Comments Colin Wright has made

Can markets come up with a complete solution?

Sean, if I get you right, you're claiming a price on carbon will take care of most of our energy problems by itself. (And Michael seems to say that that won't cause innovation quickly enough.)

But I'm wondering if a "pure" market system is up to the task of "designing" a complex, distributed, mostly renewable continental system all by itself. I think we agree that there are no silver bullets, and that at some point wind, solar, geothermal, CHP, etc. will be part of the mix. We will need to balance wind and solar generation to smooth out fluctuations, etc. Could a "market-first" system, with a layer of regulation, manage this infrastructure? Or is it a prescription for chaos?

What I have in mind is more of an electrical grid designed by the best engineering minds we have (National Academies, etc.). They might say put out bids for, say, x MW of wind energy from a particular location. They would be "picking winners", but only ones that more or less maximize "economic efficiencies" (perhaps matching your calculation above comparing wind and solar).On Renewable energy promotion policies: transparent posted 1 year, 2 months ago 32 Responses

A taste of peak oil?

Meanwhile a fifth of US refineries are shut down and gas is shooting up to over $5/gallon in some parts of the country.

At the Oil Drum, Gail the Actuary is predicting things will get much worse

Insight 10. Because some areas are likely to be very short of supply, it is likely that gasoline prices would need to rise to $10 a gallon or more in those areas, to cut back demand sufficiently.

In some areas, there may be temporary shortfalls of 25% of more of gasoline supply. To allocate such short supplies would take a very high price. Government officials are not likely to let this happen. Instead, we are likely to see many stations that are completely out of gasoline, and other stations with long lines, selling at most 10 gallons per customer.

Talking of songs about oil...

If you want a different kind of song, a real Friday song, here is David Rovics When the Oil Runs Dry (mp3) which I snagged from the wonderful Canadian environmental resource, Radio Ecoshock.

I don't think I could bear to listen to ole Aaron, ya'll. On Astroturf, the musical posted 1 year, 2 months ago 7 Responses

And did they really?

And of course the question is, how much of that 20 mb actually displaced oil? How much oil and other energy went into making that biodiesel? Or are we just converting precious natural gas into biodiesel? Or are we displacing tropical forests by diverting food-soy to fuel-soy?On National Biodiesel Board opens green building in Jefferson City, Mo. posted 1 year, 2 months ago 4 Responses

Shell shale...

The Denver Post had a recent article on Shale Oil worth looking at. The new Shell breakthrough in situ process is at least 15 years away from commercial application so it's not going to impact peak oil. Still, if we wanted to completely wreck the biosphere we probably could.

One of the critical breakthroughs of Shell's process is that it heats the shale in the ground slowly -- over a period of about three years -- using dozens of giant heating elements, each almost 2,000 feet long.

The area where the shale is being heated is surrounded by a perimeter made up of a 3-foot-thick wall of ice, created by circulating aqueous ammonia into deep wells for a year and a half.

Both processes take enormous amounts of electricity. At an ongoing freeze-wall test site west of Rifle, giant freezers the size of semitrailers run 24 hours a day -- and even that's a far smaller version of what a commercial site would look like.

But the process does create other problems. New power plants to feed the system would probably spew lots of carbon. And the refineries that analysts believe would need to be built nearby to process the liquids could contaminate the air.

But the biggest impact may be on water. Rand estimates that it would take three barrels of water to produce one barrel of shale oil. Although that's significantly less than the amount of water needed to produce a barrel of ethanol, the water would come from the relatively scarce resources of the semi-arid Western Slope, some of which also feeds the Front Range.

On melting ice and the Arctic...

Robert Piller wrote: "I read a report that scientists estimate that within 20 years, the Arctic Ocean will be ice-free during the summer. As the ice melts, sea levels will rise, so, in essence, we will turn land masses into islands in the summer."

Here's an experiment. Take a glass of water and add some ice cubes. Put a mark on the glass at the level of the water. Now wait for the ice to melt and look at the water level. If it has moved, you have just proved Archimedes wrong.

You see, as the ice melts it becomes slightly denser. So it occupies a smaller volume. In fact, the volume of ice melt matches exactly the volume of ice that lay beneath the surface. So there is no net change in the volume of water in the glass. Fortunately for us!

However, the ice melt from glaciers and ice sheets on land (as well as thermal expansion of the oceans) will raise sea level many meters (see article above). And the loss of summer Arctic ice will destroy long-established ecosystems and accelerate global warming by decreasing the albedo effect.On New sea-level rise research, part 1: 'Most likely' 0.8 to 2.0 meters by 2100 posted 1 year, 2 months ago 178 Responses

Mreinbold -- US production won't save us...

Check out the peak oil graph for the U.S. You'll see production peaked about 1970 at 10 mpb and we're down to close to 4 mbd today. There is only so much water you can wring from a sponge.On Excerpt from acceptance speech released posted 1 year, 2 months ago 12 Responses

Monbiot strikes again...

I appreciate Jonas' concern for the developing world. But there, surely the issue is more complicated than localism vs. agribusiness.

For instance, George Monbiot of the Manchester Guardian has a powerful new essay on the new threats of resource exploitation of the rich countries on the developing ones. He gives examples such as the European fishing fleets, having exhausted their own fishing grounds, are now depleting the seas off West Africa.

