However, despite my repeated denials, some posters seemed to think that I was blaming environmentalism for a variety of ills or hostile to the environmental movement. Nothing could be further from the truth. I just don't think that it is particularly useful or interesting for us to sit here "talking" about how wonderful we all are and how misguided/foolish/evil everyone else is. Nor do I think it is useful to pursue a general strategy of enviroliberalism, as I think it limits both our alliances and our policy visions. I've admired Grist for its willingness to think outside these traditional frameworks, which is why I was interested in writing here.On most environmental issues, my goals are absolutely identical to our movement's mainstream -- it's just I think that the mainstream policy ideas are, in some cases, misguided. So I am trying to, in the apt words of one of my respondents "stir things up."
But in order to dispel any remaining confusion, just off the top of my head (no peeking at the textbook), here are a few of the many things I think the environmental movement has done right over the years:
- The creation and expansion of the national park system;
- raising awareness of the global warming problem;
- fighting environmentally destructive and economically wasteful giveaways to timber companies in our national forests;
- working to prevent global overfishing;
- working to lower the environmental levels of a variety of toxins;
- fighting snowmobiling in our national parks;
- taking the lead in pushing the development of alternative, non-polluting energy sources;
- pushing a largely successful international ban on whaling;
- fighting a global over-reliance on big dams, particularly in the developing world;
- leading attempts to make sure our natural resources are valued in economic decision-making;
- developing and growing the land trust movement;
- raising awareness of the plight of any number of endangered species;
- working to save the last remaining rainforests;
- fighting many ill-conceived projects of the Army corps of engineers; and
- encouraging conservation as a key part of America's energy strategy.
I'm sure many of you can come up with better and more complete lists, and someone will no doubt find a way to criticize some aspect of the above list as "anti-environmental" in a way I can't possibly foresee. But, in general, I hope this makes my point, and viewpoint, clear.
OK, so now I've patted the environmental movement on the back a bit. Are we all feeling better? Good, because there are a lot of problems that I'd still like to discuss, and I'll begin in my next post ...
Comments
View as Flat
amazingdrx Posted 10:23 pm
17 Jun 2005
These administration and energy monopoly corporation big lie tactics being used in the energy policy arena need exposure to the light of day.
But here's a tough pill to swallow for you and your political allies.
http://amazngdrx.myblogsite.com/blog/_archives/2005/6/18/951555.html
http://www.physorg.com/news3539.html
"Toshiba Corporation today announced a breakthrough in lithium-ion batteries that makes long recharge times a thing of the past. The company's new battery can recharge 80% of a battery's energy capacity in only one minute, approximately 60 times faster than the typical lithium-ion batteries in wide use today, and combines this fast recharge time with performance-boosting improvements in energy density."
This would make an all-electric vehicle charge up in one minute. Faster than filling your tank with gasoline.
Forget the duuhbya/governator hydrogen solution to energy transportation, we have a winner.
Now how to get it mass produced? That takes political will pushing capital investment.
Imagine this vehicle...better yet read about it.. lithium ion battery electric cars are already feasible.
The only drawbacks were long charging times and cost. This invention solves the recharge time, and mass production would solve the cost problem.
This also solves the problem of wind and solar power inconsistency. Allowing wind and solar to provide the source to recharge these batteries hooked into the national power grid.
I'm afraid this invention makes the whole energy policy of the bush administration and GE's ecomagination campaign, as well as "The apollo Energy Project" all quite lame techologically,economically, politically, and environmentally.
Now get off of politics for a moment and smell the nano tech lithium ion battery solution to energy policy for this century. And start backing wind power on a mega scale, and research on nano-tech solar electric cells.
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odograph Posted 12:56 am
18 Jun 2005
I personally think the best thing everyone in the energy/environment debate can do, would be to learn the difference between a press release and a product. I've mentioned this before, in other forums, in response to other "forward looking statements."
