The Bush Administration will do anything rather than admit its own faults. The U.S. is awash in wasteful cars, SUV, suburban sprawl and energy wasteful architecture. It would seen that the oil crisis is substantially the fault of the United States. That’s not the message the U.S. recently delivered to the “world,” however:

Samuel Bodman [the U.S. Energy Secretary], attending two days of meetings in northern Japan among energy chiefs from Group of Eight industrialized countries and other top economies, said the surge in world oil prices was largely a simple problem of supply and demand.

“We’re in a difficult position where we have a lid on production and we have increasing demand in the world,” he told a small group of reporters, dismissing the effects of speculation and unclear inventory levels and other factors on oil prices.

“I would devoutly hope we … see a reduction of the use of oil in the world on the one hand, and an increase in the supply so we can see some mitigation in the pressure on price,” Bodman said.

Truly, the U.S. is part of the “world.” How about an admission to the “world” that the United States has done almost NOTHING to curtail energy use since 1974.

If you stop to listen to the “solution” to the energy crisis, you’ll hear millions of people (including most politicians) reassuring themselves that coal will be the new oil, because the United States has plenty of it and because there is now a way to burn coal “cleanly.” This last claim is pure fantasy. There is no feasible way of burning coal cleanly.

There is no place in the U.S. where coal is burned cleanly. Everywhere coal is burned, tons of CO2 are thrown into the atmosphere. The plans to set up clean coal plants have been scrapped, according the NYT.

For years, scientists have had a straightforward idea for taming global warming. They want to take the carbon dioxide that spews from coal-burning power plants and pump it back into the ground. . . But it has become clear in recent months that the nation’s effort to develop the technique is lagging badly.

In January, the government canceled its support for what was supposed to be a showcase project, a plant at a carefully chosen site in Illinois where there was coal, access to the power grid, and soil underfoot that backers said could hold the carbon dioxide for eons.

Perhaps worse, in the last few months, utility projects in Florida, West Virginia, Ohio, Minnesota and Washington State that would have made it easier to capture carbon dioxide have all been canceled or thrown into regulatory limbo.

In short, “clean coal” is a fantasy.  A U.S. energy policy based on  the imminent availability of clean coal is a disaster.

Yet, simple as the idea [of clean coal] may sound, considerable research is still needed to be certain the technique would be safe, effective and affordable.

Burning coal for energy is dangerous for many reasons. The lack of any real life method of burning coal “cleanly” is one of many reasons to steer our energy policy sharply toward conservation.

Epilogue:

Jeffrey Sachs, writing in Time Magazine:

An important measure of the government’s technology commitment is the federal budget for energy research and development. According to the International Energy Agency, U.S. spending for all energy research–nuclear, wind, coal, solar, biofuels, etc.–was a meager $3.2 billion in 2006. The Pentagon spends that much in about 40 hours. Spending on carbon capture and sequestration was a mere $67 million.

I’ve been following various articles in my local newspaper and local television “news,” looking for some recognition of the seriousness of the problem with soaring energy prices. This problem is entirely predictable by reference to the simple economic relationship between supply and demand. We’ve got a finite diminishing supply of cheap energy sources on this planet coupled with skyrocketing demand. Most of us refuse, however, to acknowledge that energy prices will keep spiraling up as long as humans keep behaving the way they are behaving.

The energy crisis really has a very simple explanation–it is a basic problem with demand outstripping supply. This is also a problem with no easy solution, at least under the alleged leadership of the Bush administration. This is an Administration that doesn’t have the honesty to suggest that the citizens should cut back energy usage by carpooling or that homebuilders start thinking about building smaller, more energy-efficient homes closer to city centers. It is an administration that won’t take reasonable and necessary steps to ameliorate the current energy crisis, even though this crisis is affecting national security. If he wanted to, this president could lead America from the bully pulpit, but he won’t because he would rather look to be in control than be in control. Most politicians lack the honesty and courage to suggest that we all can and should immediately do such things such as caulk our houses, purchase energy-efficient furnaces, add insulation and otherwise make our homes more efficient so that we preserve our precious dwindling supply of oil. They could propose serious massive funding that could provide meaningful alternatives to burning oil. But our politicians and media outlooks won’t do this, because they lack the courage to tell the citizens that we are having a major league long-term energy crisis that will not just go away.

It’s not only our politicians who are failing in their leadership role. The media is too busy printing happy news, rather than telling us that substantial self-sacrifice lies ahead for Americans. Instead of giving overall meaningful context of the problem (which, admittedly, might cause a panic), my local newspaper offers only puff pieces–interviews with proprietors of local businesses (such as pizza parlors and flower shops) to see how they are getting along in spite of higher gas prices. The only “solutions” offered by my local newspaper is to drive a little less and presumably wait this thing out. Wait it out until something happens, something that will be done by someone. Never is there any indication about how serious this crisis is or that Americans do have it in their power to change things to lessen their future pain. Almost never is it suggested that we already have the knowledge to build new homes and businesses with tiny carbon footprints.