Where once they used gunboats and sepoys, the rich nations now use chequebooks and lawyers to seize food from the hungry. The scramble for resources has begun, but - in the short term at any rate - we will hardly notice. The rich world's governments will protect themselves from the political cost of shortages, even if it means that other people must starve.

Surely as well as the Food First recommendations, we need new international structures of government to protect the weak countries from the most powerful. And how about a new ethic of cooperation? For that, we cannot move fast enough.
On Slow foodies unveil declaration of sustainability posted 1 year, 3 months ago 45 Responses

Eyes on the Prize...

I caught that too, hapa. I suppose by picking Biden the dems are trying to blunt the Fox-Limbaugh criticisms that Obama is a "softie". So Biden choose to come across as the "bad cop", by bringing up stories that he a tough, scrapper with a sort of testosterone-driven image that will play with the Right. (And at least the dems kept away from the patrician-types like Kerry, who really turn off the blue-collar voters.)

But one hopes that Obama will not become the Cold War militarist that Biden was portraying!

 On Obama's VP talks energy and Amtrak in his acceptance speech posted 1 year, 3 months ago 5 Responses

Markets and mythology?

Greenmom wrote:

But the climate problem is urgent, and clearly the world currently does worship at the alter of markets and productivity.  So it's a crucial point that markets, structured correctly and overseen by readily enforced rules, are our best bet to reduce carbon emissions as quickly as possible.

This sounds to my ears like:

But the climate problem is urgent, and clearly the world currently does worship at the alter of maiden scrifice.  So it's a crucial point that maiden scrifices, structured correctly and overseen by readily enforced rules, are our best bet to reduce carbon emissions as quickly as possible.

I don't mean to suggest that we need to resurrect Mao and Stalin. Only that continuing the trajectory of today into the unknown of tomorrow, whenever the present methods aren't working, is the definition of mental illness. Isn't it? (Sorry, couldn't resist the cheap shot!)On NYT Magazine probes Obama's economic thinking posted 1 year, 3 months ago 46 Responses

Wagging the Dog?

Thanks for the interpretation and link, Jon!

Let's see. Whitney sees it through an anti-U.S.-imperialist lens. Klare sees it through an energy lens ("all about oil!"). Vanden Heuvel sees it through a rosy lens ("This could establish the basis for a more cooperative US-Russia relationship that would also be in the interests of the Georgian people"!). And now Rynn gives us the Manufacturing lens!

(Also here is a worthwhile Georgian academic's view.) Of course, now that we know McCain's advisor was being paid by the Georgian government shows that it's all about Wagging the Dog, the hilarious movie!On Oil wealth contains the 'seeds of its own destruction' posted 1 year, 3 months ago 17 Responses

2011 is the year to watch!

I haven't seen the most recent IEA/EIA's data on world oil production. But I suspect we are still on the bumpy 87 mpd plateau. This is from Tom Whipple's Peak Oil Review:

There has been very little change in the fundamentals of supply and demand during the last few weeks. OPEC production for July was up a bit, but this was more than offset by declines in non-OPEC production. US demand for oil products remains about 2-3 percent lower than last year. Chinese imports which are more volatile than those of other countries were significantly lower in July than in the spring and this may be a factor in the price drop.

In any case, Petroleum Review editor, Chris Srebowski has done a project by project analysis of upcoming production, and his model suggests that we won't start declining til after 2010. Even so it would be really helpful if OPEC were to open their books to independent agencies, so the world can make the necessary preparations for the inevitable post-peak era.On New data point shows that OPEC's production hit highest level ever last month posted 1 year, 3 months ago 25 Responses

Rise and Fall of the Green Revolution?

Tom, just came across your superlative review here!

One person who is acutely aware of the role of famine in human history is Richard Heinberg.

But what we're doing in our backyard is infinitesimal compared with the scale and complexity of the global food system. How much coordination, planning, investment, and effort will be necessary to transform that system to work without cheap fossil fuels? And most importantly, how much time? If world oil exports are set to drop by half over the next decade, as Jeffrey Brown at www.theoildrum.com argues is the case, then averting global famine will require an immense, coordinated effort beginning now.
There is probably no higher priority on the human agenda.

Bad Samaritans! Good choice, BioD!

Ha-Joon Chang is an economist at Cambridge, who provides an excellent rebuttal to the neoliberal economists. Here's a sample from Wiki:

In his book Kicking Away the Ladder (which won the 2003 Gunnar Myrdal Prize), Chang argued that all major developed countries used interventionist economic policies in order to get rich and then tried to forbid other countries from doing similarly. The WTO, World Bank and IMF come in for strong criticism for this kind of ladder-kicking which is, according to Chang, the fundamental obstacle to poverty alleviation in the developing world. This and other work led to his being awarded the 2005 Wassily Leontief Prize for Advancing the Frontiers of Economic Thought from the Global Development and Environment Institute (previous prize-winners include Amartya Sen, John Kenneth Galbraith and Herman Daly).[1][2]

Following up on the ideas of Kicking Away the Ladder, Chang published Bad Samaritans: Rich Nations, Poor Policies and the Threat to the Developing World in December 2007.[10]. Chang argues that unregulated international trade (free markets) has very rarely succeeded in producing economic development, and has a far worse record compared to interventionist policies. He cites evidence that GDP growth in developing countries was higher prior to external pressures recommending deregulation and extends his analysis of the failures of free trade to induce growth through privatisation and anti-inflationary policies.