Yes, it is wonderful that "Toshiba Corporation today announced a breakthrough." As a semi-retired engineer, I've spent most of my life reading about such good news. Unfortunately, there is many a slip between cup and lip. Some such breakthroughs quickly progress to real-world products and enter our lives. Others (hydrogen) spend decades in a suspended state of "almost practical." The best things of course, come in at an unexpected angle and move so quickly that the gap between press release and product ship is hard to even notice.
So if you want to be real about what we should be doing now for energy/environment issues, be real about what technologies we have now. If you want to be "forward looking" be sure to add some caution ... that the expectations of the public relations folks may not match future history.
FWIW, I agree that hydrogen fuel cells are a scam, and that electric will likely beat them ... but it isn't a done deal. The thing to do is to set the prize at the finish line. Award success (and $$) to the best solutions in the market, every year.
That, more than anything else, will drive progress from the press release stage to the concrete product stage.
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amazingdrx Posted 1:53 am
18 Jun 2005
In mass production it would be affordable for cars.
As an engineer you must realize that a car with two electric motor/generators coupled to two rear wheels, these batteries, and electronic controls has about 1/100th the moving parts of a regular car or hybrid.
You must also realize that products are not released because they are better. Those decisions are mainly based on corporate politics.
If corporations had been left to manage WW 2 war production on their own, we would be speaking german.
It is the same with these oil wars, they will be endless if corpoprate bottomlime thinking alone rules the day.
Every last drop of oil will be run through every last fossil fueled device until all the money possible is made. Every other consideration be damned.
Now imagine this car with a one minute recharge time. Zoom.
http://www.acpropulsion.com/tzero_pages/tzero_home.htm
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amazingdrx Posted 1:59 am
18 Jun 2005
Or do you claim the center now as do the neo-conservatives? Painting those of us who have argued for renewable energy to replace fossil and nuclear power all these last few decades as dangerous leftists who would not volunteer to hunt for bin laden in tora bora. Hehey.
Sorry, can't let you live that moronic idiocy down so easily.
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amazingdrx Posted 2:11 am
18 Jun 2005
That ought to give one the freedom to satirize the "fair and balanced" viewpoint of a moderator like Jeremy or Dave? Hehehey.
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odograph Posted 3:06 am
18 Jun 2005
Go ahead, calculate the current required for a one-minute camera battery, and then again for a one-minute electric-car battery.
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amazingdrx Posted 4:13 am
18 Jun 2005
That's the best nonsense to dismiss this that you can come up with? The cable size?
Compensation? Hehehehehey.
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odograph Posted 7:03 am
18 Jun 2005
the standard Saturn EV1 charger drew 6.6kW for 5.5 to 6 hours. compressing that into 1 minute is scary. i mean, even assuming a "filling station" I think we'd want the kids to "get out and STEP AWAY FROM THE CAR"
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Biodiversivist Posted 1:57 am
19 Jun 2005
In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Help acquire and protect ecological hotspots, give to a conservation organization: http://www.saveourbiodiversity.com
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amazingdrx Posted 2:44 am
19 Jun 2005
Ok naysaying, cantankerous, codgers whose happier days are well behind you. Who perpetually support the status quo, because change is scary. and cling to any kind of negativity you can find to reassure yourselves death is not that bad, since your existence is near death anyway.
I call you the undead bushco inc. faithbased zombie squad. Any tactics are justified in reaffirming the undeadness of the life itself, the "culture of life"! That is the true spirit of this political and cultural movement (the feeding tube frenzy is a perfect example, Jeb continues it even now!?).
You love being angry and cantakerous! Like a squinting Rummsfield or Cheney. This is the attitude you have learned to adopt and respect. Beat an organism enough times and it no longer gets up, just stays down and even feels comfortable there.
It's the "dirty harry" thousand yard squint approach. Careful! Change might be on the horizon, best to stop it before it starts.
Anyway...here is another analysis to shoot down. Since that lithium ion quick charge battery was so easily dismissed by cable size.
