New crises demand new modes of thought.
In the early 20th century, scientists were baffled by the paradox that the speed of light never changes, even if the observer is rushing toward the light source. Einstein resolved the crisis by redefining time from a constant to a variable.
In the mid-20th Century, America was struggling to escape its centuries-old legacy of slavery and segregation. Martin Luther King and the civil rights movement found us all a way forward, by redefining racism as an assault on the souls of whites as well as blacks.
Today, America's and the world's prodigal use of fossil fuels is creating twin crises: a climate crisis from emissions of heat-trapping pollution into the atmosphere, and a security crisis self-created by the industrial world's thirst for other people's oil.
We can solve both crises, but only if we relinquish deep-seated beliefs about fuels and energy. And the attitude we must fling overboard first is our sense of entitlement to cheap energy. We need to recognize that energy does not cost too much; in fact, it doesn't cost nearly enough. To preserve Earth's climate, and wrest political authority from the corporate oil barons and petrodollar sheiks, we must conserve fuel massively and permanently, starting now.
The United States, the biggest consumer of coal, oil, and gas by far, probably needs to cut back by 75% within just two decades.
Yet so long as energy is cheap it will never be conserved, except in token and totally inadequate amounts.
Energy-efficiency standards are often held out as the alternative to higher fuel prices. Standards have proven modestly valuable in some sectors, and going forward they can be a helpful supplement to price-based conservation.
But by themselves, standards will never come close to achieving the necessary reductions in energy usage. For every activity that is brought under efficiency standards, dozens of others will elude regulatory control, either through industry "gaming" or due to the creative unruliness of consumer capitalism, forever finding new ways to burn fuels.
(Cases in point: the "light truck" loophole to CAFE standards that spawned the SUV plague, and the advent of flights-by-the-hour air travel that consumes even more fuel per passenger.)
The lesson should be clear: whether the resource is muscles, water, fuel, or time, we humans squander what's plentiful and husband only what's dear.
To be sure, few people in public life have yet articulated the need to make energy expensive. One prominent advocate missing in action so far is Ralph Nader, the activist icon and two-time Green Party candidate for president.
Last month Nader published an essay, "Stop ExxonMobil From Squeezing Us Dry," consisting of one tired nostrum after another for curbing oil company rapaciousness.
Gas prices have doubled in four years? Break up the oil giants! ExxonMobil gave retiring CEO Lee Raymond a $400 million going-away present? Slap on an excess profits tax! Alternative energy is lagging? Let an oil "extraction tax" finance investment in alternative fuels.
Actually, that last idea isn't half-bad (though I think I have a better one, explained below). But for the most part, Nader's program ignores the onrushing climate crisis and the ongoing security crisis. Indeed, by perpetuating the artifice of cheap energy, Ralph's proposals would promote even greater use of fossil fuels, worsening the climate crisis while barely laying a hand on the petrolords abroad or at home.
To see why, it helps to look at recent U.S. gasoline trends. By comparing data on usage and price, we can infer that gasoline demand is almost 10% below where it would be if we still had 2002 prices. That's because drivers have cut back in response to the higher price -- not massively, but enough to offset most of the higher demand that would have come with the expanding economy.
The implied savings, around 700,000 barrels of gasoline per day, are almost twice the lost daily production from the partial shutdown of the Alaska Pipeline this month. Not exactly chicken feed.
Higher prices do reduce usage. The challenge is to find a way to keep raising fuel prices without harming our economy, our pocketbooks, and, of critical importance, the millions of poor families who can't afford higher prices for gas, home heating, and electricity and shouldn't be made to pay to solve a problem not of their making.
The solution is straightforward and politically appealing: ramp up steep taxes on fuels, and tax-shift or rebate the revenues progressively.
Tax-shifting is the phasing out of existing, onerous, regressive taxes, such as state sales taxes and federal social security taxes, as the fuel taxes are phased in.
Rebating is the pro rata distribution of the fuel tax revenues to the public -- along the lines of the Alaska Permanent Fund, which once a year sends identical checks to all state residents from the state's North Slope oil royalties.
In either case, individuals and families that use less energy than average would get back more in tax reductions or rebates than they would pay out in fuel taxes. Since most poor households drive less, fly less, live in smaller homes, and have fewer appliances and electronic devices than richer households, most of them would benefit monetarily from this tax plan -- even those that drive clunkers, have drafty houses, and own hand-me down refrigerators.
So there is a way to raise energy prices while holding harmless the vast majority of the poor. We can call it progressive fuel taxation; or, if the tax is levied according to the carbon content of the fuel to take aim at global warming, progressive carbon taxation.