When will the media put 2 and 2 together?

It's interesting that as Exxon announced record profits, its stock went down! Investors must have noticed that their oil production actually decreased.

Maybe the oil companies are in liquidation, as Matt Simmons has said! On The breakdown of Big Oil's record-breaking profits posted 1 year, 3 months ago 6 Responses

Just in time?

Nice article. Provides a nice anecdote to this recent Richard Heinberg commentary, describing an unholy alliance between Big Oil and a new anti-poverty group:

An article today in the Financial Post, Oil Sands Get Nod from U.S. Anti-Poverty Group, underscores the need for more energy education. The article presents the views of a newly-formed "anti-poverty coalition led by African-American civil rights and faith leaders."
According to the FP, "The group is waging a national campaign targeting  50 `extreme' environmental organizations and 100 U.S. politicians it  says are restricting energy supplies through climate-change legislation, causing oil prices to spike to levels that are `strangling' the poor."  According to the coalition, all energy is good energy, because it enables economic growth, and lowers energy prices for poor people.
Climate and depletion experts need to talk to these folks--and soon! They must be helped to understand that poor people will be the most immediate victims of climate change. And that the shift away from fossil fuels is not optional in any case: the price increases in oil, gas, coal, and electricity that we are seeing are NOT due to climate regulations, but to depletion and decline.

And I know I'm guilty of this one:

Climate and Peak Oil experts chatter to each other on Internet forums peopled mostly by white, middle-aged, middle-to-upper-income managerial types. Unless this communication gap is addressed soon, the fossil fuel-promoting dinosaurs, who want to maintain business as usual even if it means societal and ecological collapse, will have powerful new allies.

Keep the funding coming...

PL: the big news here is that electrolysis can now be done essentially for free -- cheap materials and sunlight. This could be the big breakthrough for solar storage. (I'm looking forward to what Gar and Joe have to say!) I really recommend the hour-long lecture by Prof. Nocera on the MIT site to get an idea of how the dream of mimicking how nature does photosynthesis is finally coming true.

The other news on the NYT coverage of this story is a replacement for for expensive Platinum for fuel cells. So we have new possibilities opening up right before us due to years of painstaking world-class research by Dr. Nocera and others.

The second article in Science describes building a fuel cell without a platinum catalyst. Fuel cells are declining in price, but the price of the platinum alone exceeds the price of an internal combustion engine of the same power, according to a paper by a group from the Australian Center for Electromaterials Science at Monash University.

The group developed porous polymer material for use as an electrode that gives the same performance as platinum.

Wolverine, hyperbole is rarely helpful...

As Chomsky has noted, the economic press generally does a better job of getting the facts right than the mainstream press: there is real money at stake for its readers so they have to.

Meanwhile the rest of the media can afford to be more biased. Their job is to filter the news and "manufacture consent". They take their leads (and leaks) from the politicians (such as cheerleading the country into war). Thus you're more likely to read about peak oil in the WSJ than the NYT.

Of course, this blog article is nuts: if oil prices drop too low due to conservation, OPEC would just shut the spigots til prices rose again.On The WSJ alleges that our use of hybrids increases oil prices posted 1 year, 4 months ago 23 Responses

Goodbye to the WTO?

Ron, I think it's more of an issue of the power imbalance between the North and South and not the fact that it's composed of individual countries. As one NGO from Indonesia put it:

The current food, energy and financial crises were caused by a terrible mode of production and consumption which promoted by developed countries--and also by international regime like the WTO, IMF, World Bank, and through free trade agreements (FTA), both bilateral and regional.

The fact is WTO will only exacerbate the current global crises. The resume of WTO negotiation will not solve the basic problems in Indonesia, or poverty and inequality of development process. Concluding the Doha Round will not solve the problem of agricultural market. Even worse, it will destruct other sector such as manufacture sector. Furthermore, WTO negotiation will undermine people's access towards service--especially public service.

The current Doha package is a bad deal. It serves the private interests of the biggest corporations around the world, most of them headquartered in the developed world. WTO negotiations have been failed in 2006, and in many occasion since 13 years ago. Therefore, it is not the solution for today's food, climate, financial and energy crises. It is time for a new approach to the multilateral trading system that focuses on policies that promote people-centered ecologically sustainable development

Of course, trade between countries and blocks of countries will continue (though diminished due to the end of cheap oil), but the end of the "one-size-fits-all" neoliberal project will open us possibilities for countries to persue their own independent development strategies.

And in my view, disagreements between nations about resource management are better handled via the U.N., where interests other than monetary can be handled. On Outline for a move to a sustainable agriculture system posted 1 year, 4 months ago 108 Responses

Staying one step ahead of the markets...

Permit me some more speculation here...

Perhaps now that the Saudi's (the old swing producer) are essentially maxed out on oil production, the U.S. has become the swing conserver? The ball is now in our court to determine the world price of oil. (So long as we can conserve and stay ahead of world oil depletion!)