"today's typical residential solar system costs a whopping $8-12 per watt generated. In other words, about $500-$700 of equipment is needed to power just one sixty-watt light bulb. And you'll need to double that--and add in batteries--to keep it going at night."
"Solar economics are best viewed in terms of cost per kilowatt-hour (k/Wh), which factors in expected lifetime output with installation cost. According to Michael Rogol, Analyst, Solar Power Economics at MIT's Laboratory for Energy & Environment, solar costs between a quarter and fifty cents--while today's average US residential power comes in at less than a dime."
http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1558,1771457,00.asp
So we have an estimate based upon real live analysis of existing solar power insdtallations: "...costs between a quarter and fifty cents..". That is per kwh.
A reduction in cost to 10 cents per kwh puts solar electric in sight of competition with present electric power available to homeowners.
As power costs double in the next few years due to fuel inflation a solar system at 10 cents per kwh would be a huge savings. Enough to allow families on fixed retirement incomes and decreasing earnings from low pay service jobs to afford ever increasing property taxes and mortgage costs?
So how is that cost best reduced? Nano tech materials research to increase the efficieny of solar cells? Well that's fine, but is vulnarable to the vagaries of corporate/government research ever reaching production.
Instigate mass markets creating mass production efficiencies to bring the cost of the solar cells down? This is more likely! That could cut the cost to 12.5 cents from 25 cents by itself. Witness the cost reduction in computer chips with mass production. It maybe even greater cost reduction over a longer time period.
But here's an unrealized low tech cost reduction.
In most areas solar cells only generate maximum power 1 out of every three days. And unless they have expensive, complicated tracking systems the light hitting the cells is diminished by a large percentage for about half of daylight hours.
Instead of maximum output from the cells for only half the day and on only one out of every three days, what if maximum cell output could be maintained everyday for say 80% of daylight hours?
Well then solar power would cost maybe 8 cents per kwh or less?
And no expensive or groundbreaking nano tech is needed to optimize the power output based on merely suppying the cells with maximum light in daylight, early or late, sunny or cloudy. only a different design for a collector, and that collector will produce heat as a byproduct.
Solar cogeneration. It's coming. Beware, it's scary. Hehehey.
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odograph Posted 3:33 am
19 Jun 2005
sure, photovoltaics are on a good price curve. that provides both confidence in our ability to improve these technologies, and a caution to readers of press releases. there have been many, many, press releases talking about photovoltiacs falling below grid price. any day now.
a good chart of historical improvement is here:
http://www.unu.edu/unupress/unupbooks/uu24ee/uu24ee0j.htm
now, how cheap are they and how cheap should the be?
that depends on who you are and how much electricity you need. for me at home, $15 a month is a small electric bill .... way too small to justify even the smallest of the standard PV systems. on the other hand, commercial users with bigger needs and higher electric rates are already making the jump.
more will move as we move on that price/performance curve.
(for a lot of homes and businesses increased efficiency is still a cheaper buy than photovoltaics.)
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odograph Posted 3:40 am
19 Jun 2005
http://www.solarbuzz.com/Moduleprices.htm
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amazingdrx Posted 4:16 am
19 Jun 2005
I do not expect big business government research and development to make solar and wind cost effective.
I'm arguing that given the right incentives, for instance some additional spending on tax breaks for homeoweners and small business, that small business, the last realm of really competitive capitalsim (fast being extinguished by the Walmarts of this world), can bring the costs down on renewable energy.
It will be adopted on the home level first as the big government monoipoly corporate oily empire military industrial behemoth burps.
As families lose their homes to administration tax breaks for job outsourcing, sprialing energy costs due to oil wars, increasing mortgage rates due to national debt created by administration oil wars, and rising property taxes due to reduced federal tax dollars (spent on oil wars 100 billion plus per year)being returned to local government...
...It will be necessary to save money on energy to electrify and heat the family home, in order to save it from foreclosure. Thanks to, you guessed it, oil wars, home heating and electric costs may double every few years in the near future.
Fuel oil for home heating doubled in price last year!!!