Here's what progressive fuel taxation could accomplish:
- Slash use of fossil fuels by instilling across-the-board incentives to improve energy efficiency and creating the market pull for renewable biofuels, solar, and wind energy.
- Drive down the before-tax price of energy by reducing demand. (Excise taxes on any commodity always cut its before-tax price; this is Econ 101.) This would curb oil profits without the need for a complex, difficult-to-enforce excess-profits tax.
- Make polluters pay, while rewarding with cool cash every action that conserves fossil fuels.
- Diminish the political power of the oil/energy industry, as sales volumes and earnings plummet.
- Dry up the financing of "oilgarchies" from Africa to the Middle East to Indonesia -- and Washington, D.C.
- Inject that money into our economy, providing more and better jobs at home instead of funding violence abroad.
Sure sounds a lot like Nader's program of cutting the oil industry down to size while protecting consumers, but with the added dividend of cooling the climate and enhancing security by reducing fossil-fuel burning, money, and power.
Nader closed his essay by calling on bloggers and other e-activists to "start one big energy reform rumble that will be heard by both Washington and the oil giants."
I'd like to turn that challenge around: Hey Ralph: will you lend your leadership to progressive fuel taxation, as you have to so many causes down the years? Will you, like Einstein and King, embrace a bold new vision and help liberate mankind from its energy shackles once and for all?
Comments
View as Threaded
David Roberts Posted 10:40 am
19 Aug 2006
But Ralph Nader?
Put aside for the moment that Nader has long since completed his descent into pompous narcissism and intellectual sclerosis. Put aside that after his world-historical fuck-up in 2000 he should have either apologized abjectly to the world and slunk off into obscurity or started organizing a grassroots movement to undo some of the damage, but instead he did neither, and just kept galumphing along like a dessicated Pied Piper with a band of delusional followers.
Put that aside, and just consider whether Nader's support of the fuel-tax project would be of any real help whatsoever.
The political problem the fuel tax faces is that it's a tax, and whether it's shifted or rebated or whatever, the word "tax" is a weapon of the right, and it has rarely failed them. Whether the charge is accurate or not, the fuel tax will immediately be branded leftist social engineering.
What it needs is public support from noted conservatives, or at least a "Nixon goes to China" moment from one high-profile anti-tax conservative (McCain? Gingrich? Pataki?).
We are at a delicate juncture here. There's real support from a broad coalition of disparate groups for substantive action on the energy front. If we could make a fuel tax seem like the sensible, consensus response, we might have a chance.
Support from Nader would achieve the opposite effect -- it would send everyone to the right of Michael Moore screaming to the hills.
www.grist.org
Permalink
JMG Posted 2:39 pm
19 Aug 2006
Instead, call your plan "Conservation Tax Cuts" or "Energy Independence Tax Reform" or something equally peurile -- but, whatever you do, name the program after the taxes that are reduced, rather than the ones raised to pay for the cuts).
Permalink
caniscandida Posted 6:27 pm
19 Aug 2006
Nader, in 2000 and afterwards, actually teaches a valuable poli-sci/ethics lesson, of which Bush and Cheney are also excellent examples: If you make a practice of speaking only to audiences of your devoted fans, before long you will go mad.
And in connexion with that, I happen to believe that it is a major ethical failing of TV news to televise more than five seconds of a politician speaking at a canned, controlled event.
One of my current heroes, Jim Hansen, in "The Threat to the Planet," his review of the three recent books on global warming by Tim Flannery, Al Gore and Elizabeth Kolbert (New York Review of Books, July 13; David has recommended it), wrote:
<<
Available technologies would allow great improvement of energy efficiency, even in Europe. Economists agree that the potential could be achieved most effectively by a tax on carbon emissions, although strong political leadership would be needed to persuasively explain the case for such a tax to the public. The tax could be revenue-neutral, i.e., it could also provide for tax credits or tax decreases for the public generally, leaving government revenue unchanged; and it should be introduced gradually. The consumer who makes a special effort to save energy could gain, benefiting from the tax credit or decrease while buying less fuel; the well-to-do consumer who insisted on having three Hummers would pay for his own excesses.
>>
(How many Hummers does Arnold have, by the way, at last count?)
It definitely sounds like you and he are on the same page, though I am not quite sure why the "revenue-neutral" bit matters to him so much. Hansen has a fair bit more to say, too, by way of explaining how taxing carbon emissions should work.
Later in the review, he wrote:
<<
Policies favoring the short-term profits of energy companies and other special interests are cast by many politicians as being in the best economic interests of the country. They take no account of the mounting costs of maintaining the supply of fossil fuels. Leaders with a long-term vision would place greater value on developing more efficient energy technology and sources of clean energy. Rather than subsidizing fossil fuels, the government should provide incentives for fossil-fuel companies to develop other kinds of energy.