I wonder if the same reasoning could apply to the energy markets in general (given we are the world's energy hog!). If, say, the next President appointed an energy czar to direct a federal policy of the "Great Renewable Energy Transition", could we not only keep oil prices manageable, but those of natural gas and electricity. So, for example, the gov't could "direct" more conservation/efficiency/wind/solar/geothermal to come online in such a manner to keep all energy prices manageable. (They would of course want to keep the prices high enough to encourage conservation but not high enough to bankrupt ordinary people.)

I wonder if a new TVA/BPA type project (wind, solar, geothermal) would serve to moderate electricity prices as the private markets switch to renewables. Sort of as a parallel to an expanded Strategic Petroleum Reserves, though of course electricity cannot be stored for a rainy day. (You could also make a case for a Strategic Natural Gas Reserve -- I don't think we have one, or do we?)

I guess what I'm getting at is using gov't policy to act as a price buffer, as well as a market regulator/innovator.On An effective political response to the Republican push for drilling posted 1 year, 4 months ago 7 Responses

From one of the fold:

Joe writes: "The House GOP has defied the will of the public on energy efficiency, wind, photovoltaics, baseload solar thermal, and fuel economy standards since the Gingrich revolution."

There are a couple of exceptions. Rosscoe Bartlett (h/t energybulletin.net) says this of his fellow Republicans:

This `drill here, drill more, pay less' is a great mantra, and it's hurting the Democrats. But you need to finish that: `And screw your kids and your grandkids,' because that's what we're doing."

As a sidenote, Joe leaves out Geothermal, which Bush tried to zero out.

This struggle is most obvious in the Bush administration's attempt, two years ago, to cut the Department of Energy's geothermal program. The impact is still being felt today. During the program's heyday in the 1980s, it received about $80 million in annual funding, money that financed research and salaries at national laboratories.

By the first part of this decade, the annual allotment had dropped to less than $30 million. Then, looking to cut overall spending, the Bush administration began to eye geothermal programs, many of which are long term, as an easy target. In 2006, the White House requested no money for geothermal energy in its annual budget. "They were going to zero it out," says John Lund, director of the Oregon Institute of Technology's Geo-Heat Center. "They said we were a mature technology and that we didn't need support

The new Gore?

Great, timely post! I like the idea that a practical way forward could be sketched out by Gore (though I'm suspicious of his history as a pro-corporate neoliberal). But heck, if he's come this far, challenging the fossil fuel industry, maybe he can go the steps further by challenging the entrenched financial interests?

Outside of government, could he even question the collosal waste of people, money and prestige that is the core of American foreign policy? And advocate redirecting our resources homeward?On From fossil fuels to manufacturing for wind and solar energy posted 1 year, 4 months ago 19 Responses

Welcome to Wall-e's world...

Jon, I had a quick (fast forward) look at the Menominee video. It struck me an "techno-utopian". "If we convert every acre of the U.S. to tree farms we can generate the equivalent of 85 mbd of oil." Blah, blah, blah...

Then I had a look at David's MacKay online book on renewables (http://www.withouthotair.com) and found that trees can produce about 0.15 - 0.3 W/m2, which compares to 0.2 for switchgrass and 0.02 for ethanol.

So my first reaction is that the same problems for biofuels will turn up for bioenergy in general. That is, the unforeseen consequences: the competition for land will push up prices for food (and land and forest products), etc. And if the world energy consumption continues to grow as it does, doubling every 20 years or so (I don't have the exact figure on hand), we can say goodbye to the biological diversity of the world's tropical rainforests and hello "monoculture earth".

There could be some room for "sustainable" bioenergy, but it can only produce a fraction of our energy needs. The problem is that as oil depletion sets in, market forces will overwhelm all sense of balance and proportion. The cheapest sources of new energy will be "mined" first. I'm thinking of Papua New Guinea, and other poor countries where multinationals can get forest rights by handing out beads. Then those multinationals sell the wood to the biodigestors that spring up in the oil refineries.

Meanwhile, we can imagine the bumper-stickers on the smug environmentalists' cars, "My car runs on FSC-certifed wood."
On Time to stop using the phrase 'renewable energy' posted 1 year, 4 months ago 65 Responses

Great questions!

I think Pelosi's heart is in the right place. But she needs to be pushed about some of her replies. Here's a couple of things which stood out for me.

What kind of signal is sent to the markets if new coal plants are not banned? (And let the coal companies with their millions of dollars for attack ads fund their own research on carbon capture, not the taxpayers!)

Opening up the Strategic Petroleum Oil Reserves would be a huge and dangerous folly, in my opinion. It would open us up to the possibility of petrocollapse during hurricane season. The only way to get oil prices down is a sustained and coordinated international effort to reduce oil use below the depletion rate. (And whatever happened to the Windfall Profit tax idea as a way to ease the burden on the poor at the expense of the monstrous profits of the oil companies?)

And of course, when will the Democrats ever come to their senses on biofuels, which is estimated by the World Bank to have caused world food prices to increase by 75 %?On Grist talks to Speaker Nancy Pelosi about climate and energy politics on the Hill posted 1 year, 4 months ago 6 Responses

Kissinger and Powell turn into DFH's -- hippies!

Ken wrote: "From the perspective of someone outside the US, seeing real reluctance from the worlds most advanced economy to tackle this issue - to lead on this issue - very worrying."

Indeed! But there does appear something beginning to build. And I don't think it would hurt if radical change didn't appear first in Britain, France, Australia, etc.

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1155ap_wise_men_en ...