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odograph Posted 4:59 am
19 Jun 2005
it is interesting to examine that curve. it shows rapid improvement in the 70's and early 80's but then a flattening. year over year improvement has never been as good as the 70's.
this is unfortunately a common thing. there is a lot of room in new fields for a "big idea." as more and more people enter the field, the big ideas start to become scarce. they've been tried. at that point progress slows to steady work, divided between fiercely competitive teams.
your assumption that some new incentives will kick things into gear again is based on the (imo false) idea that people aren't trying so hard.
i think they are trying very hard, and this is the rate of progress you get WITH a lot of effort, a lot of investment (see Japan, Germany) and incentive.
the one hope is for a left-field idea to shake things up. "nano" might provide that ... or it might just prove to people throwing around a left-field word ... in their press releases ;-)
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Bart Anderson Posted 7:26 am
19 Jun 2005
Another suggestion is to take one specific subject and go into some depth, rather than having a general post which details all the ways that other people are wrong. If you can shed light on one subject, people may be more willing to listen. After all, why should we listen to you? What expertise do you have? Show us that the conservative approach can help us meet our goals .
By talking about specifics we can leave behind the usual left/right cliches and stereotypes.
A related suggestion -- LISTEN to other people. Understand their analyses and arguments. I found it easy to dismiss your earlier arguments as right-wing talking points, because they were superficial and one-sided.
One danger with listening to other people is that you may grow in understanding and leave that ideological bubble behind. You might grow into someone we would be happy to listen to and respect.
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Biodiversivist Posted 9:42 am
19 Jun 2005
Your following comment struck me as being the ultimate case of the pot calling the kettle black:
"One danger with listening to other people is that you may grow in understanding and leave that ideological bubble behind."
As far as your last comment to Jeremy:
"You might grow into someone we would be happy to listen to and respect."
I took the liberty of performing a reality check. Not to say that a majority has any relevance here, but I counted 16 people who appreciated Jeremy's posts and only 6 who did not. I think it is interesting that you assumed it was otherwise.
In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Help acquire and protect ecological hotspots, give to a conservation organization: http://www.saveourbiodiversity.com
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Bart Anderson Posted 11:25 am
19 Jun 2005
I'm perfectly happy to be in the minority, here or elsewhere.
The point I was making is that Jeremy had taken on the environmental movement as a whole, characterizing it as enviroliberalism, wishing that it would die, lambasting the Sierra Club, Vandana Shiva , etc. I identify with the movement Jeremy called enviroliberalism and (on this issue) presuming to speak for it.
Let's not get into a "you said," "I said," argument. What's the point of that?
The reality is that conservatives (whether libertarians or Bush supporters or whatever) are not strongly represented in the environmentalism. Jeremy has brought this issue up, coming from a certain point of view, and it's worthwhile to discuss.
It can be a constructive discussion if we really are respectful (and not just say we are); if we can listen to one another; if at some point we discuss specifics rather than reiterate the usual talking points and stereotypes.
I'm particularly critical of the right wing ideological bubble because I inhabited it for a number of years. An ideological bubble is a scary thing, because there is little critical thinking, little interest in the outside objective world.
A few observations about American conservativism and environmentalism.
There is a growing disconnect between American conservativism and the outside world, brought to an acute stage by the current administration. Polls show a growing distrust of America.
If conservatives follow the Bush administration in its rejection of science, global warming, and international co-operation, the conservative movement will be discredited. Interestingly, some of the neo-conservatives are taking a different tack from Bush, as what Thomas Friedman calls the Geo-Greens. They advocate conservation and energy self-sufficiency. I suspect that smalltown Republicans and some libertarians will have more of a future than the Bush-Cheney Republicans.
There are three crises that are approaching, and conservativism does not seem to have an adequate reponse for any of them. The three crises are:
The economy. The US is piling up foreign debt and the dollar is over-valued.
The environment. Climate change is the most spectacular impending crisis, but water and food are not far behind.