>>
This is not quite the same as your first bulleted recommendation, but is clearly compatible.
I have a problem with Hansen's last sentence there, and I wonder if you do too. Why in the world should fossil-fuel companies be thought of as the leaders in developing alternative energy? If, as BP and Shell profess, they have looked into the future and seen a world with little or no petroleum, and would not unreasonably prefer to adapt rather than go extinct, then fine. But why in the world should they be our presumed leaders, and have incentives provided them to lead us?
Let them sink or swim, say I. If I had the power and the bucks, I would much more happily throw millions, nay billions, in the direction of such excellent and quite non-oily people as our dear friends Sunflower, working with solar, and Amazing, with wind.
Permalink
Roz Cummins Posted 12:58 am
20 Aug 2006
Permalink
Green Power Posted 6:22 am
20 Aug 2006
Within this initiative the need to internalise the externalities of environmental damage are essential.
Add local environmental literacy as a community intervention strategy. Quality information which pinpoints for the public the "best foot forward" environmentally speaking. Use an environmental accounting tool locally to pick up on actual local global warming issues. Design an action campaign involving promulgation of environmental literacy. Show the community the best way forward from within by using a local school as the focus for the project.
If the current adults do not pick up on the lessons learned then the children will eventually as they grow older. All your suggestions are good but we need to make sure we maximise impact by varying the age of the audience.
This environmental information is relevant and local. Replicate the accounting tool to monitor the impact that the environmetal literacy is having. We have produced big changes and are only after completing our second assessment in Ballina, Tipperary, Ireland; http://www.volvoadventure.org/site/829.asp.
Waste volumes have been reduced significantly and thats good; now we are moving onto household energy use and car transport which represent 80% of our current ecological footprint in Ballina.
Its practical, educational, meaningful and reduces green house gas emissions. The information garnered is owned locally and thus represents a real stimulus to change. This converts real change whereby changes in attitudes are followed by changes in behaviour. It is a bottom-up initiative. Rules, regulations and directives so often find their way into bureaucratic filing cabinets from where they represent aspirations; top-down needs to be accompanied by sufficient bottom-up initiative. Otherwise control and command becomes removed from reality on the ground. Subsidiarity is essential to sustainability as in LA21.
The above local initiative has subsidiarity, sustainability, local-control and monitoring, community ownership and youthful input. Along with all your low and zero carbon suggestions that may go a long way.
go ZED!
Permalink
iamnbrown Posted 1:16 pm
20 Aug 2006
So, everyone casts in their first stone. Mine is a different sort of approach. Use carbon taxes to pay for Medicare for everyone. Ease it in with sufficient cultural foreplay. Start with one level of carbon taxation to pay for medicare for children (people) under 21, then incremental segments of the adult population until most elements of basic medical care as provided by Medicare for people over 65 are extended to the rest of the population.
Its a lot of money at some level, yet much cheaper than the present medical system. And, it doesn't just offset one tax with another like Corzine just did in Jersey (raising regressive sales taxes to fund property owners rebates) but goes about providing an absolutely critical public service and one that removes enormous pressure on the un-insured and those who pay enormous present medical vigs.
Permalink
jsalera Posted 1:34 pm
20 Aug 2006
Really do any of you think you're going to be taken seriously by bashing Nader. A guy who's done more good work on government oversight in ten minutes than any of you will do in a lifetime.
Part of Nader's platform's have alway's been alternative energy with a big emphasis on solar. He's done plenty for auto safety, fuel effiency and lot's of other areas.
What have you guys done?
Permalink
bookerly Posted 4:29 pm
20 Aug 2006
There is an obvious problem with the plan Charles is proposing.
Any fuel tax would start off as regressive. That means it would initially affect poor people more. It sounds great that in 18 months or so, they would get a nice rebate check. But how are they supposed to eat until then?
So, nice idea, but really, a null starter.
Nader, love him or hate him, it doesn't matter. He let his ego get so involved in his presidential runs that he has lost all credibility. Even if you love him, you must recognize that no one listens to him any more. So, his participation won't help anything.
