitalism.

Libertarians and Tea Partiers subscribe to the free-growth mindset, but so do Democrats and Republicans. Even Greens and Socialists are not immune to the seductive language of productivism. I know of one political candidate in the US who has run on a platform of slowing down the machine in order to preserve long-term prosperity only: Dave Gardner, who ran for mayor of Colorado Springs and directed a movie about it called Growthbusters.

We've seen material growth and prosperity walking hand-in-hand for so long that we don't know what they look like separately. That will have to change. Perhaps we'd better reorient, or at least recognize, our productivist inclinations now. Otherwise, Mother Nature may force us to reckon with our unsustainable belief systems in a less agreeable fashion.

Guy McPhersen uses the term "fossil fuel derivatives," which fits into your assessment. Is that a better way of framing the debate: fossil fuels vs. fossil fuel derivatives? There is no "clean energy" then, right? Any "silver bullet" fuel source, or is the "silver bullet" creating a different world?

The silver bullet is to envision a prosperous, yet smaller and less-consuming populous. In the modern energy system, alternative energy ends up being an alternative way to burn fossil fuel, which incurs alternative side effects and limitations. I wish it weren't so, but that's where the evidence leads.

Since wind and sunlight are free, why are wind and solar power so expensive? Solar and wind energy technologies should be very cheap - much cheaper than fossil fuels.

But they are not cheap at all. Even with massive subsidies, we see firms going bankrupt trying to sell them. And then we still have to figure in the cost of building batteries, redundant power plants or other infrastructure that arises from their low quality intermittent energy. Finally, we have to consider the mining, health, pollution and waste problems of renewable technologies. For example, we are now learning that the solar cell industry is one of the fastest growing emitters of virulent greenhouse gases such as sulfur hexafluoride, which has a global warming potential 23,000 times higher than CO2, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

There's no such thing as clean energy, but there is such a thing as less energy. Every energy generation technique has side effects and limitations. The best way to avoid these negative consequences is to use less energy overall. That strategy also has side effects and limitations, but at least those can be addressed within the laws of physics on our finite planet.

Do you believe more so in the "end of growth" point of view, espoused by Richard Heinberg and others in that school of thought?

Our future success will rest upon our ability to bring the population down over time as we also reduce per-capita consumption. How do we do that while maintaining life satisfaction?

That's the question that Richard Heinberg, Curtis White, Albert Bartlett, Paul and Anne Erhlich, Jeff Gibbs and I are asking along with theorists in the French de-growth movement and others. We certainly don't have all of the answers - far from it. There's not even much room to discuss these topics within the existing progressive movement, but I invite everyone to come join us in creating that space. The first steps are to shed our green energy illusions and to start thinking more critically about perpetual growth. Afterward, I suspect we'll be able to ask clearer questions and maybe even imagine what a truly advanced civilization might look like.

What about something like biomass or biochar, the latter of which has been touted by some environmentalists as a form of "black gold"? Will that save our asses or is there hype here?

I recently visited a new tree-burning plant on the campus of the University of British Columbia. The university brags about burning trees to fuel their rather inefficient campus buildings. The practice of burning trees goes by many carefully branded names these days: biomass, biochar, sustainable forestry, selective logging, combined heat and power, and others. Biomass proponents in Vancouver told me their plant is 1) CO2 neutral and 2) only burning waste - two of the central talking points that profit-minded industry officials leverage to bring citizens on board. But, as with other forms of marketing, they are engaging in a practice of misdirection.

It takes a minute to incinerate a tree in a biomass plant, but it takes decades to grow one. And how can that seedling grow back if you've removed the so-called "waste" materials from the forest? Research shows that forests do not grow back to their original state, of course, and that biomass plants exhaust far more CO2 than natural gas or coal plants.

If you live on an infinite planet and have a time machine, maybe biomass could be sustainable. However, on our finite world, forests are a depleting resource just like fossil fuels. They are also our lungs. That's why burning them is the fastest route to civilization collapse.

Electric cars? You devote a decent amount of space in your book explaining why they're not the answer. Why not? There have been twovery prominent documentaries which conclude that they're the saving grace.

Building a heavy box with wheels and then shoving it thousands of miles down a road requires a lot of energy. There's no physical way around that. Electric car companies haven't found a way around the physics. But they've created an illusion that they have.

Electric cars can seem clean if you're wearing some pretty substantial blinders. And if you read reports by industry, political groups, and academic departments at UC-Davis, MIT, Stanford, or Indiana University, who have partnered with industry, that's what you'll get - narrow questions that measure easily obtainable data that can be quantified within a semester. On their own, they might be a curiosity, but electric car proponents leverage these fractional studies into the spotlight to paint the whole industry green.

Fortunately, we have another point of reference to consider. Researchers at The National Academy of Sciences took a step back. They investigated the entire life cycle of an electric car and painstakingly compared its impact to epidemiological data from every county across the United States. They determined that electric cars merely create a different set of side effects. It's just that those side effects don't come out of a tailpipe, where we are accustomed to looking for them.

Overall, the researchers found no benefit to an electric car once you account for the broader array of harms - most notably those arising through manufacturing. The National Academies report is showing its age, but it's the best we've got so far because it's comprehensive and independent. It was commissioned by Congress - we paid for it - and it's co-authored by 100 of the nation's top scientific advisers. A more recentCongressional Budget Office report came to similar conclusions.

Why has the mainstream green movement gone in this direction that you describe? Is it a case of corporate funding interests behind activist groups and an accompanying case of well-intentioned activists "drinking their Kool-Aid?"