The cause of our energy problem is also found by looking in the mirror. I barely know any people who have voluntarily taken real steps to substantially reduce his or her use of energy, for instance, by bicycling or walking to work instead of driving. We don’t even take Earth Day seriously.

Americans have grown completely complacent. We are facing a dangerous energy crisis, yet very few people act as though there is anything they can do about it. Instead, we chant that the “free market” will save us, as though the “free market” is something with foresight and wisdom, and as though we can’t guide the free market.

Wolverton, Cagle Cartoons (Published with permission)

We are thus getting ever further into a dangerous energy crisis (one that is sending us into a long-term economic depression) most of what we hear that somebody, someday, will think of some new automobile or some new energy source. “They” will take care of us. In the meantime, we only need to surrender to the current circumstances. All we need to do is to hunker down and wait because things will eventually take care of themselves.

It’s like being with the people going down with with the Titanic. We’re standing around, complacently, listening to the band play and rearranging the deck chairs. Except that this need not be like the Titanic.

We’re acting complacently because everyone else is acting complacently. We can do someone about our predicament, if only we had honest and courageous leadership.

There’s a lot of bad information floating around on the Internet.  For instance, many conservatives blame environmental regulations, but this argument is way off base.   Why?  Because 75% of the cost of gasoline is in the cost of the crude oil, not in the refining.

At Salon.com, Andrew Leonard spells it all out succinctly:

But questions about refinery capacity, environmental regulations and Balkanization of the overall market shrivel when compared with the real force responsible for the dramatic rise in gas prices over the past eight years. Far and away, the largest factor contributing to the total price of a gallon of gasoline in California (and anywhere else in the United States) is the cost of crude oil.

Nate Beeler, The Washington Examiner

Mike Lester, The Rome News-Tribune

Parker, Florida Today

Pavel Constantin, Romania

Parker, Florida Today

An enthusiastic conservation effort, coupled with a wide variety of alternative sources of energy, will soften the blow of peak oil, but it might be too little too late.   And it’s incredibly difficult to get people to actually do something serious about conserving energy (see Janisse Ray’s “Altar Call for True Believers” at Orion Magazine).  In my experience, most people don’t give a damn about our long-term energy situation, not even many of the people who preach that hard times might be right around the corner.

Many Americans refuse to consider serious conservation.  It feels like surrender to them.  It’s wimpy and shameful.  I understand this emotion, but if we want to keep using wasteful amounts of energy, we’ll have to find it somewhere.  Many people suggest coal.  Coal is dirty and dangerously toxic, in addition to being a fossil fuel that drives global warning.  We have limited options for generating levels of energy that we’re currently generating.

What other energy source exists in ample supply?  Did someone say “nuclear power”?  We’re seeing more and more people look to nuclear because there is really no where else to go (given that we’re not willing to wean ourselves of the extravagant use of energy).

Here are two viewpoints on the nuclear issue.  The first is from Rebecca Solnit’s article in Orion Magazine, entitled “Reasons Not to Glow.”

[E]very stage of the nuclear fuel cycle is murderously filthy, imparting long-lasting contamination on an epic scale; that a certain degree of radioactive pollution is standard at each of these stages, but the accidents are now so many in number that they have to be factored in as part of the environmental cost; that the plants themselves generate lots of radioactive waste, which we still don’t know what to do with—because the stuff is deadly . . . anywhere . . . and almost forever.

Solnit was reacting to a position now held by James Lovelock, the former anti-nuclear power advocate.  Lovelock’s conversion (and the conversions of other prominent environmentalists) is reported by Gwyneth Cravens, published in Discover Magazine, in an article entitled, “Is Nuclear Energy our Best Hope?” Here’s an excerpt:

Lovelock explained that his decision to endorse nuclear power was motivated by his fear of the consequences of global warming and by reports of increasing fossil-fuel emissions that drive the warming. Jesse Ausubel, head of the Program for the Human Environment at Rockefeller University, recently echoed Lovelock’s sentiment. “As a green, I care intensely about land-sparing, about leaving land for nature,” he wrote. “To reach the scale at which they would contribute importantly to meeting global energy demand, renewable sources of energy such as wind, water, and biomass cause serious environmental harm. Measuring renewables in watts per square meter, nuclear has astronomical advantages over its competitors.” All of this has led several other prominent environmentalists to publicly favor new nuclear plants.

The United States and the European Union have taken a “criminal path” by contributing to an explosive rise in global food prices through using food crops to produce biofuels, the United Nations special rapporteur on the right to food said today.At a press conference in Geneva, Jean Ziegler of Switzerland said that fuel policies pursued by the U.S. and the EU were one of the main causes of the current worldwide food crisis.

The Special Rapporteur warned of worsening food riots and a “horrifying” increase in deaths by starvation before reforms could take effect.

For the full article, visit Common Dreams.