Any kind of regressive tax is not going to work (regressive at collection point) for the poor.
patrick
Permalink
LegumeSam Posted 1:08 am
21 Aug 2006
Drive down the before-tax price of energy by reducing demand. (Excise taxes on any commodity always cut its before-tax price; this is Econ 101.) This would curb oil profits without the need for a complex, difficult-to-enforce excess-profits tax. There is only so much demand to reduce before a high energy tax just makes people poorer, or worse, incapable of affording the price of travel to and from work or school. Remember, American suburbs were and are predicated on cheap energy prices -- if we are ask everyone to leave, we must have a place for them to stay. And there is only so much reduction in the "before-tax price" that a tax can induce, especially in a "market" like gasoline/ crude oil. 75% reduction in demand, you say?
Make polluters pay, while rewarding with cool cash every action that conserves fossil fuels. There is only so much "cool cash" that the working class can get out of tax reductions. The problem with being working class is not that you're "taxed to death" -- it's that you don't earn enough (especially after you've finished paying inflated rental prices on your place-of-residence) to be "taxed to death" in the first instance.
Diminish the political power of the oil/energy industry, as sales volumes and earnings plummet. Do you imagine that a tax applied only to the United States will diminish the global power of oil/energy industry conglomerates which will have doubtless diversified into every business that generates a profit? How many fewer politicians will they be able to buy?
Dry up the financing of "oilgarchies" from Africa to the Middle East to Indonesia -- and Washington, D.C. Will a tax allow us all sudden entree into the Cayman Islands bank accounts and secret financial pipelines held by such entities?
Inject that money into our economy, providing more and better jobs at home instead of funding violence abroad. That's a nice ideal -- but, unless you're talking about large cash payments to individuals (and not mere tax breaks), the economy doesn't need "more money," but rather a more equitable distribution of money. And the US government funds violence abroad by borrowing against the power of dollar hegemony. That could go on forever unless dollar hegemony is ended.
And Ralph Nader? Are you still mad at him because he dared to run against John Kerry? If Kerry was so great, what's he advocating? And if the problem with Nader is that he's got "such a big ego," why are you puffing it up further by talking about him? I have a simple request in this regard. Would you all mind talking about me, instead of Nader? My ego is too small, and I need a bigger one.
That having been said, a progressive energy tax is better than a regressive energy tax, if you can get the votes to pass it. I suppose the current market for politicians' votes would present a challenge to that. Komanoff is just overselling it, that's all. I think everyone supports something good. I, myself, support Howie Hawkins' proposal: Howie Hawkins supports convering $300 billion a year of US military spending to a Global Public Works Program to rewire the planet for renewable energy in 10 years. It would even be nice if we could get the TV networks to take one minute out of their Jon Benet Ramsey coverage to discuss this stuff...
http://ecosocialism.blogspot.com/
Permalink
sunflower Posted 4:28 am
21 Aug 2006
Coal is almost free, burning it at 50% improved efficiency will not cause an increase of use, but will reduce future growth by 50%. (Peak oil, like peak water, will cause oil conservation and efficiency.)
A carbon reduction tax will facilitate motivation for coal efficiency. For example, $0.30/lb carbon will increase gasoline cost from $3.00/gallon to $4.50/gallon CRT. The same carbon reduction tax on coal would increase cost from $25/ton to $625/ton CRT.
Permalink
caniscandida Posted 5:56 am
21 Aug 2006
Now and again in his career, John Kerry has caught a glimmer of the good thing to do, and he has done it. Not often; and he has done lots of unenlightened things too. I do not defend him. Either his wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry, or his running mate, John Edwards, would make a better president, imho. Teresa especially. (But, alas!, she is foreign-born.) And I certainly do not blame his loss in 2004 on Ralph Nader.
But 2000 is a very different story, isn't it.
Ralph Nader is almost a tragic figure in our history, because he is clearly one of the most intelligent people in the land, and he has in the past used his intelligence to very good effect. And yet, behold his "desiccated," disrespected figure today.
And the Green Party injured themselves, didn't they, by making Nader their figurehead for so long. They would have been much better off with someone like, oh, say, Legume Sam.
Permalink
TysonSlocum Posted 6:46 am
21 Aug 2006
Ok. Got that off my chest. Mr. Komanoff is to be applauded for initiating discussion on this important issue. Bold thinking on these issues is in short supply, and I congratulate him.
Now, a couple of quick thoughts.
First, it wasn't my impression that Ralph Nader was "perpetuating the artifice of cheap energy." He was saying that consumers aren't getting any bang for our buck. We're paying more for energy, but much of that money is simply flowing into corporate profits and stock buybacks and therefore not being invested in sustainable energy solutions. The major oil companies collectively have a trillion dollars in capital sunk into extracting, refining and marketing oil and gasoline to us. Their business model is built to squeeze every last penny of profit out of that capital investment for as long as it takes.
I wholeheartedly agree with Mr. Komanoff's desire for change in America's energy policies. But there are several key flaws with Komanoff's arguments.