Mainstream environmental groups are exchanging their principles for power at a suspect rate of exchange. It's not just the alternative energy technologies that rely on fossil fuels. The environmental groups do, too. They rely on funding from the excess wealth accumulated as froth on the top of the fossil fuel economy. But it's not just money. There are other influences too.

Mainstream environmental groups seem transfixed by technological gadgetry and have succumbed to magical thinking surrounding their pet fetishes. The last thing you want to give to a growing population of high consumers is more "green" energy. Even if it did work as advertised, who knows what we would do with it, but it almost certainly wouldn't be good for other species on the planet or, for that matter, long-term human prosperity.

In addition to the money and magic, there are silo effects. That is, asking narrow questions that can be answered with the methods at hand. We've seen a decline in the social science and humanities as ways of knowing something about our world, as if the human spirit and the natural world were materials to be titrated in a test tube. We are afraid to ask questions that can't be answered by the clever methods we've created.

Finally, there's the influence of media, which I spend a whole chapter dissecting inGreen Illusions. Green media has become a war of press releases - a contest of half-baked models and glorified science fair experiments. It doesn't have to be this way. We can change it all if we are willing to think and inquire differently as concerned citizens.

What exactly would "de-growth" look like as a movement? Are there examples of communities/nation-states taking part in it now? And do you see any examples of it within the US itself, say, within the Occupy movement?

I can't say exactly what de-growth will look like, but I suspect it will start with a different conceptual landscape. We've built up stories around green technologies and we make comparisons that are bound to satisfy those preconceptions. As a result, we have an environmental movement that is asking the wrong questions about growth, economy, equity and global risks.

Take, for instance, the practice by mainstream environmental groups of vilifying petroleum cars in order to promote electric cars. No doubt, gas cars are expensive and dirty. They kill tens of thousands of people annually. But using them as a benchmark to judge a technology as green is a remarkably low bar. Even if researchers at the National Academies are wrong - even if electric cars someday pass over that low bar - there's another problem. How will electric cars stack up against the broader array of transportation options at hand such as transit, cycling and walking?

Subsidies for electric cars are ultimately a subsidy to car culture and the infrastructure that goes with it. Car culture is not sustainable within the limits we face to growth. The more durable transportation options are cycling and walking. But the United States Congress has nearly eliminated bike lane and pedestrian funding - even while it pays out thousands of dollars to every wealthy electric car buyer. And Congress staged this tragic national embarrassment with the full support of the nation's leading environmental organizations.

We are so far from finding solutions. We first have to change our questions. We have to stop touting green growth, green jobs, green buildings, green business, and start to interrogate assumptions that undergird the belief that material growth will lead to long-term prosperity. British Columbia's Work Less Party, along with the French de-growth movement, are shifting to different kinds of questions. Occupy, as a political ideal, is building foundations, too. As the green illusions start to unravel over the coming years, we will find opportunities to create a new environmentalism, or perhaps a rediscovered environmentalism, which I am guessing will be both frustrating and exhilarating.

Ozzie Zehner is the author of Green Illusions and a visiting scholar at University of California-Berkeley.

This article was first published on Truthout and any reprint or reproduction on any other website must acknowledge Truthout as the original site of publication 

Have the Plutocrats Figured It Out?

Once upon a time you dressed so fine

Threw the bums a dime, in your prime

Didn't you?

   - Bob Dylan ( Like a Rolling Stone ) 

I ain't no fortunate one.

     Creedence Clearwater (Fortunate Son) 

Greetings

         Well, the plutocrats are joining the party.  Listen below as various billionaires, and former cabinet members, explain the problems associated with climate change.   (see below)  Take a listen at ecoshock.   See the  report "Risky Business" here.   See a review here

      (One aspect I haven't given much thought to was the idea that it would be too hot to go outside during the day.  So we'd have to move into caves, and only come out at night.  Holy climate change Batman! )

        I think its great that our "betters" are coming on board.  They've got two out of three  - its here, and its human caused.  What I wonder about, though is number three - the one that's toughest to swallow -  what it takes to stop making it worse.   Even assuming that we have some of our " carbon budget" remaining to burn up ( but see here), the economic implications of only staying under the budget are not good.   Not merely no growth, but a shrinking economy - "degrowth" according to Kevin Anderson.. see here   If that is part of their program, it wasn't mentioned in the press conference.

      I hate to be cynical, but this just reminds me too much of one of Bruce Wayne's charity galas.   Where the elite meet, and slap each other on the back, and tell each other they are doing good.  Now Bloomberg, and Hank Paulson can hop on their jets and fly of to Martha's Vineyard, or Davos, or wherever the right people are going this season.

     I'd like to say "it's a step in the right direction.", but these folks don't propose a program, so I can't tell what direction they are heading!

     

   Bonus Stuff:   Hear Alex Smith's song "Too Hot"and help it go viral !

                           Hear an interview with Stuart Saniford of Oil Drum fame

                           Hear an interview with Dr Peter Wadhams, on the likely impacts of a methane burp.

                       

------

CRASHING CLIMATE NEWS

NOTICE! On Thursday July 10 the Radio Ecoshock server is having technical problems.Please download or listen to the new show from SoundCloud here:https://soundcloud.com/radioecoshock/crashing-climate-news

SUMMARY: Plutocrats admit U.S. economy is "Risky Business" during climate change. It will not be safe to go outside. Cambridge Polar expert Peter Wadhams on Arctic methane burst. New climate song "Too Hot". Radio Ecoshock 140709

Four years ago, on Radio Ecoshock I asked if planet Earth could get so hot, it would be dangerous for most humans to go outside on many days of the year.