The best way to get people to neglect a cause is to dedicate a Special Day to that cause each year. On that one special Day, we will hold thousands festivals where we treat the cause in a trite way and we will ignore that cause the other 364 days. We’re just too busy with our amusements and distractions to give a damn about important things here in America. Earth Day fits the mold perfectly. You would think that at Earth Day festivals, people would take the purpose of Earth Day seriously. You’d think that people would feel the need to make substantial immediate changes in their lives in order to live and procreate in healthy and sustainable ways, leaving the planet in good shape for the following generations of humans and the other animals. What could be done on Earth Day? We could talk big. We could make real plans to take the actions suggested by visionaries like Lester Brown, who proposes that we cut carbon emissions by 80% by 2020. It could really be done. Here’s how Brown describes his plan in his book, Plan B 3.0:

First, dramatically and systematically raise the efficiency of the world energy economy; second, massive investment in renewable sources of energy; and third, increase the earth’s tree cover by planting billions of trees.

Really doing something on a big scale could “inspire awareness of and appreciation for the Earth’s environment.” But most people aren’t doing anything at all. They are content to live the same wasteful lives people lived 20 years ago.

I discussed Earth Day with several people recently (in stores, not at the Earth Day festival). They rolled their eyes when I suggested the need to actually change the way we live our lives. They think that Earth Day is run by a bunch of hippies and they don’t trust hippies.

Even those who don’t scoff at the idea of Earth Day mostly believe in belief in Earth Day (just like most religious believers, who often believe in belief). Many Earth Day’ers believe it’s sufficient to merely say and think responsible things, even if the way they live their lives are indistinguishable from those who don’t believe in Earth Day. Many of these people celebrating Earth Day drive to Earth Day festivities in SUV’s from their homes way out in the Suburbs. When they’re done shopping at Earth Day (and there are lots of non-essential things to buy at Earth Day), they drive back out to the suburbs. This inaction reminds me of a neighbor who mentioned a topic to which I responded “That really concerns me.” He immediately chastised me: “No it doesn’t. If you were actually concerned, you’d be doing something about it.” (more…)

Tell them what Architecture 2030 says about coal:

Because coal is the only fossil fuel plentiful and supposedly cheap enough to push the planet to 450 parts per million (ppm) of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere.  Because reaching 450 ppm (or possibly less) triggers potentially irreversible glacial melt and sea level rise.

Because 53% of Americans live in and around coastal cities and towns and, beginning with just one meter of sea level rise, many of these cities and towns will be inundated.

Scientists are forewarning that at approx. 450 ppm CO2 in the atmosphere, we will trigger potentially irreversible glacial melt and sea level rise “out of humanity’s control.” We are currently at 385 ppm, and are increasing atmospheric concentrations of CO2 at approx. 2 ppm annually.  At this growth rate, we will reach 450 ppm in 2035 . . .

In the US, there are over 600 existing coal plants and 151 new coal plants in various stages of development.

Tell them that there is a smarter and better way.   And a cleaner way.  Tell them that mining coal is not only ugly, it’s dangerous for miners and everyone else.

Tell them to take a close look into a train car full of coal (as I did yesterday) and to ask themselves if coal looks like the fuel of the future. 

I thought about coal as I noticed a train loaded with coal go by (I took these photos).  I thought about how little most people know about coal yet how politicians and their constituents don’t have the dangers of coal on their radar.   Some of these dangers are set forth in my earlier post, The Banality of Burning Coal.   

I’ve been told by a man who works with the biggest electric company in St. Louis that each coal burning plant eats an entire train full of coal each day.  That is confirmed by Wikipedia:

Coal is delivered by highway truck, rail, barge or collier ship. A large coal train called a “unit train” may be two kilometers (over a mile) long, containing 100 cars with 100 tons of coal in each one, for a total load of 10,000 tons. A large plant under full load requires at least one coal delivery this size every day.

Most people I speak with resist serious energy conservation as a matter of principle.  Many conservatives belittle conservation, as though it is a matter of weakness.  They scoff at conservation.  When I bring up global warming, they deny it.  When I bring up peak oil, they have no logical response.  They resist energy conservation as if they were 3 year olds whining that they don’t want to try a new sort of food that their parents put on their plates.   It’s an irrational emotional resistance (not that emotions are always irrational) that is endangering our economy.  Conservation is one-half of the solution out of this big mess. (more…)

In the April 3, 2008 addition of Nature (available online only to subscribers), an article entitled “Architects of a Low-Energy Future” indicates that we can do a much better job in building energy-efficient structures.  This opportunity is critically important (as discussed in an earlier post regarding architect Ed Mazria of the highly accomplished non-profit Architecture 2030) because buildings worldwide account for approximately 45% of total energy consumption, more than “all the world’s cars and trucks put together.”

How much better can we design buildings?

The most efficient of the structures are almost completely passive, meaning they require very little, if any, traditional heating or air conditioning.  Yet the overall comfort they provide is, if anything, superior to existing buildings.  Nor is there necessarily a cost penalty: these ultra-energy-efficient buildings are often no more expensive to build than conventional structures, and they work out far cheaper if energy bills during their occupation are taken into account.

The hurdles to building these energy-efficient structures do not involve engineering challenges or lack of materials.  The major impediments to developing energy efficiency in buildings can be found in “our institutional barriers and market failures rather than technical problems.”