WASHINGTON -- A bipartisan group of 27 elder statesmen is sending an open letter to both presidential candidates and every member of Congress saying the country faces "a long-term energy crisis" that threatens the security and prosperity of future generations if swift action isn't taken.

The group includes Henry Kissinger, Colin Powell and six other former secretaries of state or defense, former senators of both parties and a half dozen former senior White House advisers and other Cabinet officers for both Republican and Democratic presidents....

The letter includes 13 broad recommendations. They include aggressively promoting energy efficiency and reducing energy consumption, increased commitments to both nuclear energy and renewable energy sources, making coal more environmentally acceptable and moving transportation away from oil as a fuel.

Thanks, jon.

Incidentally, the Environment 360 looks like a good website too.

Have to agree with Jeff Goodall from their front page article about the limits of clean coal:

Clearly, every ton of CO2 that is safely buried underground is a step in the right direction. But betting our future on an expensive, unproven technology like CCS is, at best, reckless. We don't need to bury our problems. We need to reinvent our world.

Don't forget freight!

Also at the Oil Drum, ALan Drake has a good piece about electrifying rail (in 6 years!):

Transferring 85% of truck freight to rail, and electrifying half of US railroads, which the author considers to be possible with a large enough investment (see Appendix Four), would save 2.3 to 2.4 million barrels/day. That is 12% of USA oil used today for all purposes, not just transportation.

This dwarfs any other "silver BB" being actively discussed that can be implemented quickly. And best yet, no new technology is required. This analysis shows that the major oil savings are in transferring freight from trucks to electrified rail.

Many people are too ashamed to whine...

I bet a lot of these people didn't vote for Bush, and many of the ones that did were misled by the media (h/t to the energy bulletin). Maybe if people whined more, we could get a social justice movement going.

A mother and father in rural Vermont: "Due to increasing fuel prices we have at times had to choose between baby food/diapers and heating fuel. We've run out of heating fuel three times.... The baby has ended up in the hospital with pneumonia two of the times."

A man in north central Vermont: "As bad as our situation is, I know many in worse shape. We try to donate food when we do our weekly shopping but now we are not able to even afford to help our neighbors eat. What has this country come to?"

A mother: "By February we ran out of wood [for the wood stove we use for heat] and I burned my mother's dining furniture. I have no oil for hot water.... We are certainly a country in distress."

A 55 year old man: "I have worked since age 16. I don't live paycheck to paycheck, I live day to day.... I can see myself working until the day I die.... I work 12 to 14 hours daily and it just doesn't help.... I am just tired, the harder that I work, the harder it gets."

A man in a small town: "I have what I used to consider a decent job, I work hard, pinch my pennies, but the pennies have all but dried up.... I began selling off my woodworking tools, snowblower (pennies on the dollar), and furniture that had been handed down in my family from the early 1800s, just to keep the heat on. Today I am sad, broken, and very discouraged."

A woman from Northeast Kingdom: "I have always been a big pusher of `if you can do something to change your situation, do it'.... [But] it seems like every time [my husband and I] do the right thing and try to move ahead for our family, something out of our control happens in order to slap us back down.... We now find ourselves unsure if we will be able to pay for both the mortgage and our oil next winter."

A working mother of two: "I spend around $150 per week at the grocery store and trust me when I say I don't buy prime rib.... Some nights we eat cereal and toast for dinner because that's all I have. My family has had to cancel our annual trip to the zoo, and we make less trips to see our families in another town due to the increase of gas."

Fermi's paradox explained...

George, if your last sentence is true it would explain why there appears to be no extra-terrestrials out there. Nature has not been able to come up with a dominant species where individuals do not put there status ahead of group survival.On No easy explanation for continued price increases in the oil markets posted 1 year, 4 months ago 48 Responses

Could need air-source heat pumps, too.

Gar wrote:

However, we are assuming all space heating and cooling other than solar is switched to ground source heat pumps with PCM thermal storage. So when solar electricity was produced at a time it was not needed, it could run heat pumps to generate heat or cold in storage for climate control systems to draw on later

Exactly right about storing solar. Here is Cambridge physicist David MacKay [pdf](thanks to JMG's recent post) on limits to ground source heat pumps:

Can everyone use ground-source heat pumps, without using the summer replenishment trick? A calculation on p.348 gives a tentative answer of no: if we were aiming for everyone
in the neighbourhood to be able to pull from the ground a heat flow of
about 48 kWh/d (my estimate of our typicalwinter heat demand),we'd
end up freezing the ground in the winter. Avoiding unreasonable cooling
of the ground requires that the sucking rate be less than 12 kWh/d.
So when we switch to heat pumps, we should plan to include substantial
summer heat-dumping in the design, to refill the ground with heat
for use in the Winter. This summer heat-dumping could use heat from
air-conditioning, or heat from roof-mounted solar water-heating pan.

Alternatively, we should expect to need to use some air-source heat
pumps too, and then we'll be able to get all the heat we want - as long
as we have the electricity to pump it. In the UK, air temperatures don't
go very far below freezing, so concerns about poor winter-time coefficient
of performance of air-source pumps, which might apply in North
America and Scandanavia, probably do not apply in Britain.
Nay-sayers object that the coefficient of performance of air-source
heat pumps is lousy - just 2 or 3. But their information is out of date. If
we are careful to buy top-of-the-line heat pumps, we can do much better.
The Japanese government has legislated a decade-long efficiency
drive that has greatly improved the performance of air-conditioners;
thanks to this drive, there are now air-source heat pumps with a coefficient
of performance of 4.9; these heat pumps can make hot water
http://www.ecosystem-japan.com/ p.148, part 1 Energy

Can we build it?