Now far too soon, a new report called "Risky Business" explains the majority of Americans will experience days too hot to go out for more than an hour or so, without suffering heat stroke. Many will die. In just the South East region of the United States, by the end of this century there will be somewhere between 11,000 to 36,000 more heat deaths every year. They'll get about 130 days a year, four months, of extreme temperatures.

In the United States, as in many other parts of the world, there will be huge economic losses. Crop yields will fall as much as 50%, with some foods disappearing. It will be too hot outside to work in the fields. In fact all outdoor work, from construction to forestry, may have to be done at night.

That's the start of a long-term trend where humans may have to become more nocturnal, and build more underground, just to survive temperatures so hot they have only appeared once before on this planet. Our early mammal relatives survived only underground.

Here is what makes this report doubly shocking: it's published by top business leaders and finance experts, including Republicans. When the 1% who own most of the wealth in the world realize their own money and real estate are threatened by global warming, you know we are in trouble. But maybe that could be the turning point where we finally see some real action to move away from fossil fuels, deforestation, and agribusiness that pollutes the atmosphere with dangerous gases.

Download or Listen to this Radio Ecoshock show in CD Quality (56 MB) or Lo-Fi(14 MB)

Or listen to it now on Soundcloud.



ONE OF THE BIGGEST CLIMATE STORIES THIS YEAR!

I play you key short clips from the report press conference. You will hear former Bush Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson say the climate threat to the economy is far greater than the 2007-2008 economic crash he helped stave off. The famous New York City MayorMichael Bloomberg, himself a billionaire, explains we are heading into climate catastrophe. John Hopkins specialist Dr. Al Summers explains how heat deaths work. And Clinton Treasury Secretary Bob Rubin warns we may not even be aware of the worst to come.

Along those lines, I'll also be playing you a the audio from a new interview of Cambridge Polar expert Dr. Peter Wadhams. He says civilization is unlikely to survive if a 50 gigatonne release of methane burps out of the rapidly warming Arctic. Two scientists, one American, one Russian, have explained how that is quite possible.

Then we'll dive into the Radio Ecoshock archives, where I interview bloggers John Cook of Skeptical Science, and Stuart Staniford of Early Warning, about the science of human tolerance for heat and humidity.

I hope to have time to squeeze in my new climate song "Too Hot" - which I hope you can use as a tool to reach more people.

BUSINESS AS USUAL IS THE RADICAL GAMBLE WITH OUR FUTURE CLIMATE!

Let's get busy, with the opening remarks by Hank Paulson for the report "Risky Business,The Economic Risks of Climate Change in the United States."

This is Radio Ecoshock. We are listening to remarks made at the press release June 24th, in New York City of a stunning report on climate, human health and the economy. It's called "Risky Business". Next up is former Clinton Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin. Bob Rubin was also CEO and co-Chair of Goldman Sachs, as well as a Board member at Citigroup.

Henry Cisneros was the first Hispanic-America Mayor of San Antonio Texas, and served as Secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, or HUD, in the Clinton Administration. He's now Chairman of the CityView companies. Finally, someone in the real estate industry speaks up about the coming price carnage coming as multi-million dollar coastal properties become worthless due to rising seas and extreme storm surge.

Eventually most of Florida real estate will go under, along with the land. The Risky Business report suggests between $238 billion and $507 billion of coastal property will be lost to the sea.

Al Sommers, is the Dean Emeritus of the Bloomberg School of Public Health at John Hopkins University. Here's the short and bitter explanation of how humans die from heat.

Dean Sommers told the press: “Montana summers will soon be the same as New Mexico today.” It will become impossible to be outside there without some kind of air-conditioned suit for about 20 days a year.

Greg Page, the executive chairman of the world's largest grains company Cargill, also spoke, but frankly he used public relations talk, extolling the can-do powers of farmers to adapt to climate change. In my opinion, even Superman can't grow crops when the rain doesn't fall, or extreme heat or floods wipe out the fields.

Others who have made statements supporting this report include former United States Senator Olympia Snowe, billionaire environmental supporter Tom Steyer, and Bush-era Secretary of State and of the Treasury, George Shultz. Professor of Political Science and President of the University of Miami, Donna Shalala minced no words on the clear threat posed by climate change to her state. You can find links to all the videos, statements, and the report in my Radio Ecoshock blog at ecoshock.info. Or go to riskybusiness.org.

RISKY BUSINESS REPORT LINKS (Executive summary, press video etc)

"RISKY BUSINESS"

Executive Summary here.

Find risks in your own part of the United States here.

Press release video: http://riskybusiness.org/blog/risky-business-press-conference-live-stream [recorded for this show, with notes]

Joe Romm's take here.

Reuters article here.

More here from Bloomerg and here from UK's Daily Mail (with some good graphics).

I CAN HARDLY BELIEVE BIG MONEY HAS WOKEN TO THE CLIMATE DANGER

As I write this, it is 101 degrees F, 38 degrees C outside my door. I don't know about you, but I wasn't sure I'd live to hear top financial experts from both political parties admitting global warming is becoming an almost unstoppable catastrophe that will threaten the entire wealth structure of America and the world. I feel vindicated and even more worried at the same time.

Even by 2050, not all that far away, the average American will experience tow or three time more days over 95 degrees, or 36 Celsius. By the end of the century, that becomes about 3 months of such weather.

So what you say? First, a warmer atmosphere holds more water. This higher humidity will combine with higher temperatures to kill many of us. We can only sweat ourselves cool enough to avoid heat stroke if the heat and humidity are below certain levels. We'll find out more about that later in this program. Second, if you think air-conditioning will handle it all, consider our grid and power sources are already at the breaking point in hot weather. The price of oil, coal and gas will continue to go up as we go beyond the peak of what can be produced at reasonable prices.