Another big problem is that high energy efficiency is too often not on the client’s radar, and architects are geared to simply giving the clients only what the client wants.  This is a shame, as the article points out, because “the biggest payoffs will come from new buildings, where ultralow energy can be designed in from the beginning.”  If it is not designed in from the beginning, the work of trying to make the building energy-efficient is much more difficult.  Retrofitting generally has to rely upon “bolting on energy intensive air conditioning, heating, and artificial lighting.”

Reading this article, I was astounded by how much energy a good building design can save.  Take, for instance, heating and cooling.  Most people pour lots of energy into their heating and air-conditioning systems.  It was eye-opening to learn that most of this cost is not necessary.  With high efficiency installation, glazing, and “thermal bridges” to prevent wasteful energy transfers to the outside, high-efficiency buildings show their “impressive gains in negawatts.”

The building can get its heating from the solar gains through glazing as well as through waste heat from appliances and even our bodies.

Another key technique for temperature control and passive houses is that first counterintuitive: simply let fresh air and from the outside.  A pump draws fresh air through a grid of pipes several meters underground, where the temperature is relatively constant throughout the year, 10-14 degrees centigrade . . .  When this fresh air arrives at the house, its temperature has already been modulated–warmed up or cool down by the ground, depending on the season . . . this system of air base cooling and ventilation not only saves energy by recycling heat, but vastly improves air quality.

Jeff Christian is the head of buildings technology Center at the Oak Ridge national laboratory.  His job is to design cheap and energy-efficient homes for low income families.  He is convinced that “cheap, low energy houses will take off in United States only if the government steps in:  “The financial incentives we need to drive this are not in place.”

Getting highly efficient buildings actually built sounds like another place where the invisible hand needs a hand.

Raymond Learsy reports on one aspect of post-oil:

Renault Nissan, and California-based Project Better Place, are working together with the government of Israel to make the country oil independent by 2020. Denmark has already signed on to implement the sinews of this major electric car initiative.

In broad outline, Renault Nissan will build cars powered by lithium-ion batteries running purely on electricity and delivering performance on par with a 1.6 liter gas engine. These electric car models will become available as of 2011. A key component will be the preparation and development of a national infrastructure to access electric power. “Project Better Place” will arrange for the installation of 500,000 charging hook-ups throughout Israel. It is estimated electric power charging costs for the lifetime of this car will approximate the cost of fueling an equivalent gasoline powered vehicle for some two years at current gasoline prices.

Denmark plans to provide the power supply for electric cars with wind power. Israel is planning huge mirrors in the Negev Desert to capture the solar energy needed for its electric cars. With an extensive grid of plug-in locations there will be no need for lengthy charge periods so that charging up shouldn’t take much more time than tanking up currently.

Price Of Oil
Bob Englehart, The Hartford Courant

Our Saudi Friends
Keefe, The Denver Post

Tanking Economy
Nate Beeler, The Washington Examiner

Iraq Milestone 4000
Brian Fairrington, Cagle Cartoons

McCain and the Iraq War
Bob Englehart, The Hartford Courant

On Feb. 28, Rep. Earl Blumenauer, D-Ore. submitted House Congressional Resolution 305 for consideration to the House of Representatives: “Recognizing the importance of bicycling in transportation and recreation.” I assume that this resolution is a perfectly valid reaction to this boneheaded statement by one of Bush’s appointees.

I don’t think Blumenauer’s resolution has any chance of passing, because it suggests that some money now going for highways should actually be used to encourage people to use bicycles for their transportation needs.   God forbid that we actually encourage such a perfectly sensible mode of transportation.  You know the arguments, prevents obesity, uses no fossil fuel, cheap, is perfect for urban commutes.  I’ve previously posted on some of the many reasons to use a bicycle for commuting.  There are, indeed, many reasons for doing so, especially in an urban area where many commutes are fewer than five miles.  BTW, what would a bicycle-friendly city look like?  Here’s one version.

I learned of Bluemenauer’s resolution by reading Andrew Leonard’s article in Salon.com, “Life and death and bicycling.”  Just because you use a bicycle doesn’t mean you are “green.”  Leonard includes a Sierra Club test to see how “green” you are.  I am a rather cool 92 out of 100, a very green cyclist! 

I do want to publicly thank Representative Blumenauer for bringing some much-needed attention to bicycles as a serious mode of transportation.   His resolution is chock full of statistics that should (but likely won’t) wake up those who don’t yet take bicycling seriously.   I’m pasting in, below, the full text of Bluemauer’s resolution on the importance of bicycling (here’s another place to read the full resolution):

Mr. BLUMENAUER (for himself and Mr. OBERSTAR) submitted the following concurrent resolution; which was referred to the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure

Whereas a national transportation system conducive to bicycling produces enriched health, reduced traffic congestion and air pollution, economic vitality, and an overall improved quality of living is valuable for the Nation;

Whereas by dramatically increasing levels of bicycling in United States cities tangible and intangible benefits to the quality of life for cities and towns across the country will be realized;