Mr. Komanoff claims that "we can infer that gasoline demand is almost 10% below where it would be if we still had 2002 prices. That's because drivers have cut back in response to the higher price -- not massively, but enough to offset most of the higher demand that would have come with the expanding economy."
Mr. Komanoff doesn't provide the methodology he used to infer that gasoline demand has dropped in relation to economic and population growth. In fact, this is a surprising assertion because in nearly all analyses that I've come across, everyone concludes that gasoline demand is NOT declining in response to higher prices
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14340379/
That's because gasoline demand is highly inelastic. Tens of millions of households have bought homes and cars years ago when prices were cheaper, and it is simply not a viable economic option for working families to change their consumption habits because prices have tripled. The only way for demand to drop is if prices get punitively high to cause a recession. Economic stagnation will guarantee reduced energy use. But at what cost to society? Relying on markets (prices) alone to achieve energy conservation, as Mr. Komanoff suggests, simply won't get the job done in an efficient, humanitarian manner.
So Mr. Komanoff suggests an aggressive solution: "Tax-shifting is the phasing out of existing, onerous, regressive taxes, such as state sales taxes and federal social security taxes, as the fuel taxes are phased in."
Apparently Mr. Komanoff is suggesting huge new increases on taxes on "bad" energy consumption tied with corresponding cuts in the payroll tax that currently finances social security.
Needless to say, this is indeed a bold proposal worthy of discussion. Let's discuss just a few potential problems. Let's assume that Mr. Komanoff's plan to impose huge new taxes on "bad" energy consumption achieves the desired result: consumption of oil and other bad energy declines. That means the revenue generated from taxing bad energy will decline over time. But Mr. Komanoff was replacing payroll taxes that fund social security with this new carbon tax. But how will we continue to fund social security (which has its own looming financial problems decades in the future) with a tax that, by design, will become ineffective at raising money over time? Replacing the payroll tax with a carbon tax will not generate enough revenue to finance social security. In fact, you will bankrupt social security faster than we will end our addiction to oil. Am I wrong on this point?
Also, I've come up with a saying in this era of $300 billion annual federal budget deficits: Programs for the poor will always be the first on the cutting room floor. Do we really think that Congress will continue to allocate billions of dollars every year to financial protections for the working poor from the ill-effects of high taxes on bad energy consumption? Pressure will increase to allocate more money to deficit reduction and other spending priorities. The working poor will always get the short end of the stick, and we need to be honest about this fact when designing huge new tax increases on the poor.
Regarding the poor, Mr. Komanoff makes what I believe to be an inaccurate statement: "individuals and families that use less energy than average would get back more in tax reductions or rebates than they would pay out in fuel taxes. Since most poor households drive less, fly less, live in smaller homes, and have fewer appliances and electronic devices than richer households, most of them would benefit monetarily from this tax plan -- even those that drive clunkers, have drafty houses, and own hand-me down refrigerators."
What Mr. Komanoff forgets is consumption as a share of income. Poor people are poor because they cannot save money. Why can't they save money? Because they spend all of their available income consuming everyday essentials like energy, food and rent. So it doesn't matter if a poor person drives less than Bill Gates, because Bill Gates can drive all he wants, but the price of a gallon of gas will never be a factor in his monthly family budgeting. When we tax consumption, as Mr. Komanoff proposes, that tax will disproportionally hit poorer families much harder than wealthier families. And Mr. Komanoff neglects to mention the secondary impacts of rising energy prices (as his tax would do): prices for goods and services in our economy will rise across the board.
Mr. Komanoff argues that we must use the market to change America's terrible track record on energy policy. He proposes "instilling across-the-board incentives to improve energy efficiency and creating the market pull for renewable biofuels, solar, and wind energy."
But what if instead of trying to influence the market, we force the market to comply? That's why Public Citizen supports legally-mandated renewable energy standards. Quite frankly, Public Citizen is sick of waiting around for the market to do the right thing on environmental policy. It's time that we establish aggressive, enforceable laws requiring a certain percentage of energy be derived from renewable resources. Twenty states and the District of Columbia have established such standards. It's time for an aggressive push at the federal level.
And Public Citizen strongly supports large new income taxes on oil company profits, with the proceeds dedicated to investing the billions of dollars it will take to bolster America's mass transit infrastructure and the billions it will take to invest in smart growth strategies for urban and rural living in this country. The market will never make these types of investments - government must take the lead, and we should ask the oil industry to finance the start-up costs.