We can't burn all those fossil fuels anyway, without completely roasting out the planet. Can we really expect solar and wind power to cool off all our inefficient shopping malls, office towers, homes and industrial plants? I doubt it.

THE METHANE EMERGENCY REMAINS POSSIBLE

Bob Rubin raise the problem of extreme changes that are not even quantified by the official Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. There's plenty of news from the Arctic to back that up. I could spend 3 programs just updating you on the hot Arctic, the super-heat-cell hovering over Siberia, and the giant forest fires there. But here is the head of the Head of the Polar Ocean Physics Group at Cambridge University, UK, Dr. Peter Wadhams, being interviewed by Nick Breeze for the Arctic Methane Emergency Group.

Watch that interview on You tube here.

Find the Arctic Methane Emergency Group here.

Will we get that 50 gigaton burst of methane? No one knows for sure. It could all come down to good luck, or an undersea land-slide or quake. Meanwhile, as Wadhams says, we do know more and more methane is leaking out of the frozen methane clathrates as the Arctic sea warm to extraordinary temperatures, especially with no sea ice covering. We won't even get into the methane clouds rising from land sources as the permafrost melts.

HOW HEAT KILLS

This is the Radio Ecoshock summer special on extreme heat.

Let's get the mechanics of how humans cool themselves, and why we may not be able to in a hotter and more humid world. We'll start with a slightly shortened version of my 2010 interview with John Cook, host of the popular Skeptical Science blog and video series.

Listen to or download the full John Cook interview here.

Don't forget our interview on climate and human health with Dr. Elizabeth Hanna from Australian National University. That's from our show November 27th, 2013. Here's a quick clip of Dr. Hanna on the response of the human body to extreme heat.

Download/listen to this 20 minute interview with Dr. Hanna in CD Quality orLo-Fi.

Read more about Elizabeth Hanna with links here.

Back in 2010, another enquiring mind, Stuart Staniford, looked into human trying to work in extreme heat in Pakistan. The difference of course is Pakistan has a dryer heat, whereas the rest of us will get a deadly double-dose of heat AND high humidiy. Staniford is the host of the Early Warning blog. Find the link for the full interview here.

That was Stuart Staniford, from our Radio Ecoshock interview June 11th, 2010. Find Stuart at earlywarn.blogspot.ca. Although he hasn't been blogging since January.

Radio Ecoshock was literally years ahead of the mass media in covering this issue. Be sure to stay tuned as we cover climate change and our future, as no one else does.

Find all our past programs, most of them as valid as the day they were born, as free mp3 files at our web site, ecoshock.org.

NEW SONG FROM ALEX SMITH: "TOO HOT"

So here is that song, just right for today's news and the news of tomorrow. It's called "Too Hot". I wrote this song using Ableton Live, a computer synth voice called "Blue Vox", plus voices from TextAloud.

Please forward links to this song to all your friends, and contacts in social media. We need a Twitter and Facebook barage to get out the music of climate change, and the word about this radio program. Thank you for demanding for a better world. Here is the link to share. [ https://soundcloud.com/radioecoshock/too-hot ]

China reduces local pollution, dooms climate

Greetings

     In an effort to deal with local pollution in its cities,  China is constructing a number of rural coal meg projects.   Some are quite large.

    With these projects, China could, by itself, use up the remaining carbon budget by 2050

.

"Experts estimate that if China's planned coal bases are built, the country's emissions would likely hit 10 billion tons a year—putting it on track to consume the world's remaining 349 billion tons by 2050."

See also:  Inside Climate science

http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/theres-a-coal-base-in-china-the-size-of-la

China Is Building a "Coal Base" the Size of LA

China, faced with ever-worsening pollution in its major cities—a recent reportdeemed Beijing "barely suitable for living"—is doing what so many industrializing nations have done before it: banishing its titanic smog spewers to poor or rural areas so everyone else can breathe easier. But China isn't just relegating its dirty coal-fired power plants to the outskirts of society; for years, it's been building 16 unprecedentedly massive, brand new "coal bases" in rural parts of the country. There, they won't stifle China's megacities; they'll churn out enough pollution to help smother the entire world.

The biggest of those bases, the Ningdong Energy and Chemical Industry Base, spans nearly 400 square miles, about the size of LA. It's already operational, and seemingly always expanding. It's operated by Shenhua, one of the biggest coal companies in the world. China hopes to uses these coal bases not just to host some of the world's largest coal-fired power plants, but to use super-energy intensive technology to convert the coal into a fuel called syngas and use it to make plastics and other materials. 

Syngas is healthier to breathe when burned than typical coal—but as Motherboardhas noted before, synthesizing the stuff emits nearly twice the carbon pollution. That's why when Inside Climate News, the Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative environmental outfit, traveled to China to investigate the operation, they, and a number of climate experts concluded it would "doom the climate." 

Image: Ningdong

Ningdong is the fossil fuel-guzzling centerpiece to the effort. Here's how Inside Climate's William J. Kelly describes the massive operation 700 miles west of Beijing:

Conceived in 2003, Shenhua said it broke ground in 2008 on the 386-square-mile coal base. That's an area about three-quarters the size of Los Angeles that's being covered bit by bit over a period of some 17 years with coal mines, power plants, power lines, pipelines, roads, rail tracks and all manner of chemical processing plants with their towers, smokestacks and tanks ... The project is so huge that engineers used the world's largest crane to set in place the unit that's to serve as the heart of the plant, a 2,155-ton Fischer-Tropsch synthesis reactor that's as high as a 17-story building.