Peak oil. Within our lifetimes, the production of oil will reach its peak. Oil (and energy) will become much more expensive, with profound effects for our civilization. The only US politician who has spoken out about peak oil has been a conservative Republican in the House, Roscoe Bartlett of Maryland. Neither Republicans nor Democrats, nor major parties of any country, have raised this issue (except for the NZ Greens).
I'm afraid that the ideological blinders of current conservatives will make it very difficult for them to address these issues. What are the signs of ideological blinders? Lack of awareness of history. Lack of awareness of other cultures. An inability to see capitalism and markets objectively. A preference for bashing liberals and achieving hegemony, rather than for solving problems.
I predict that American conservativism will be almost totally discredited within 10 years, unless some of you conservatives who are more aware push it in a more productive direction.
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Biodiversivist Posted 12:22 pm
19 Jun 2005
...naysaying, cantankerous, codgers whose happier days are well behind you. Who perpetually support the status quo, because change is scary. and cling to any kind of negativity you can find to reassure yourselves death is not that bad, since your existence is near death anyway.
I showed your post to my daughters(ages 11 and 17) who both figured you had pretty much hit the nail on the head alright. Kids, you gotta love 'em.
In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Help acquire and protect ecological hotspots, give to a conservation organization: http://www.saveourbiodiversity.com
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Biodiversivist Posted 1:06 pm
19 Jun 2005
I think I can see where you are coming from. It is the fact that he says he is not a liberal that has you concerned. Personally, I try to resist simple labels. Liberal is not a synonym for environmentalist. Maybe that makes him a centrist. Likewise, Republican is not a synonym for conservative. There are a lot of Republican environmentalists . The head of the Nature Conservancy is one of them. Likewise, there are fundamentalist Christians who are environmentalists. Do you want to save the planet or not? I think that rejecting environmentalists who have strong religious beliefs or those who shun the liberal label is analogous to refusing to let former slaves join in the fight to end slavery. Granted, Delay, Bush, and the religious right in general may be morons, but not all people who refuse the liberal label are cut from the same cloth.
In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Help acquire and protect ecological hotspots, give to a conservation organization: http://www.saveourbiodiversity.com
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Bart Anderson Posted 3:21 pm
19 Jun 2005
biodiversivist wrote "It is the fact that he says he is not a liberal that has you concerned."
No, I don't have any problem at all talking to non-liberals, conservatives, whatever. It's good to have different political points of view, esp on a subject like the environment. But there is a difference between discussion -- listening to other people -- learning from other people -- and just regurgitating the same old talking points. For one thing, those talking points are BORING! (whether they are of the left or the right) Presumably people who come to the Gristmill can do better, go deeper.
To some extent I agree with you that labels are not important, for example, on specific local progjects.
However, these days national politics are becoming very important for environmental issues. That's what I was trying to get at in my previous post. It makes a huge difference whether the Bush administration fights progress at global warming talks. (See How high-pressure politics threatens action on climate .)
I agree completely that "not all people who refuse the liberal label are cut from the same cloth." Some of the most encouraging signs are coming from these folks. The Geo-green idea of national energy self-sufficiency. The Christian fundamentalists who are becoming concerned with the state of Creation, i.e., the environment.
One approach that has particular promise is localization -- building strong communities through patronizing local farmers and merchants. Voluntary simplicity and opposition to consumerism is another movement that is neither Left nor Right, but just a good idea.
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odograph Posted 11:18 pm
19 Jun 2005
But I think the real-deal is that we are flattening multiple charictaristics into a single measure. You could ask people questions like:
do you trust science?
do you think the planet needs saving?
and then combine them with philosophy of government.
Now, the core truth to your generalization is that while it is not a conservative value to oppose science/nature, there is a strong tribe of science and environment hating conservatives out there.
Maybe they were always there ... they were just never in the leadership of the party, let alone the country.
Bottom line - you should be able to tell the difference between a conservative environmentalist and a conservative nature-hater. The charictaristics are not bound, just coincident.
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odograph Posted 11:19 pm
19 Jun 2005
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