And lastly, Public Citizen supports the public financing of all political campaigns. Since 2001, the oil industry has made $61 million in campaign contributions to federal candidates, with 81% of that total going to Republicans. Until we end the ability of special interests to legally bribe our elected officials, we will continue to get legislation that satisfies their corporate agenda, at the expense of citizens and the environment.
I hope that my criticism is taken as constructive. Again, I applaud Mr. Komanoff for raising such bold ideas, and my intent to respond here is to provoke debate that may result in the implementation of the strongest, soundest policy proposals.
Thanks!
Permalink
LegumeSam Posted 8:34 am
21 Aug 2006
At any rate, Jevons' paradox is not about coal; it's about whether creating more efficient consumption processes will lead to overall reductions in consumption under capitalism. Let's go to the meat of Jevons' argument:
It is wholly a confusion of ideas to suppose that the economic use of fuel is equivalent to a diminished consumption. The very contrary is the truth. As a rule, the new modes of economy will lead to an increase of consumption according to a principle recognized in many parallel instances.... This is the principle behind Jevons' Paradox. Now here is the supporting argument: If the quantity of coal used in a blast-furnace, for instance, be diminished in comparison with the yield, the profits of the trade will increase, new capital will be attracted, the price of pig-iron will fall, but the demand for it increase; and eventually the greater number of furnaces will more than make up for the diminished consumption of each. And if such is not always the result within a single branch, it must be remembered that the progress of any branch of manufacture excites a new activity in most other branches and leads indirectly, if not directly, to increased inroads upon our seams of coal.... Civilization, says Baron Liebig, is the economy of power, and our power is coal. It is the very economy of the use of coal that makes our industry what it is; and the more we render it efficient and economical, the more will our industry thrive, and our works of civilization grow (Jevons 140-142, qtd. in Foster). Now, economic narrators will often argue that Jevons misunderstood the substitutability of oil for coal, and thus the predicted coal shortage did not materialize in any global sense. This is true, but not really relevant to the application of the principle of Jevons' Paradox to the problem of peak oil.
Oil replaced coal as the fuel-of-choice because its much higher EROEI (energy return on energy invested) allowed for the development of a much more intensive energy economy than that which was once available with coal-burning. Jevons' Paradox will become imporant once again, the argument goes, because the capitalist powers-that-be will try to maintain the intensive energy economy now available with oil, only using other energy sources. The world of today consumes 85 million barrels of oil each day, every day. Will the capitalist system be able to find another source of energy to do that which it currently does with those 85 million bbls./day of oil?
Wikipedia discusses this, but wrongly:Also, this principle is often referenced in conjunction with Peak oil, to show why conservation of oil will not slow the arrival or the effects of peak oil. However, a key part of Jevons Paradox assumes a relatively steady supply of a given resource. Under this principle, demand increases after the price came down due to a reduction in demand. Starting with a significant reduction in supply however (as in the case of Peak Oil), prices will go up, requiring an equally significant reduction in demand from increased efficiency just to maintain the status quo of price and therefore consumption.
Here the Wikipedia author misapplies Jevons' Paradox. The point is not that "conservation of oil will not slow the arrival or the effects of peak oil" -- clearly, if everyone conserved oil, peak oil would come later rather than earlier. An application of Jevons' Paradox to the problem of peak oil would endeavor to show that more efficient uses of oil will not result in an aggregate reduction in oil use. Thus the examples in the first article I cited: The contemporary significance of the Jevons paradox is seen with respect to the automobile in the United States. The introduction of more energy-efficient automobiles in this country in the 1970s did not curtail the demand for fuel because driving increased and the number of cars on the road soon doubled. Capitalist economies are economies of ever-increasing scale. More efficient uses of oil, and the alternative energies besides oil, will grant the global capitalist economy more chances to expand than it otherwise would have, with all of the ecologically-disastrous effects such expansion would have. The Wikipedia author is correct to note that a reduction in oil supply will result in reduced demand for oil, of course. But more efficient uses of oil will not result in any more oil being left in the ground than would otherwise be consumed.
As the total oil output of the world's wells is reduced, in fact, we can expect the world economy to cling even more tightly to what is left of cheap oil than it does today. Conservation, and oil alternatives, may reduce the individual's need for what will be left of cheap oil, if the individual is lucky enough to be able to make a living and still do so. But the aggregate of humanity, under capitalism, will still be operating the engines of economic growth, and those engines will gravitate to what's left of cheap oil, because the development of alternatives to oil is more likely to usher in an economy of conservation than (like oil when it replaced coal) it is to create an even-more-intense energy-consuming civilization. All the energy alternatives will do in such a context will be to preserve what's left of capitalist economic growth against the possibility of post-oil-peak economic collapse.