Greenpeace has documented the carnage caused by the project in the region, charging that the coal plants are "triggering severe water crises in the country’s arid Northwest. This huge amount of water will be used for the water-intensive coal extraction, forcing deterioration of arid grassland and forcing herders to seek alternative livelihoods." In fact, the only limit on many of these coal plants that activists see is water itself—if they dry out the local water supplies, they won't be able to use it to extract coal.

Image: Greenpeace

It's projected to finally be finished by the end of the decade, when it will produce a jaw-dropping 30,000 MW of power, sucking down 100 million tons of coal every year in the process. And it's just one of over a dozen such sprawling operations.

As such, Ningdong does a fairly good job of epitomizing China's grave threat to the global climate system. A recent paper in Nature Climate Change noted that if all of the coal-to-gas plants get built, they'd produce 21 billion tons of CO2 alone. The Washington Post's Brad Plumer puts that in context: "The entire nation of China produced 7.7 billion tons of carbon-dioxide in 2011." Put simply, China's on a path to produce an unholy amount of carbon pollution.

Writing in Rolling Stone, Bill McKibben estimated that, based on climatologists' forecasts, humans worldwide can can only safely burn some 365 gigatons (or billions of tons) of carbon before we seriously disrupt the global climate system. Using those estimates, Kelly notes that even if China where to burn just 10 billion tons of carbon each year, that would put it "on track to consume the world's remaining 349 billion tons by 2050." After that, the table is set for runaway, or catastrophic, global warming.

China's giant coal bases, then, may very well be the largest looming threat to a stable global climate. 

Tell it like it is

Tell the truth

Tell me, whose been fooling who?

-Derrik and the Dominos

I heard it through the grapevine 

and I'm just about to lose my mind. 

-Marvin Gaye

Greetings

    Heinberg really hits it out of the park in this one.  Lots of inconvenient truths here.    Watch out, or you might step on one!   Good stuff about cherry picking,  data and studies,  putting on blinders , etc.

   I'm going to focus on two aspects.   The first one is that we can't meet the carbon buget targets and have economic growth.  That's no surprise to this group.  But Heinberg's endorsement should give it a wider circulation.   Here's what he says:

 "What if climate change is an even worse problem than most of us assume, and there is no realistic way to deal seriously with it and still have economic growth?

 

In the real world of US politics, many Democrats would agree with the first part of the sentence, many Republicans with the second. Yet both parties would flee from endorsing the statement as a whole. Nevertheless, this seems to be where the data are driving us. Actual climate impacts have consistently outpaced the worst-case forecasts that the UN’s International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has issued during the past two decades. That means curbing carbon emissions is even more urgent than almost anyone previously thought. The math has changed. At this point, the rate of reduction in fossil fuel consumption required in order to avert catastrophic climate change may be higher, possibly much higher, than the realistically possible rate of replacement with energy from alternative sources. Climatologist Kevin Anderson of the UK-based Tyndall Centre figures that industrial nations need to cut carbon emissions by up to 10 percent per year to avert catastrophe, and that such a rapid reduction would be “incompatible with economic growth.” What if Anderson is right?"  (emphasis added)

       That's not news around here.   But, it goes a long way in explaining why our government's policy is "all of the above"  and not "stay within the carbon budget"

        But, perhaps its useful to look a little closer.    No economic growth means, lower wages, lost jobs, less tax revenue.   Assuming that job, wages and benefits are roughly proportional to GDP, that means 10% less jobs wages, and benefits.       Whose wages, whose jobs, whose programs get cut?     Jobs, at universities, governments, NGO's?    Cuts in our hard won pension benefits?   Probably not, at least initially.   (  but see e.g Detroit pensions cut 10-34%   )

     Unless there is some incredible change in the way things are distributed in this country, the folks who will loose the jobs, wages, and benefits will by the (former) middle class, and proletarians.   Here's a stat from Forbes  (!) "Roughly one in three people born into middle class-households, those between the 30th and 70th percentiles of income, now fall out of that status as adults." 

 We've all seen the graphs:

 (Perhaps the carbon tax can be structured to accomplish a redistribution of income significant enough to counter balance this effect.   As far as I can tell it is not currently designed to do so - .e.g. carbontax.org " The overall effect of a carbon tax-shift could be equitable and perhaps even “progressive” (benefiting lower-earning households).  "   In order to address what Anderson described - a 10% reduction in GNP - would require significant progressivity.)

  

             Heinberg also makes a very interesting observation about substitution of "clean green" energy for fossil fuels.    There is a lot of talk about how we can do a great big build out of solar and wind and have "100% renewable power by 2030"   That sounds really good to me .    Heinberg pours a little  cold water on whether that can really be accomplished.   But he also addresses the carbon implications of such an endeavor.   Rebuilding the energy infrastructure would of course be an enormous undertaking.   The manufacture and installation  of all those turbines, and solar facilities, would create a tremendous carbon burp, during the 25 year build out period..   So, to keep the us under the carbon budget,  we would need to use less  fossil fuels for other purposes.      

      Heinberg says:

    

"The problem of transitioning quickly away from fossil fuels while maintaining economic growth is exacerbated by the unique characteristics of different energy sources.

 

Here’s just one example of the difficulty of replacing oil while maintaining economic growth. Oil just happens to be the perfect transport fuel: it stores a lot of energy per unit of weight and volume. Electric batteries can’t match its performance. Plug-in cars exist, of course (less than one percent of new cars sold this year in the US will be plug-in electrics), but batteries cannot propel airliners or long-haul, 18-wheel truck rigs. Yet the trucking and airline industries just happen to be significant components of our economy; can we abandon or significantly downsize them and grow the economy as we do so?