Business Week, that radical weekly had a recent story on reinvesting in U.S. manufacturing through government intervention:

In areas where the U.S. is at the forefront of innovation--renewable energy, nano materials, solid-state lighting--the U.S. must compete with Asian and European nations willing to lavish entrepreneurs with start-up capital, cash grants, and cheap loans. Similar help may be needed to persuade U.S. companies to build capacity

Also, I think Thom Hartmann is broadcasting from Denmark this week. I'm sure he'll have some renewable energy stories.On Lessons from Europe and Japan posted 1 year, 5 months ago 10 Responses

Excellent resource!

I think this is a remarkable book, well worth studying. Here is one provocative paragraph with relevance to decentralization vs centralization, and CHP vs ground source heat pumps. This is from p. 50

A final impediment to rational discussion of combined heat and
power is an unfounded assumption that has grown up recently, that
decentralizing a technology somehow makes it greener. So whereas big
centralized fossil fuel power stations are viewed as clearly `bad', flocks
of local micro-power stations are imbued with goodness. Small may be
beautiful, but if decentralization is actually a good idea then this fact
should be evident in the numbers. Decentralization should be able to
stand on its own two feet without religious belief in the need to decentralize.
And what the numbers actually show is that centralized
electricity generation has many benefits in both economic and energy
terms. Only in large buildings is there any benefit to local generation,
and usually that benefit is only of order 10% or 20%. And what this
chapter will show is that there is another technology that is superior to
combined heat and power: this technology is called `heat pumps'.

The Long Emergency to continue?

Rubinomics, here we come!

Obama's Economic Adviser Draws Scrutiny for Wal-Mart Praise
On the campaign trail, Senator Barack Obama is coming under criticism in some circles for appointing an outspoken defender of the retail giant Wal-Mart as his chief adviser on economic policy. The adviser, Jason Furman, is a New York University scholar and former official in the Clinton administration. In 2005, he published a paper entitled "Wal-Mart: A Progressive Success Story" that argued Wal-Mart's low-prices outweigh the negative effects of its low wages for its workers. Obama has criticized Wal-Mart on the campaign trail and made several references to former rival Senator Hillary Clinton's time on the Wal-Mart board of directors during their battle for the Democratic nomination

Look out Bulgaria!

Jon, I like the veiled reference to Bob the Builder in your last line, a dead giveaway that you have boys!

I also like the idea of a transcontinental high-speed electrified rail line! That could really excite and unite the populace once airlines start charging for bathroom use!

Anyway last time they tried to build a rail line from Chicago to Seattle, the natives got restless and put an end to General Custer, whose task it was to defend the new railroad. I hope you mid-Westerners have better motives next time!
On Swing states need green manufacturing posted 1 year, 5 months ago 15 Responses

A different approach...

My take on this China-initiated energy confererence is entirely different. The markets got us into this mess ($140 oil). Only governments can get us out. Phasing out subsidies will only hurt the poor in developing nations and destabilize their economies.

Eventually the markets and the rising price of oil will bring the world economy into recession. (Arjun Murti of Goldmann thinks $150-$200 will do it.) But if governments acted in concert to reduce demand then the oil price could be brought down. For instance, if each country agreed to reduce it's oil consumption by x% per year, OPEC would surely listen. The value, x, could be adjusted to bring about stable oil prices that can help the world negogiate oil depletion.On Five nations agree to think about ending oil subsidies posted 1 year, 5 months ago 16 Responses

Cap-and-ration?

Cap and trade won't work, according to Michael Dorsey of Dartmouth. In Foreign Policy in Focus he writes:

In April 2007, the Financial Times (FT) launched an investigation into carbon trading that uncovered numerous problems with trading and offset schemes. "The rush to go green suggests easy money for investors in projects that reduce carbon dioxide output," the FT reported. "The reality is otherwise: many carbon projects turn out to be high risk." Carbon traders and analysts told the FT that because of project failures and over-optimism, "40-50 per cent of the carbon credits anticipated under the Kyoto protocol will never be delivered." Worse, as the FT's environment correspondent Fiona Harvey noted, carbon trading runs "the risk of fraud, such as sale of credits from carbon reduction projects that do not exist. It is often difficult for buyers and brokers to verify the existence and effectiveness of projects as many are in remote areas."

Also there, Tom Athanasiou writes:

That the only way the Non-Annex 1 countries are going to make a "substantial deviation from baseline" emissions paths, in time, is if the wealthy countries provide them with the technology and development assistance necessary to do so without compromising their development prospects. Politically this can only happen in a progressive manner (not in the sense of "progressive politics" but in the sense of "progressive tax") as part of a package that mobilizes the longing for economic justice as well as the drive for climate stabilization. In other words, we need a new deal that's not limited to climate protection, but also reforms "development" and drives poverty alleviation in the wealthy world as well as the poor.

