Originally published at GetRealList
"I felt a great disturbance in the Force... as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced." --Obi-Wan Kenobi
The death of the climate bill yesterday struck the Climateers like a wet, oil-soaked dead dolphin to the face.
Their wails of despair and cries for retribution swamped my Twitter stream, as carbon cap champions learned the Democratic leadership had given up on mustering the 60 Senate votes needed to pass the bill. The political realities of Washington had stymied them once again. Nothing had changed.
The news release a few hours later that China had unveiled a $740 billion, 10-year energy plan--including all forms of energy--only rubbed salt into their wounds. There was China once again, charging ahead, doing what we should be doing, and here we were "back to Bush."
Then, true to their fundamentally political nature, the Climateers set about attacking Obama, Republicans, and the Blue Dog Democrats, trying to pin the blame for the bill's failure. The notion that there might be something inherently unworkable about carbon legislation remained taboo.
As for me, I was pleased. Perhaps, I thought, we'd now have a chance to get the policy right.
There was a time when I would have joined the mourning of my environmentally minded brothers and sisters. I supported a carbon pricing approach two decades ago. We could have had a society that was a quarter of the way down the path toward energy transition if we had done it then, instead of starting from near zero today. In fact, I supported the carbon tax approach (but not cap and trade, or cap and tax, or carbon capture and sequestration) right through the final months of 2009.
But then Copenhagen and cap-and-trade failed as I expected, and I read Empire of Illusion...and a few key insights into the problem of carbon control finally sunk in.
One, the energy business moves at glacial speed. It's the biggest business in the world and has the most powerful lobby in Washington, and it generally gets what it wants. Add in the agriculture and automobile lobbies, and it's essentially an unstoppable force. Comparatively, the lobby for alternative energy, permaculture, rail, and other solutions is a tiny speck. Call me cynical, but a few decades of watching reform fail in energy, transportation, and the environment will knock a lot of magical thinking out of your head.
Two, nearly everything that gets done in this country gets done by business, not via politics. As long as we're agreeing to play by the rules of capitalism and relying on business lobbyists to craft policy, then you have to harness that beast in order to rebuild your energy infrastructure. You have to incentivize, not penalize.
It almost seems too elementary to bother saying, but elected officials find it far easier to vote for initiatives that bring money into their districts than for anything that takes money away. Carbon capping is a penalty approach, and predictably it aroused enough resistance to sink it.
As I said last November: "It's a whole lot easier to find the financing and business support to roll out millions of little solar systems and insulation upgrades and more efficient vehicles, and so on, than it is to get a world full of politicians to agree on anything. Even after you get that agreement, you still have to build the solar systems and cars and install the insulation."
Focusing on carbon emissions is simply looking at the wrong end of the problem. Instead of trying to control what comes out of the tailpipe, we should be thinking about what we put into the engine. Even if carbon emissions legislation succeeded, it would do little about the even more pressing problem of peak oil (and peak fossil fuels in general).
If we put all our efforts into incentivizing efficiency and renewable energy, and slowly phase out the much larger incentives we put into fossil fuels, we can solve the emissions problem...only we'll wind up with more energy supply, not less, and it will be more sustainable.
All is not lost, my Green friends. We're hardly back to Bush. In fact, there is finally significant momentum going in the right direction. Lest they be lost amid the Climateers' moaning, consider these news releases from the very same day the climate bill died:
Meanwhile, momentum is building toward a slow phase-out of fossil fuel subsidies, and toward longer-range investments in renewable energy and efficiency.
China is still going to run circles around us. Policymaking by the political process is no match for a command economy. To cite just a few examples: The U.S. has committed a total of $13 billion to rail development, while China is already building a $556 billion high speed rail system that will link all of their major cities in five years. The U.S. has no energy plan, while China is embarking on a $740 billion comprehensive energy plan to see them into the future, with vigorous support for renewables. China is on track to do more about its future emissions than the U.S., even while it has just surpassed the U.S. as the world's largest consumer of energy.
It's time to rethink our strategy. We would do well to follow China's model. Instead of taking a political approach, circling the wagons around the eco-warrior camp and battling the fossil fuel industry, we should be developing a serious energy plan based on science, encompassing all forms of energy, to unite all parties in an unreserved commitment to the great task of energy transition. Because oil depletion is relentless, time is running out, competition for fuels is only increasing, and we're the most vulnerable player at the table.
Never mind carbon emissions. That game cannot be won. What we can do--and what will engender bipartisan support--is work steadily toward replacing fossil fuels with renewables, transitioning from liquid fuels to electricity, and making the most of every last BTU. If we get that right, our carbon emissions problem will take care of itself.