 

What about non-transport replacements for fossil fuels? Well, both nuclear power stations and renewable energy systems have high up-front investment costs. If you factor in all the financial and energy costs (something the solar, wind, and nuclear industries are reluctant to do), their payback time is often measured in decades. Thus there seems to be no realistic way to bootstrap the energy transition (for example, by using the power from solar panels to build more solar panels) while continuing to provide enough energy to keep the rest of the economy expanding. In effect, to maintain growth, the energy transition would have to be subsidized by fossil fuels—which would largely defeat the purpose of the exercise."  (emphasis added)"

So which US politician will be the first to propose less growth?    How about rotating brown outs to offset the carbon cost of wind turbines?    

------------------------------------------------------

The Purposely Confusing World of Energy Politics

by Richard Heinberg, originally published by Richard Heinberg's Museletter  | FEB 11, 2014

Life often presents us with paradoxes, but seldom so blatant or consequential as the following. Read this sentence slowly: Today it is especially difficult for most people to understand our perilous global energy situation, preciselybecause it has never been more important to do so. Got that? No? Okay, let me explain. I must begin by briefly retracing developments in a seemingly unrelated field—climate science.

Once upon a time, the idea that Earth’s climate could be changing due to human-caused carbon dioxide emissions was just a lonely, unpopular scientific hypothesis. Through years that stretched to decades, researchers patiently gathered troves of evidence to test that hypothesis. The great majority of evidence collected tended to confirm the notion that rising atmospheric carbon dioxide (and other greenhouse gas) levels raise average global temperatures and provoke an increase in extreme weather events. Nearly all climate scientists were gradually persuaded of the correctness of the global warming hypothesis.

 

But a funny thing happened along the way. Clearly, if the climate is changing rapidly and dramatically as a result of human action, and if climate change (of the scale and speed that’s anticipated) is likely to undermine ecosystems and economies, then it stands to reason that humans should stop emitting so much CO2. In practical effect, this would mean dramatically reducing our burning of fossil fuels—the main drivers of economic growth since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution.

 

Some business-friendly folks with political connections soon became alarmed at both the policy implications of—and the likely short-term economic fallout from—the way climate science was developing, and decided to do everything they could to question, denigrate, and deny the climate change hypothesis. Their effort succeeded: belief in climate change now aligns fairly closely with political affiliation. Most Democratic elected officials agree that the issue is real and important, and most of their Republican counterparts are skeptical. Lacking bipartisan support, legislative climate policy languished.

 

From a policy standpoint, climate change is effectively an energy issue, since reducing carbon emissions will require a nearly complete revamping of our energy systems. Energy is, by definition, humanity’s most basic source of power, and since politics is a contest over power (albeit social power), it should not be surprising that energy is politically contested. A politician’s most basic tools are power and persuasion, and the ability to frame issues. And the tactics of political argument inevitably range well beyond logic and critical thinking. Therefore politicians can and often do make it harder for people to understand energy issues than would be the case if accurate, unbiased information were freely available.

 

So here is the reason for the paradox stated in the first paragraph: As energy issues become more critically important to society’s economic and ecological survival, they become more politically contested; and as a result, they tend to become obscured by a fog of exaggeration, half-truth, omission, and outright prevarication.

 

How does one cut through this fog to gain a more accurate view of what’s happening in our society’s vital energy supply-and-support systems? It’s helpful to start by understanding the positions and motives of the political actors. For the sake of argument, I will caricature two political positions. Let’s personify them as Politician A and Politician B.

 

Politician A has for many years sided with big business, and specifically with the fossil fuel industry in all energy disputes. She sees coal, oil, and natural gas as gifts of nature to be used by humanity to produce as much wealth as possible, as quickly as possible. She asserts there are sufficient supplies of these fuels to meet the needs of future generations, even if we use them at rapidly increasing rates. When coal, oil, and gas do eventually start to run out, Politician A says we can always turn to nuclear energy. In her view, the harvesting and burning of fossil fuels can be accomplished with few incidental environmental problems, and fossil fuel companies can be trusted to use the safest methods available. And if Earth’s climate is indeed changing, she says, this is not due to the burning of fossil fuels; therefore, policies meant to cut fossil fuel consumption are unnecessary and economically damaging. Finally, she says renewable energy sources should not be subsidized by government, but should stand or fall according to their own economic merits.

 

Politician B regards oil, coal, and natural gas as polluting substances, and society’s addiction to them is shameful. He thinks oil prices are high because petroleum companies gouge their customers; nuclear energy is too dangerous to contemplate; and renewable energy sources are benign (with supplies of sunlight and wind vastly exceeding our energy needs). To hear him tell it, the only reason solar and wind still supply such a small percentage of our total energy is that fossil fuel companies are politically powerful, benefiting from generous, often hidden, government subsidies. Government should cut those subsidies and support renewable energy instead. He believes climate change is a serious problem, and to mitigate it we should put a price on carbon emissions. If we do, Politician B says, renewable energy industries will grow rapidly, creating jobs and boosting the economy.

 

Who is right? Well, this should be easy to determine. Just ignore the foaming rhetoric and focus on research findings. But in reality that’s not easy at all, because research is itself often politicized. Studies can be designed from the outset to give results that are friendly to the preconceptions and prejudices of one partisan group or another.

 

For example, there are studies that appear to show that the oil and natural gas production technique known as hydrofracturing (or “fracking”) is safe for the environment. With research in hand, industry representatives calmly inform us that there have been no confirmed instances of fracking fluids contaminating water tables. The implication: environmentalists who complain about the dangers of fracking simply don’t know what they’re talking about. However, there are indeed many documented instances of water pollution associated with fracking, though technically most of these have resulted from the improper disposal of wastewater produced once fracking per se is finished, rather than from the hydrofracturing process itself. Further, industry-funded studies of fracking typically focus on sites where best practices are in place and equipment is working as designed—the ideal scenario. In the messy real world, well casings sometimes fail, operators cut corners, and equipment occasionally malfunctions.