Whereas we now live in a Nation with 300 million people, and that number is expected to grow to 365 million by 2030 and to 420 million by 2050 with the vast majority of that growth occurring in urban areas with limited ability to accommodate increased motor vehicle travel;

Whereas since 1980, the number of miles Americans drive has grown 3 times faster than the United States population, and almost twice as fast as vehicle registrations;

Whereas one-third of the current population does not drive due to age, disability, ineligibility, economic circumstances, or personal choice;

Whereas the United States is challenged by an obesity epidemic, 65 percent of United States adults are either overweight or obese, and 13 percent of children and adolescents are overweight, due in large part to a lack of regular activity;

Whereas the Center for Disease Control estimates that if all physically inactive Americans became active, we would save $77 billion in annual medical costs;

Whereas over 753 of our Nation’s Mayors have signed onto the climate protection agreement of the United States Conference of Mayors urging the Federal Government to enact policies and programs to meet or exceed a greenhouse gas emission reduction target of a 7 percent reduction from 1990 levels by 2012;

Whereas the transportation sector contributes one-third of the greenhouse gas emissions in the United States and passenger automobiles and light trucks alone contribute 21 percent;

Whereas bicycle commuters annually save on average $1,825 in auto-related costs, reduce their carbon emissions by 128 pounds, conserve 145 gallons of gasoline, and avoid 50 hours of gridlock traffic; (more…)

In an earlier post, I argued that people need to better appreciate that dollars are fungible (see here  and here).  Why is it important to understand that dollars are fungible?  A case in point is the new American enthusiasm for turning food into fuel. Consider this report from Fortune Magazine:

The growing myth that corn is a cure-all for our energy woes is leading us toward a potentially dangerous global fight for food. While crop-based ethanol -the latest craze in alternative energy - promises a guilt-free way to keep our gas tanks full, the reality is that overuse of our agricultural resources could have consequences even more drastic than, say, being deprived of our SUVs. It could leave much of the world hungry.

We are facing an epic competition between the 800 million motorists who want to protect their mobility and the two billion poorest people in the world who simply want to survive. In effect, supermarkets and service stations are now competing for the same resources.
 
This year cars, not people, will claim most of the increase in world grain consumption. The problem is simple: It takes a whole lot of agricultural produce to create a modest amount of automotive fuel.

The grain required to fill a 25-gallon SUV gas tank with ethanol, for instance, could feed one person for a year.

And consider this additional bad news from Earth Policy Institute: 

We are witnessing the beginning of one of the great tragedies of history. The United States, in a misguided effort to reduce its oil insecurity by converting grain into fuel for cars, is generating global food insecurity on a scale never seen before.

The world is facing the most severe food price inflation in history as grain and soybean prices climb to all-time highs. Wheat trading on the Chicago Board of Trade on December 17th breached the $10 per bushel level for the first time ever. In mid-January, corn was trading over $5 per bushel, close to its historic high. And on January 11th, soybeans traded at $13.42 per bushel, the highest price ever recorded. All these prices are double those of a year or two ago.

As a result, prices of food products made directly from these commodities such as bread, pasta, and tortillas, and those made indirectly, such as pork, poultry, beef, milk, and eggs, are everywhere on the rise. In Mexico, corn meal prices are up 60 percent. In Pakistan, flour prices have doubled. China is facing rampant food price inflation, some of the worst in decades.

Here’s are a few rhetorical questions to consider:  Can Americans justify filling up any more of those big SUV fuel tanks now that there is solid evidence that doing so will cause families on the other side of the world to suffer and die?  Can we justify cranking up the heat in the winter to stay toasty warm?  Should we merrily take long trips without considering the effects of burning this extra fuel on food prices (and thus food availability) to those people who are living on the margin?  Can we justify building more houses in the exburbs? 

We are now witnessing a collision between A) our desire to have fun and feel prestige through the discretionary buring of fuel, versus B) our ability to honestly look in the mirror to see ourselves as kind, decent and caring people.

“The free market–the invisible hand–will take care of everything.”

I’ve addressed this topic of the free market as alleged panacea several times before.  I’ve referred to this blind faith in the market as unsubstantiated.  I’ve mockingly referred to the common belief in the wisdom of the invisible hand as a belief in the Fouth Person in the Holy Quartet.  Why mock?  Because stark shortages of critically important natural resources loom in every direction.   And yet we’re in denial. You deny the denial?  Then how is it that we tolerate, this year, big U.S. metropolitan areas like Raleigh-Durham and Atlanta had only a few weeks left of their municipal water supplies?  We tolerate that we are drawing down unreplenishable water sources throughout the desert southwest.  Intelligent civilizations don’t deny such dangers.  They consciously deal with their problems.

I’ve just read a well-phrased description of why the modern version of the free market can’t save us from our problems regarding impending shortages of essential natural resources.  The following quote is from a new book available free on-line from Population Connection: PLAN B 3.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization, by environmental analyist, Lester R. Brown (2008).