In clinging to cheap oil, then, and (secondarily) in developing oil alternatives, people will be clinging to what's left of this civilization's intensity, even if the price is significantly higher. Capitalist competition and capitalist growth will oblige them to do so. (Some of the oil alternatives will indeed promise a happier relationship to nature, but only if capitalism is brought to an end.)
Thus, don't expect any global warming dividends from alternative energy under capitalism. The best we can hope for is an end to capitalism, facilitated by the disastrous effects of global warming, before the capitalist system finds it "necessary" to go back to large-scale coal burning, or the exploitation of the tar sands of Canada and Venezuela, or the production of large quantities of nuclear-energy-related toxic waste. The search for a high-EROEI energy economy will, presumably, compel capitalism to multiply crises in this regard. Let's stop it before it's too late.
Remember, folks: we don't have to have a capitalist economy. This dilemma is avoidable.
http://ecosocialism.blogspot.com/
Permalink
sunflower Posted 10:36 am
21 Aug 2006
I agree, Sam, that no policy nor technology will prevent the extinction of oil and gas, assuming that extinction is near term. Further, I believe that the fear of peak oil and Bush are more likely to destroy a vibrant capitalist economy than is the reality of peak oil itself.
Policy and technology must extinguish coal energy, globally.
I know solar energy can do the job because I know the cost of burning sunlight is less than the cost of burning coal. The cost of coal is not relevant (and therefore solar subsidies and carbon taxes are not required, just desired). Investments in alternative energy technologies are highly sensitive to the prices of oil. We are on the cusp of a major energy transition.
My motivation for energy efficiency improvements do not relate to capitalism nor Public Citizen authorities. A 50% efficiency gain will reduce the amount of solar hardware required, potentially cutting the transition time in half. Also, efficient buildings and cars are more easily converted over to solar sources.
This profitable transition to solar energy will require the largest investment ever made by humanity, and a cohesive visionary government. I'm looking for a public and private partnership.
The goal is not business as usual but rather the end of coal.
Permalink
PeterPage Posted 10:51 am
21 Aug 2006
Get people imagining much larger tax refunds. That is how we'll get this started. Just a little tax that collects enough money to give a rebate check, no matter how small, to everyone in America who files a 1040.
We need to keep a laser focus on, say, "Rebate of every cent of tax on the first $25,000 including sales taxes.''
Permalink
bookerly Posted 12:16 pm
21 Aug 2006
TysonSlocum has it right. Better to tax corporations directly than to impose a regressive tax.
Again, any tax that requires up front payments by poor people is regressive. The promise of money back later is like the promise of pie in the sky by and by. Irrelevant to people who are struggling to survive.
Let's keep it simple.
No to regressive taxes.
patrick
Permalink
LegumeSam Posted 2:28 pm
21 Aug 2006
Now the rest of you must do your part and chime in. It would be an important step forward if there were at some point an academic conference about me: "Legume Sam as avatar: helpful or unhelpful?" We should send a call for papers out. And I would hope at some point for a high-profile denunciation -- if Bill O'Reilly or Ann Coulter were to spew lots of nasty comments about me, the cause would be forwarded greatly. Again, thank you for getting the ball rolling.
(just kidding, of course... seriously, though, the people we should really be talking about are folks like Todd Chretien or Howie Hawkins who walk the walk as well as asking to be talked about...)
http://ecosocialism.blogspot.com/
Permalink
LegumeSam Posted 2:31 pm
21 Aug 2006
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14340379/
That's because gasoline demand is highly inelastic. Tens of millions of households have bought homes and cars years ago when prices were cheaper, and it is simply not a viable economic option for working families to change their consumption habits because prices have tripled. The only way for demand to drop is if prices get punitively high to cause a recession. Economic stagnation will guarantee reduced energy use. But at what cost to society? Relying on markets (prices) alone to achieve energy conservation, as Mr. Komanoff suggests, simply won't get the job done in an efficient, humanitarian manner. Thank you.
http://ecosocialism.blogspot.com/
Permalink
David Roberts Posted 4:35 pm
21 Aug 2006
www.grist.org
Permalink
LegumeSam Posted 8:55 pm
21 Aug 2006
Can it supply enough energy to replace the 85 million barrels/ day the world is currently getting from oil?
Can it satisfy an ever-increasing demand (going up about 2% per year, at least) for energy?
Will it have the highest EROEI of any available energy source?
Can you prove it?