 

For their part, environmentalists point to peer-reviewed studies showing air, water, and human health problems associated with actual (far from ideal) fracking operations.

 

So, depending on your prior beliefs, you can often choose research findings to support them—even if the studies you are citing are actually highly misleading.

 

Renewable energy is just as contentious. Mark Jacobson, professor of environmental engineering at Stanford University, has co-authored a series of reports and scientific papers arguing that solar, wind, and hydropower could provide 100 percent of world energy by 2030. Clearly, Jacobson’s work supports Politician B’s political narrative by showing that the climate problem can be solved with little or no economic sacrifice. If Jacobson is right, then it is only the fossil fuel companies and their supporters that stand in the way of a solution to our environmental (and economic) problems. The Sierra Club and prominent Hollywood stars have latched onto Jacobson’s work and promote it enthusiastically.

 

However, Jacobson’s publications have provoked thoughtful criticism, some of it from supporters of renewable energy, who argue that his “100 percent renewables by 2030” scenario ignores hidden costs, land use and environmental problems, and grid limits (see here, here, and here. Jacobson has replied to his critics, well, energetically (here and here).

 

At the other end of the opinion spectrum on renewable energy is Gail Tverberg, an actuary by training and profession (and no shill for the fossil fuel industry), whose analysis suggests that the more solar and wind generating capacity we build, the worse off we are from an economic point of view. Her conclusion flatly contradicts that of this report, which aims to show that the more renewables we build, the more money we’ll save. Ecologist Charles Hall has determined that the ratio of energy returned to energy invested in capturing solar energy with photovoltaic (PV) panels is too low to support an industrial economy. Meanwhile the solar industry claims that PV can provide all of society’s power needs. Global wind capacity may have been seriously over-estimated. But then again, maybe not .

 

In sum, if you’re looking for quick and simple answers to questions about how much renewables can do for us, at what price, and over what time frame, forget it! These questions are far from being settled.

 

There’s a saying: For every Ph.D., there is an equal and opposite Ph.D. Does this mean science is useless, and objective reality is whatever you want it to be? Of course not. However, politics and cultural bias can and do muddy the process and results of scientific research.

 

All of this is inevitable; it’s human nature. We’ll sort through the confusion, given time and the hard knocks that inevitably come when preconceptions veer too far from the facts. However, if the more worrisome implications of climate science are right, we may not have a lot of time for sorting, and our knocks may be very hard indeed.

 

*          *          *

 

Here’s a corollary to my thesis: Political prejudices tend to blind us to facts that fail to fit any conventional political agendas. All political narratives need a villain and a (potential) happy ending. While Politicians B and A might point to different villains (oil companies on one hand, government bureaucrats and regulators on the other), they both envision the same happy ending: economic growth, though it is to be achieved by contrasting means. If a fact doesn’t fit one of these two narratives, the offended politician tends to ignore it (or attempt to deny it). If it doesn’t fit either narrative, nearly everyone ignores it.

 

Here’s a fact that apparently fails to comfortably fit into either political narrative:The energy and financial returns on fossil fuel extraction are declining—fast. The top five oil majors (ExxonMobil, BP, Shell, Chevron, and Total) have seen their aggregate production fall by over 25 percent over the past 12 years—but it’s not for lack of effort. Drilling rates have doubled. Rates of capital investment in exploration and production have likewise doubled. Oil prices have quadrupled. Yet actual global rates of production for regular crude oil have flattened, and all new production has come from expensive unconventional sources such as tar sands, tight oil, and deepwater oil. The fossil fuel industry hates to admit to facts that investors find scary—especially now, as the industry needs investors to pony up ever-larger bets to pay for ever-more-extreme production projects.

 

 

In the past few years, high oil prices have provided the incentive for small, highly leveraged, and risk-friendly companies to go after some of the last, worst oil and gas production prospects in North America—formations known to geologists as “source rocks,” which require operators to use horizontal drilling and fracking technology to free up trapped hydrocarbons. The energy returned on energy invested in producing shale gas and tight oil from these formations is minimal.While US oil and gas production rates have temporarily spiked, all signs indicate that this will be a brief boom that will not change the overall situation significantly: society is reaching the point of diminishing returns with regard to the economic benefits of fossil fuel extraction.

 

And what about our imaginary politicians? Politician A wouldn’t want to talk about any of this for fairly obvious reasons. But, strangely, Politician B likely would avoid the subject too: while he might portray the petroleum industry as an ogre, his narrative requires it to be a powerful one. Also, he probably doesn’t like to think that gasoline prices might be high due to oil depletion rather than simply the greed of the petroleum barons. Motives can be complicated; perhaps both feel the patriotic urge to cheer domestic energy production, regardless of its source and in spite of evidence of declining returns on investment. Perhaps both understand that declining energy returns imply really bad news for the economy, regardless which party is in power. In any case, mum’s the word.

 

Some facts seem to fit one narrative or the other but, when combined, point to a reality that undermines both narratives. What if climate change is an even worse problem than most of us assume, and there is no realistic way to deal seriously with it and still have economic growth?