Now with the economy as large as it is, the indirect costs of burning coal—the costs of air pollution, acid rain, devastated ecosystems, and climate change—can exceed the direct costs, those of mining the coal and transporting it to the power plant. As a result of neglecting to account for these indirect costs, the market is undervaluing many goods and services, creating economic distortions.

As economic decision-makers—whether consumers, corporate planners, government policymakers, or investment bankers—we all depend on the market for information to guide us. In order for markets to work and economic actors to make sound decisions, the markets must give us good information, including the full cost of the products we buy. But the market is giving us bad information, and as a result we are making bad decisions—so bad that they are threatening civilization.

The market is in many ways an incredible institution. It allocates resources with an efficiency that no central planning body can match and it easily balances supply and demand. The market has some fundamental weaknesses, however. It does not incorporate into prices the indirect costs of producing goods. It does not value nature’s services properly. And it does not respect the sustainable yield thresholds of natural systems. It also favors the near term over the long term, showing little concern for future generations.

Dick Cavett once said: “It’s a rare person who wants to hear what he doesn’t want to hear.”  Plan B 3.0 is the kind of information that those rare people ambivalently clamor to hear.    It’s clearly written and well documented.  There’s nothing shrill in Lester Brown’s book; just the facts—lots of facts that paint a dire picture.  Over and over, humans are overexploiting precious resources, and the situation is getting dangerous in many ways.  What’s at stake?  You name it.  Oil, food, water, forests, health, fisheries.   On the topic of fisheries, did you know that there are essentially no cod to be caught in the North Atlantic Ocean any more?   Gee, how did that happen?  Why didn’t the “free market” protect the North Atlantic Ocean?

Brown argues that we need to dramatically change the way we live and consume.   He argues that the “free market” is not a cure, unless we first make the true costs of over-exploitation visible and force purchasers to pay the full price.   We need to “Get the market to tell the ecological truth.” For example, the true cost of a gallon of gas is not $3/gallon, but more like $12/gallon. (more…)

This fellow claims to have lots of important statistics displayed on a big real-time dashboard.   Assuming his data to be accurate (I don’t have any reason to dispute it), it’s especially interesting to hit the “Now” button to reset this “World Clock,” then to watch the numbers grow from zero.  

Though I’ve often discussed world oil depletion, I’m amazed to see the number of barrels of oil pumped every minute.  

This Slate article is from 2005, but the topic is one that desperately needs to be reported accurately. It’s about ethanol, and the story is that it takes much more energy to make ethanol than one can get from ethanol.

Ethanol won’t significantly reduce our oil imports; adding more ethanol to our gas tanks adds further complexity to our motor-fuel supply chain, which will lead to further price hikes at the pump; and, most important (and most astonishing), it may take more energy to produce a gallon of ethanol than it actually contains.

If you find these these claims to be disturbing, check out these additional statistics produced by David Pimental, a Cornell University agricultural expert.  Ethanol can only “work” with massive government subsidies.  Ethanol is not quite the panacea it is touted to be by politicians and the corporate media, eh?  Here’s one of the shockers:

If all the automobiles in the United States were fueled with 100 percent ethanol, a total of about 97 percent of U.S. land area would be needed to grow the corn feedstock. Corn would cover nearly the total land area of the United States.

With numbers like these, why isn’t conservation constantly promoted on page one of every newspaper?

Scientific American has just published a comprehensive article on how to switch the United States substantially over to sunlight. The headline: “By 2050 solar power could end U.S. dependence on foreign oil and slash greenhouse gas emissions.”

The cost of this immense clean-energy-producing plan would be $420 billion. That’s a HUGE amount of money. Where could we EVER get that sort of money? Oh, yeah. The U.S. has already spent that much on the Iraq debacle. For the amount of money that we’ve wasted in Iraq, we could have already funded a great way to wean ourselves from mideast oil.

Now, specifically, what could $420 Billion buy if one spent it wisely? It’s an incredible investment that would pay for itself over and over. Here are the highlights of the plan, according to the Scientific American article:

Solar plants consume little or no fuel, saving billions of dollars year after year. The infrastructure would displace 300 large coal-fired power plants and 300 more large natural gas plants and all the fuels they consume. The plan would effectively eliminate all imported oil, fundamentally cutting U.S. trade deficits and easing political tension in the Middle East and elsewhere. Because solar technologies are almost pollution-free, the plan would also reduce greenhouse gas emissions from power plants by 1.7 billion tons a year, and another 1.9 billion tons from gasoline vehicles would be displaced by plug-in hybrids refueled by the solar power grid. In 2050 U.S. carbon dioxide emissions would be 62 percent below 2005 levels, putting a major brake on global warming.

The plan would include photovoltaic farms, pressurized caverns for storing the solar power, concentrated solar power (using numerous mirrors to focus the light as heat) and long-distance direct current transmission systems (because most of the solar power would be produced in the desert Southwest, far from major cities.