Until next time,
Chris
Chris Nelder is an energy expert who has spent a decade studying and writing about energy and related issues. He has written two books (Profit from the Peak and Investing in Renewable Energy) and over 750 articles on energy and investing, is a frequent media guest, and he lectures and consults with business and government on the future of energy. He blogs at GetREALList.com
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http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/25/business/global/25carbon.html?scp=7&sq=cap+and+trade&st=nyt
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/12697/64796
Carbon trading was meant to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the European Union by making polluting more expensive for heavy industries, encouraging them to invest in cleaner technology. But even supporters admit that the system, also known as cap and trade, is falling far short of that goal. Critics decry it as just another form of financial profiteering with little environmental benefit.
Tesla wants us to pay 7,000 per car by taxpayer, and have fannie and freddie give mortgage on solar cells
Here's some videos explaining fracking
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gvxFBvHRUY&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cEmadgNz9vI
Here's a video demonstrating a secondary recovery. The well on the left is a saltwater injection well that builds pressure and forces water more oil to the pumping production well
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cTyBHniLtcw&feature=related
There are plenty of Youtube animated videos to explain how this stuff is done.
Personally, I've been involved in fracing and secondary recovery since 1976 and not one (not a single one) of those wells every contaminated a fresh water well. Some of those well are only 1800' deep with the fresh water zone about 600 feet deep and have been using saltwater injection for secondary recovery since 1979 to this day.
A woldwide conversion from fossil fuels to mass produced nuclear reactors would eliminate most air pollution saving millions of lives annually, end the global warming/ peak oil problem within a ten year time frame, provide a huge job producing boost to the economy, and require only a small part of our industrial capacity.
Currently there are 57 nuclear reactors being built around the world, another 140 had been ordered and a further 150 had been proposed for 2020, so lots happening but not enough. With mass production nukes are so cheap that the payback over fossils is less than 3 years.
The US could do it with 2500 gigawatts of mass produced nukes at $2500B financed by the $800B paid every year into the coffers of Big Oil/Coal for their deadly products.
What would work best is a giant public national power authority like the Bonneville (Grand Coulee) Power Commission or TVA with one time national technical and environment certifications - no lawyers allowed - charged with replacing all the nations coal plants on site with nukes efficiently on budget and on time copying the Asian nuclear success story..
Here is Obama's opportunity to seize the moment, call the Repubs on their pronuke claims, and just maybe save the world.
http://today.caltech.edu/theater/5602_bb.ram
The "Repug" Congressman Roscoe Bartlett talks about the same problem as Goodstein: http://media.globalpublicmedia.com/RAM/2005/10/bartlett.10-17-05vid.ram
I've yet to see a democrat give a similar warning to congress.
We could get around that two decade problem by going to breeder reactors. Are you willing to allow that many plutonium generators stationed around the world?
There's 437 nuclear reactors around the world. The US operates 104 of those. Ours are more efficient, however, since we produce 1/3 of the total megawatts globally.
We use so much electricity our nukes only produce 20% (1 out of every 5 homes) of our current electrical needs. Joule for joule do you realize that the energy density of the oil we import and consume each day is equal to output of 750 nuclear power plants?
So to replace our oil consumption with nukes we first need a plan to build 750 more, and then figure out how to convert that power into a form usable for consumer transportation.
And all of that is ignores the reality that world governments are already bankrupt.
The problems we face is much bigger then we're lead to believe
The worlds current supply of nuclear waste covering a football field 40 feet deep could power the world for hundreds of years either reprocessed into MOX fuel for current generation reactors, or burned in the new GenIV units like India's new 500 MW plant. It is also possible to use 5 times as abundant as uranium - thorium - as fuel in molten salt and conventional reactors. Heavy water reactors like the Candu can also use thorium fuel loads to breed U233 reactor fuel. Areva claims MOX fuel is already as cheap as enriched uranium.
It is so impractical to used the plutonium isotopes from modern power reactors to make nuclear weapons, that nobody has ever done it.
As we convert to nukes, NG electricity and heating applications would immediately convert to nuclear electricity. The freed up gas would be available to make CNG, methanol, DME (propane), and synfuel transportation fuels as we transition to nuclear produced synfuels and electric vehicles.
The revised energy bill has a provision to do just that. CNG vehicle fuel is widely available at a buck a gallon equivalent in the enlightened state of Utah.
Very little government money is required. Perhaps, you missed my statement on how the transition would be paid for. Can you give me a single investment that has a better than the three year payback period?
You then couple that with the IEA's 2008 report of needing a new Saudi Arabia every 3 1/2 years to 5 years to come online: http://oildepletiondebate.blogspot.com/2008/11/iea-world-energy-outlook-2008.html
And the US military putting this to print (and no major US news outlet making a mention) saying we could a have a 10 million barrel shortfall by 2015 if a massive amount of new production doesn't come online: http://oildepletiondebate.blogspot.com/2010/04/united-states-joint-forces-command-us.html
Why would anyone listen to you, me, or Jim Puplalva? Americans are ignorant about their energy and near future economic climate.