 

In the real world of US politics, many Democrats would agree with the first part of the sentence, many Republicans with the second. Yet both parties would flee from endorsing the statement as a whole. Nevertheless, this seems to be where the data are driving us. Actual climate impacts have consistently outpaced the worst-case forecasts that the UN’s International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has issued during the past two decades. That means curbing carbon emissions is even more urgent than almost anyone previously thought. The math has changed. At this point, the rate of reduction in fossil fuel consumption required in order to avert catastrophic climate change may be higher, possibly much higher, than the realistically possible rate of replacement with energy from alternative sources. Climatologist Kevin Anderson of the UK-based Tyndall Centre figures that industrial nations need to cut carbon emissions by up to 10 percent per year to avert catastrophe, and that such a rapid reduction would be “incompatible with economic growth.” What if Anderson is right?

 

The problem of transitioning quickly away from fossil fuels while maintaining economic growth is exacerbated by the unique characteristics of different energy sources.

 

Here’s just one example of the difficulty of replacing oil while maintaining economic growth. Oil just happens to be the perfect transport fuel: it stores a lot of energy per unit of weight and volume. Electric batteries can’t match its performance. Plug-in cars exist, of course (less than one percent of new cars sold this year in the US will be plug-in electrics), but batteries cannot propel airliners or long-haul, 18-wheel truck rigs. Yet the trucking and airline industries just happen to be significant components of our economy; can we abandon or significantly downsize them and grow the economy as we do so?

 

What about non-transport replacements for fossil fuels? Well, both nuclear power stations and renewable energy systems have high up-front investment costs. If you factor in all the financial and energy costs (something the solar, wind, and nuclear industries are reluctant to do), their payback time is often measured in decades. Thus there seems to be no realistic way to bootstrap the energy transition (for example, by using the power from solar panels to build more solar panels) while continuing to provide enough energy to keep the rest of the economy expanding. In effect, to maintain growth, the energy transition would have to be subsidized by fossil fuels—which would largely defeat the purpose of the exercise.

 

Business-friendly politicians seem to intuitively get much of this, and this knowledge helps fuel their continued infatuation with oil, coal, and natural gas—despite the increasing economic problems (even if we disregard the environmental problems) with these fuels. But these folks’ way of dealing with this conundrum is simply to deny that climate change is a real issue. That strategy may work for their supporters in the fossil fuel industries, but it does nothing to avert the worsening real-world crises of extreme temperature events, droughts, floods, and storms—and their knock-on impacts on agriculture, economies, and governments.

 

So those on the left may be correct in saying that climate change is the equivalent of a civilization-killing asteroid, while those on the right may be correct in thinking that policies designed to shrink carbon emissions will shrink the economy as well. Everybody gets to be correct—but nobody gets a happy ending (at least as currently envisioned).

 

That’s because nearly every politician wants growth, or at least recognizes the need to clamor for growth in order to be electable. Because growth, after all, is how we currently define our collective, national happy ending. So whenever facts lead toward the conclusion that more growth may not be possible even if our party gets its way, those facts quickly get swept under the nearest carpet.

 

Masking reality with political rhetoric leads to delays in doing what is necessary-- making the best of the choices actually available to us. We and our political “leaders” continue to deny and pretend, walking blindly toward environmental and economic peril.

 

*          *          *

 

We humans are political animals—always have been, always will be. Our interests inevitably diverge in countless ways. Further, much of the emotional drive fueling politics comes from ethical impulses: perhaps for genetic reasons,different people assign different ethical principles a higher priority. Thus one politician’s concern for fairness and another’s passion for national loyalty can glide right past each other without ever shaking hands. Religion can also play a role in partisanship, along with the legacies of economic and social exclusion, historic rivalries, disputes, and atrocities. None of this can be dispelled with the wave of a magic wand.

 

Moreover, political engagement often leads to welcome outcomes. When people organize themselves to effect change, the result can be expansions of civil rights, women’s suffrage, and environmental protection. On the other hand, when people fail to speak up, social power tends to become monopolized by a small minority--and that never ends well. So, let’s not withdraw from politics.

 

But how to work effectively in a politically polarized environment? Hyper-partisanship is a problem in approving judicial appointees and passing budgets, and failure to do these things can have serious consequences. But when it comes to energy and climate, the scale of what is at stake runs straight off the charts. The decisions that need to be made, and soon (ideally 20 years ago!), on energy and climate may well determine whether civilization survives. The absence of decisive action will imperil literally everything we care about.

 

Energy is complicated, and there can be legitimate disagreements about our options and how vigorously to pursue them. But the status quo is not working.

 

I’ve struggled to find a hopeful takeaway message with which to end this essay.

 

Should I appeal to colleagues who write about energy, pleading with them to frame discussions in ways that aren’t merely feeding red meat to their already far too polarized audiences, encouraging them to tell readers uncomfortable truths that don’t fit partisan narratives? I could, but how many energy writers will actually read this essay, and how many of those are willing to examine their preconceptions?

 

Perhaps the best I can do is point out the existence of a small but enthusiastic subculture that actually understands these issues. This subculture is exemplified by Transition Initiatives promoting “small-scale local responses to the global challenges of climate change, economic hardship, and shrinking supplies of cheap energy” and the premise that life can be better without fossil fuels. For better or worse, this subculture is practically invisible to political elites and the mainstream media (except perhaps in parts of the UK).

 

Perhaps it’s fitting that this essay leaves both author and readers unsettled and uncomfortable. Discomfort can sometimes be conducive to creativity and action. There may be no solutions to the political problems I’ve outlined. But even in the absence of solutions there can still be better adaptive behaviors, and judo-like strategies that achieve desired outcomes—ones that could conceivably turn the tide on intractable global problems such as climate change—without directly confronting existing societal power structures. These behaviors and strategies can be undertaken even at the household scale, but we’re likely to achieve much more if we collaborate, doing what we can locally while using global communications to compare notes and share our successes and challenges.