I ran across a site I’m really enjoying, No Impact Man.  Who is “No Impact Man”?  He is a fellow who got tired of only talking about living an ecologically responsible lifestyle:

I am no eco-expert. I am just a liberal schlub who got sick of not putting my money where my mouth was. In a way, the whole project is a protest against my highly-principled, lowly-actioned former self. I’m fumbling through, trying to do my best and doing the research as I go along. This blog is my attempt to tell you how it’s going.

Ok.  It’s time to walk the walk.  But what is the plan? 

Stage one was figuring out how to live without making garbage: no disposable products, no packaging, etc. Stage two was figuring out how to cause the least environmental impact with our food choices. Stage three is figuring out how to reduce our consumption to only what is necessary and how to do that sustainably. The whole thing gets harder and harder as we add each stage.

The site is a bubbling ferment of practical tips on living an ecologically responsible lifestyle.  Here are a ton of tips, in a post called “Cure the Planet’s Fever.”  And why vacation far from home?  After all, there are “Opportunities in the Crisis.”  And here are a bunch of tips for not making trash. 

But can you take this living responsibly stuff too far?  No Impact Man says “yes”:

This point, “the goal,” is really just the place where you are really conscious of what you use. You don’t take things for granted. You understand that your actions have consequences for other people and the planet. It is the point between asceticism and waste, between self-denial and self-indulgence. It is the place of balance.

I can already see many people scoffing at this site, the same people who are going to be doing many of these things in ten years.  That is the way the (warm) wind is blowing.  We’re all going to have to live smarter and lighter if we’re going to thrive.  

On Bill Moyers’ Journal, Bill Moyers discussed this multifaceted issue with Kathleen Hall Jamieson, a professor at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania. 

This video is well worth watching for many reasons.  The introduction includes a clip of John F. Kennedy’s 1960 speech to Southern Baptist preachers to answer their opposition to a Catholic president.  Kennedy’s understanding and articulation of the wall between church and state is inspirational. 

Watching this video, I learned of the “You Choose” site within youtube.com, where you can watch the candidates speaking on issues, side by side.  For instance, here are the candidates’ positions on energy independence. (check out Barack Obama’s position on energy in a speech he gave in Detroit.  In my opinion, he is one of the few candidates that “gets it.”).

Jamieson and Moyers spend substantial time analyzing the “avalanche of misogyny” aimed at Hillary Clinton, some of these attacks Bible-based, many of them verging on pornographic (here’s another site documenting these attacks).  Here’s a sampling of the discussion between Moyers and Jamieson:

KATHLEEN HALL JAMIESON:  [U]nderlying many of these assertions is the assumption that any woman in power will, by necessity, entail emasculating men and, as a result, a statement of fundamental threat.

So, why shouldn’t you vote for Hillary Clinton? Well, first, she can’t be appropriately a woman and be in power. She must be a man. Hence, the site that says Hillary Clinton can’t be the first woman president; Hillary Clinton’s actually a man. But also explicit statements that suggest castrating, testicles in lockbox. She’s going to emasculate men. It’s a zero-sum game in which a woman in power necessarily means that men can’t be men.

BILL MOYERS: And you can’t use your uterus and your brain. That’s the old argument, right? You can’t be caring and tough. That’s the old argument against women, right?

KATHLEEN HALL JAMIESON: Well, and at one time there was actually an argument that if women became educated, they would become infertile. There was also, for a long period of time, serious penalties for women who tried to speak in public. And the residue of this is a language that suggests that women in power cannot be women and be in power. And as a result, as Hillary Clinton certifies herself as being tough enough to be president, competent enough to be president, these attacks say then she can’t be president because she’s not actually a woman. And you can’t trust someone who is that inauthentic. So underlying this and underlying the vulgarity and underlying the assertions of raw sexual violence is deep fear about a woman holding power.

Two can live more energy-efficiently than one, according to this article from New Scientist: 

“Divorced households are smaller than married households, but consume more land, water, and energy per person than married households,” says Jianguo Liu of Michigan State University in East Lansing, US, who carried out the 12-country analysis with colleague Eunice Yu.

In the US, for example, 627 billion gallons of water, the use of 38 million rooms, and 734 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity would have been saved in 2005 alone if no-one had got divorced.

In the same year, divorced households spent 46% more on electricity and 56% more on water per person than if they had stayed married. And following a split, US households consumed 42 to 61% more resources per person than while married.

Being married isn’t the only way to live together, of course.  This article points to our energy-expensive future as one where people will more readily share living spaces.  Master bedrooms in the 1950’s were about 130 square feet.  In moderately priced new homes, master bedrooms now measure 300 square feet.  Right after WWII, the average new house was 750 square feet.  Now, it’s almost 2,500 square feet.  We have insatiable cravings for more stuff and bigger stuff.  If energy continues to rise dramatically in cost, large suburban houses will become more of a challenge to maintain by small families or single people.

What else uses lots of energy?  According to a second article at New Scientist, the answer is storing computer data on a server, which is about as energy efficient as driving an SUV:

Global Action Plan, a UK-based environmental organisation, publishes a report today drawing attention to the carbon footprint of the IT industry in the UK.