This is what the capitalists will want from you. Now, as I said before, I don't care so much, because I'm not that much of a capitalist. But "I know solar energy can do the job because I know the cost of burning sunlight is less than the cost of burning coal" probably won't satisfy them.
http://ecosocialism.blogspot.com/
Permalink
LegumeSam Posted 10:25 pm
21 Aug 2006
http://ecosocialism.blogspot.com/
Permalink
sunflower Posted 12:04 am
22 Aug 2006
Yes to all four of your bullets. The "job" is displacing all coal. The capital cost of burning almost free coal is $2/Watt(e). Solar power will cost less than $1/Watt(e) [some scientists think $0.50/W(e)] and $0.20/Watt(t). Electricity (e) Thermal (t) see...
http://www.harbornet.com/sunflower/free.html
Oil is easy. Coal is more difficult because it is so cheap. Solar can make almost any city 100% energy self sufficient at lower capital cost (assuming coal fuel costs nothing).
Scales to gigawatts very quickly, much faster than cars.
Solar collector energy output of 25 years requires 6 months of energy input. EROEI of burning fossil fuels is less than one, and for solar greater than 50. This is a huge difference and the reason solar is so cost effective.
see... http://www.harbornet.com/sunflower/
Bush "Zeroed out [solar] concentrators" early 2001 because industry was threaten by this technology. Those "capitalists" do believe the numbers, derived from $4 billion in federal research initiated by President Carter.
Permalink
recursive Posted 12:15 am
22 Aug 2006
Permalink
anarcissie Posted 2:45 am
22 Aug 2006
*Anarcissie*
Permalink
usandthem Posted 3:26 am
22 Aug 2006
I do agree with David Roberts in most everythint he had to say in this forum.
I disagree that solar power can pick up ALL of the load that oil,coal,and wood have and do today.It will take solar power,wind power,biomass,and biodiesel together to do that job.The first thing that is taught at energy fairs and seminars is CONSERVATION then they go on to teach about the renewable energies,because just using energy like it was free will cost enormous amounts of money.Pricing most people out of the renewable energy market. Another point to know about is that you don't just plug into a system.You have to be educated about how to run YOUR own power plant and that is the hard part about renewables.Along with the conservation angle.You have to get batteries(which are expensive),you need a generatore to top off batteries occasionally when the wind and sun don't cooperate(this uses fossil fuels),you have to buy converters to change direct current from solar,hydro,and wind into alternating current.So it is not easy but it can be done with time and learning.There is more to it than flicking a switch.The other point that will bind on people is that some one has to be there almost all of the time to check batteries,and make sure that everything is operating properly.
Why not ask why!?
Permalink
LegumeSam Posted 8:06 am
22 Aug 2006
This means, first of all, calculating the energy costs of producing all of the solar panels necessary to run the global capitalist system. Here we must explain how the energy is to be found to do this, and where the raw materials are to come from in the quantities necessary to energize the whole world using solar power.
You will have some freedom to say where the panels should optimally be placed. On top of people's homes? In sunny deserts? In geosynchronous near-Earth orbit? In each case you will have to calculate the transporation cost (in units of energy, of course) of placing the panels onsite.
And there's a global energy-to-fuel calcuation that must be made, too. Fleets of airplanes currently ferry the professional classes from city to city so they can manage businesses for the owning classes. These airplanes will not run on electricity alone, unless we are thinking of inventing a battery-powered airplane (and I'd like to see that explained). We will need to choose and explain a conversion mechanism, an energy-to-fuel process, for making solar electricity into airplane fuel. Its aggregate cost, worldwide, will have to be spelled out arithmetically.
Same thing goes for cars and buses. If we are only to use battery-powered cars, for instance, we will have to calculate the cost of making so many cars, at least as many as the world has today. If we are going to get rid of gasoline-powered cars, the cost of scrapping all of the obsolete, gasoline-powered cars will have to be factored into the total energy cost of our global solarization.
Telling us dollar amounts means little for the purposes of such a proof. Under capitalism, prices are a reflection of the relationship between buyers and sellers, not of energy costs. All numbers must therefore be in terms of energy and resource quantities, not of money.
***
And that's how you would figure out the "energy invested" figure. That "energy invested" sum would be the denominator of your fraction.
The whole fraction is calculated by figuring energy return, divided by energy invested, which is the number value of EROEI.
The numerator (energy return) is to be calculated by summing up the amount of energy used to power global society now. If we wish to preserve capitalism using solar power, that's the number we must shoot for. This is if we are trying to prove that today's society can be solar powered. (I personally would prefer to abolish capitalism and shoot for a lower number, but that's another matter.)
When you can figure out both aggregate figures, that's when you can estimate ER/EI and show how cheap or expensive it would be to solar-power the world.
http://ecosocialism.blogspot.com/
Permalink