My own view is we need to combine some sort of Oil Depletion Protocol, actually an Energy Depletion Protocol, with appropriate greenhouse gas limits. Then we can actually have a functioning world economy that can provide for a carbon-free future without fear of energy bankrupcy.On Post-post mortem on Boxer-Lieberman-Warner debate posted 1 year, 5 months ago 14 Responses

Chomsky on China

I consider Chomsky probably to be the most astute of our political commentators. Here are a few things to think about:

Chomsky: China does not pose a military threat. In fact, of all the major powers, China has probably been the most restrained in building up its military forces. China poses a very serious threat because it cannot be intimidated [by the US].

[The US] is a little bit like the mafia. The Godfather does not tolerate disobedience, even in a small storekeeper, let alone somebody that matters, so that's a threat.

However, the US relationship with China is also very ambivalent. On one hand, from the point of view of state power, China is threatening because it follows its own course.

On the other hand, powerful business interests in the US are of course highly influential in determining state policy. These businesses have a real stake in China - it is a wonderful platform for cheap exports and it's a potential market. They want relations with China to be strong, but there is an internal conflict in the US.

Remember that China has enormous financial reserves that surpass Japan - it is the leading holder of foreign reserves - it is keeping the US economy afloat. So it's a pretty tricky, complex relationship.

The corporate manipulations continue

caniscandida wrote:

A puzzle of a different kind is why, in this German-made ad, the voice of the Wind is speaking English, with a French accent.

Good question. I hope it's not nationalistic antagonisms at work. Perhaps it's innocent -- the actor is Chaplinesque, and maybe the French touch was an "arts" thing?

The Frankensteinoid appearance of the actor is unsettling.  But the concept, having him do the kinds of things that bother people in cities regarding excessive wind, is terrific.

In any case, the ad is yet another a marketing scheme that benefits from rational analysis... On Wind energy ad wins Cannes award posted 1 year, 6 months ago 9 Responses

Will -- very learned?

Surely you jest, Canis? It would take a treatise to properly debunk Will, but look at this one paragraph:

What Friedrich Hayek called the "fatal conceit" -- the idea that government can know the future's possibilities and can and should control the future's unfolding -- is the left's agenda. The left exists to enlarge the state's supervision of life, narrowing individual choices in the name of collective goods. Hence the left's hostility to markets. And to automobiles -- people going wherever they want whenever they want.

Now who is it that wants to take away a woman's right to choose? Who is it that makes the U.S. the largest prison state in the world? Who shredded the Constitution (undue searches, habeas corpus, etc.)? Don't get me started on the right-wing...

As for taking away people's cars, the oil markets will take care of that!On Conservative pundit correctly recognizes the radical implications of the polar bear decision posted 1 year, 6 months ago 5 Responses

No one has all the answers ...

Ted, great stimulating review!

You criticize Speth for not addressing the ills of the two-party system. But perhaps unfairly. I link to a great interview with Speth here. Although he doesn't specifically mention third parties, I get the impression he would be open-minded enough to consider anything that could provide a spark to the "environmental revolution". Unless you know otherwise. (Does he know as much as you about multicultural organizing? Probably not.)

I certainly support Green Party activities but I wouldn't bet the house that a third party, even one tied to a dynamic, grassroots movement is going to be our savior. Surely we will need to encourage movement on all fronts (individual, community, municipality, national and international governments, etc.).

Meanwhile, you don't seem to offer any sort of parallel criticism of Mazzochi. What sort of socialist was he? How would he go about organizing the economy differently than Speth? Would he advocate nationalizing or "socializing" industry? Or would he advocate bringing workers and community representatives onto corporate boards, as a transitional strategy (perhaps, not differently than Speth)? What were his views on economic growth and the relation to ecological destruction?

I take it your point is to push Speth more to the left. But I wonder more what each of these men could have learned from the other.On Ted Glick on two new books that address capitalism and the environment posted 1 year, 6 months ago 8 Responses

LOL!

Jon, I don't think we're French (or Slovenian) enough!On Coming to terms with the reality of a world of refugees posted 1 year, 6 months ago 12 Responses

Oops, where is that editor when you need it?

Strike that Zoellick quote above! Cutting agricultural tariffs and subsidies in the developed world could certainly be a good thing. There is no one-size-fits-all but in general I think the developing world would gain by more access to U.S. markets -- as long as this does not mean opening developing countries markets to multinational corporations in return.

And while subsidized U.S. corn decimated Mexican farmers, there can sometimes be benefits to the South from U.S. agricultural subsidies. For instance, the Center for Economic and Policy Research in a critique of trade liberalization give the example of subsidized wheat [p.11]:

A third way that countries could end up with net loss as a result of trade liberalization is that they may be large consumers of subsidized exports. If a country eliminated its subsidies on these exports, then in standard models the importing country could lead to a loss to the importing nation. For example, if a country is a major consumer of subsidized wheat exports from the United States, and the United States then removes these subsidies, the importing country would be in a situation where it now has to pay more for the wheat it purchases.

Commenter rights!

I'd like to be able to track commenters latest comments, even if they haven't posted recently. Right now if I want to see what, say, caniscandida has written I have to wait til I see his name in the "recent comments". Those "recent comments" can roll by pretty quickly.

Maybe there is already a way to do this? But it seems the commenters don't come up in the search engine either.

And how about a calender section with dates of events of environmental significance?