“Computers are seen as quite benign things sitting on your desk,” says Trewin Restorick, director of the group. “But, for instance, in our charity we have one server. That server has same carbon footprint as your average SUV doing 15 miles to the gallon. Yet, whereas the SUV is seen as a villain from the environmental perspective, the server is not.”

This second article fails to note an important mitigating point: providing data with computer server actually saves lots of energy compared to providing that information in the form of catalogues, reports and other hard copy paper forms that would need to be delivered by using fossil-fuel burning vehicles.  For example, the server used by Dangerous Intersection is shared by numerous other web sites.  On a typical day, DI alone is visited by 2,500 people who view about 8,000 pages of information.  This total sometimes rises to more than 10,000 people.  Consider whether there is a more energy-efficient method of distributing information.

On the other hand, the report does call attention to the enormous amount of energy consumed by computers: 

The global IT sector is responsible for about 2% of human carbon dioxide emissions each year – a similar figure to the global airline industry.

In October 2007, James E. Hansen testified with regard to an application to build a new coal-burning plant in Iowa.  Hanson is the Director of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies and senior scientist in the Columbia University Earth Institute.  He said some harsh things about our substantial dependence on coal:

Global warming from continued burning of more and more fossil fuels poses clear dangers for the planet and for the planet’s present and future inhabitants. Coal is the largest contributor to the human-made increase of CO2 in the air. Saving the planet and creation surely requires phase-out of coal use except where the CO2 is captured and sequestered (stored in one of several possible ways).

Hundreds of millions of people live less than 20 feet above sea level. Thus the number of people affected would be 1000 times greater than in the New Orleans Katrina disaster. Although Iowa would not be directly affected by sea level rise, repercussions would be worldwide. Ice sheet tipping points and disintegration necessarily unfold more slowly than tipping points for sea ice, on time scales of decades to centuries, because of the greater inertia of thick ice sheets. But that inertia is not our friend, as it also makes ice sheet disintegration more difficult to halt once it gets rolling. Moreover, unlike sea ice cover, ice sheet disintegration is practically irreversible . . .

The biologist E.O. Wilson (2006) explains that the 21st century is a “bottleneck” for species, because of extreme stresses they will experience, most of all because of climate change. He foresees a brighter future beyond the fossil fuel era, beyond the human population peak that will occur if developing countries follow the path of developed countries and China to lower fertility rates. Air and water can be clean and we can learn to live with other species of creation in a sustainable way, using renewable energy. . .

Coal will determine whether we continue to increase climate change or slow the human impact. Increased fossil fuel CO2 in the air today, compared to the pre-industrial atmosphere, is due 50% to coal, 35% to oil and 15% to gas. As oil resources peak, coal will determine future CO2 levels. Recently, after giving a high school commencement talk in my hometown, Denison, Iowa, I drove from Denison to Dunlap, where my parents are buried. For most of 20 miles there were trains parked, engine to caboose, half of the cars being filled with coal. If we cannot stop the building of more coal-fired power plants, those coal trains will be death trains – no less gruesome than if they were boxcars headed to crematoria, loaded with uncountable irreplaceable species.

[Emphasis added]. Hansen’s comments led to these comments by David Roberts of Grist:  (more…)

How can we save up to 6% of our total electricity usage? Dry our clothes outside–hang them on clothes lines.  Unless the neighbors try to interfere, as described by this article from Time Magazine. 

Yes, there are people who want to do their part to lower their carbon footprint.

But on the other side are people who oppose air-drying laundry outside on aesthetic grounds. Increasingly, they have persuaded community and homeowners associations (HOAs) across the U.S. to ban outdoor clotheslines, which they say not only look unsightly but also lower surrounding property values. Those actions, in turn, have sparked a right-to-dry movement that is pressing for legislation to protect the choice to use clotheslines.

The article notes that 3 states limit the ability of Homeowner Associations to ban clothelines (Florida, Hawaii and Utah).  North Carolina is working to be a fourth state, but the effort is drawing opposition from HOA’s and the real estate industry.

Imagine the excitement if scientists suddenly announced that there was a new as-yet-undiscovered energy source that would provide six percent of all the electricity in the United State without any environmental drawback.   It would be the front page of every newspaper.  Here’s an equivalent idea that, unfortunately, meeting with derision by short-sighted people who obsess about a stilted idea of appearances.   So , is a clothes line ugly?

Project Laundry List’s [Alexander Lee] dismisses the notion that clotheslines depreciate property values, calling that idea a “prissy sentiment” that needs to change in light of global warming. “I understand the need for communities to legislate taste, but people always find a way around it,” he says. “The clothesline is beautiful–gorgeous, sentimental and nostalgic for many.

The quote featured on the homepage of Project Laundry List?  It’s by Benjamin Franklin:

We must all hang together, or most assuredly we will all hang separately.

Cartoons often communicate complex political ideas faster and better than prose.  For this reason, DI recently purchased a license from Cagle Cartoon Syndicate in order to reprint the cartoons of some of the best cartoonists in the business.  We are proud to support this work.  Today’s topic is oil. 

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Clever packaging here.   The site, sponsored by Sustainability, asks