If those volumes aren't put online over the next 5 years then we go into an economic depression. What Washington politician is willing to recognize that and then tell the public even though the Joint Forces Command has sounded a warning?
Since the general public hasn't a clue what they're facing it's little wonder they are responding the way they are.
(continue)
Climateers believe going to bio fuels will be sustainable and solve climate change. I don't see it. If, as climatologists claim, CO2 has and atmospheric lifetime of 50-200 years and we continue to burn bio carbon at the same rate as with fossil carbon, you still have a climate change issue. People are lead to believe bio-carbons would get recycled each year.
I'm only illustrating how big the problem is but people believe the solutions are easy fixes
With over 3 million miles of asphalt highways in the US alone, and tar only being ~2% of a refined barrel of oil what will we maintain our roads with? Even though we recycle 80% of the asphalt, now, we have to do a lot better. As oil prices climb states, counties, and cities will be under taxing pressure to maintain their road's bases.
Politicians telling petro sapien its addicted to oil is like telling a fish its addicted to water. People aren't going to listen until their oil pond begins drying up.
Finally, there's that 10%er, like you and me, who see the danger and try to plan ahead. These people are information hungry to better understand the situation and when the brunt of the crisis (peak oil) really hits. I've been information hungry the past several years. http://oildepletiondebate.blogspot.com/
The energy crisis is acute. And since this crisis is a Long Emergency that you and I've been trying to wake people up to they have learned to tune us out since peak oil is to economics what global warming is to the seasonal changes.
The Flying Prius
The future of the passenger jet may look surprisingly like a larger version of the hybrid automobile.
http://www.newsweek.com/2010/07/16/the-flying-prius.html?GT1=43002
You see, Chris, NewsWeek is showing us one more reason as to why we should believe that humanity is saved. Yet another techno fix that's somewhere out in the future. All anyone needs to do to blow your concerns off is buy a Popular Mechanics or Popular Science magazine selling hope in a futuristic techno fix. While in the meantime global oil depletion is relentless threatening to collapse the global economic system within 5 years.
400 parts per million of carbon has recently been found to be the Arctic Tipping Point, which could conceivably endanger everyone. We are approaching 390 ppm and adding 2 ppm each year. The safe limit is 350 ppm. If we are truly about 5 years from a life threatening cataclysm leadership needs to emerge - fast!
According to one scientist, a very thin oil film on the surface of the Atlantic and Arctic oceans that could spread from the Gulf, threatens to raise temperatures toward the catastrophic Tipping Point.
It seems possible to effectively attack the problems we face only with a monumental effort on a wartime scale.
If the threat is real, renewable energy systems that can be deployed in time should rapidly be produced on a 24/7 basis. Congress should check the facts without delay - and if confirmed, provide whatever incentives are necessary to make that possible.
See What to Do! at http://www.aesopinstitute.org The subtitle is: A 5 Step Program...
Little known and hard to fathom breakthroughs involving radically new energy technologies can help to supersede petroleum much more rapidly than might be readily understood or believed.
See Moving Beyond Oil on the same Aesop Institute website.
If the threat is confirmed, Congress and the White House must initiate action to prevent catastrophe!
After all, the lives they save may be their own!
BS.
end them all now.
plow that money into green energy.
the failure of the fossil, nukes and banker giveaway cap and trade bills is a godsend. .
Rooftop solar would be FAR FAR cheaper than Nukes, Gas, Oil or Coal if Nukes, Gas, Oil or Coal had to pay for the destruction they are wreaking on the planet, communities, mountains, oceans, aquifers and taxpayers. So why don't they - when we want more of something we subsidize it, so why are we subsidizing these stinkers?
So, fine, you don't want a carbon tax? Me neither. Let's do the obvious and regulate carbon so these pigs cannot emit it. They cannot poison our water (fracking, coal), they cannot slaughter our workforce (coal, gas oil) and they cannot have insurance from the taxpayers or create ANY hazardous waste (nukes and coal). They also cannot permanently destroy millions of acres of publicly-owned wilderness, require new, SF6 spewing transmission, or deplete our water, especially in the desert (Big Solar, Big Wind).
Big Energy, stand on your own two feet and compete with rooftop solar on a level playing field - Necessity is the mother of invention, right? You can't kill the planet or rip us off any longer. Now, show us what you got!
This is a summary of that report http://cogcc.state.co.us/cogis/ComplaintReport.asp?doc_num=200190138
And the full report http://ogccweblink.state.co.us/DownloadDocument.aspx?DocumentId=1968520