Oh, and one of those free magic ponies everyone talks about!On Grist is cooking up a new site; what do you want to see in it? posted 1 year, 6 months ago 32 Responses

Certainly here...

For people who can still afford to live in Seattle, the debate rages over electric trolleys vs. streetcars vs. light rail. What we really need though is a federal electrification-of-transit project comparable to the setting up of the Interstate system.

... streetcars cost three to six times as much to build as electric trolley buses. Both are powered by electric wires, but fixed rails must be built and maintained for streetcars, while rubber-tired trolley buses run on street pavement without tracks. According to the city estimate, electric trolley construction and facilities such as power lines would cost $7 million to $8 million per mile for systems lasting 30 years. The city estimate compared that to $30 million to $45 million per mile for streetcar systems that last 40 years (one proposed line would cost more than $50 million per mile). Light rail trains, by comparison, cost between $100 million and $160 million per mile and can last more than 60 years

Rising powers, shrinking planet...

One wonders how it will all end. I suppose we shouldn't be surprised if China is now mopping up the last of the farmland as well as the remaining resources.

Who will cut down the last tree? Or will peak resources and escalating prices lead to a deflation of super-capitalism? Could humans possibly learn to share the remaining resources equitably and develop ecological economics?

Coming soon to a planet near you! Stay tuned...On More hidden costs of our love affair with cheap imported goods posted 1 year, 6 months ago 27 Responses

Good video!

Came across another CCA article here.

Previously, the only way for a local government to have a say in where the community's power came from was to establish a municipally owned utility. The CCA process provides an easier way to switch to an earth-friendlier power supply without taking on the burden of managing the power lines, collecting bills, and the divisive politics involved with the expensive process of bringing energy under municipal control.

This type of community energy planning is happening in a big way in California's Marin County, where I live. Granted, this is an area just north of San Francisco that's heavily populated with tree huggers. But other parts of California, from the Central Valley to Los Angeles, are investigating CCA models. (Massachusetts and Ohio have already enacted CCA programs, but the motivation in these states was more for local control and cutting costs, not saving the environment.)

Marin's goal is to obtain 100 percent of the supply from renewable energy sources within the next few years.

Cafe culture?

Damn Aussies. What have they got against Starbucks?On A modern city can be remade posted 1 year, 6 months ago 12 Responses

From sacharin to agent orange to GM seeds...

Sounds like a great book. Two of America's best investigative journalists (Bartlett & Steele) have just published an expose of Monsanto in Vanity Fair. Frighening that they are allowed to continue buying up seed companies. So much for the free market.

Even as the company is pushing its G.M. agenda, Monsanto is buying up conventional-seed companies. In 2005, Monsanto paid $1.4 billion for Seminis, which controlled 40 percent of the U.S. market for lettuce, tomatoes, and other vegetable and fruit seeds. Two weeks later it announced the acquisition of the country's third-largest cottonseed company, Emergent Genetics, for $300 million. It's estimated that Monsanto seeds now account for 90 percent of the U.S. production of soybeans, which are used in food products beyond counting. Monsanto's acquisitions have fueled explosive growth, transforming the St. Louis - based corporation into the largest seed company in the world.

No one is perfect!

I used to feel more critically towards JHK. I have a different political outlook, a different reading of the past and future. But I've come to appreciate him more and more.

He's part artist, part analyst, part trickster, I think. And he gives me at least the courage to speak my own truth more, not to bow to convention, not be afraid of making wrong predictions. So in a way he moves us along the emotional and spiritual path to dealing in a healthy way with whatever peak oil has to throw at us. If you can make peace with a scenario like "World Made By Hand", then anything we retain above bare subsidence is a bonus.

Who else has done more to break through the many layers of denial that envelop us? And offer us a positive message that we are each our own generator of hope.On Kunstler meets Colbert posted 1 year, 7 months ago 16 Responses

How would a rationing system work?

I'm with human power on this one. Rationing will be the only fair way to ensure that people can get to work (in the short term) and the economy does not collapse when gas prices double and double again. Indonesia just this week has started rationing gas with smart cards.

Of course, it will be a while before that is politically acceptable. But greens can help prepare the public by educating them on peak oil, and proposing peak oil mitigation strategies.

What would rationing do to global oil prices? Perhaps a decreased demand would lower the price of a barrel of oil. But really a world oil depletion protocol would have to be hammered out to get the speculative money out of oil.

I don't know how rising public anger will play out, as the politicians are unable to bring down global oil prices. Truckers have the power to bring the economy to a standstill (as they did in England several years ago). Maybe diesel rationing and subsidies will come first? Or maybe some honest and far-sighted leader will emerge who can guide us gracefully out of the Oil Age? I don't see that leadership in either the Democratic or Republican current plans.On Proposal to curb prices not likely to include 'gas tax holiday' posted 1 year, 7 months ago 7 Responses

It's about the energy...

Great article, Tom. The rise in food prices is surely complex. Over at The Nation , John Nichols puts the blame squarely with the Washington Consensus:

The current global food system, which was designed by US-based agribusiness conglomerates like Cargill, Monsanto and ADM and forced into place by the US government and its allies at the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the World Trade Organization, has planted the seeds of disaster by pressuring farmers here and abroad to produce cash crops for export and alternative fuels rather than grow healthy food for local consumption and regional stability

Yet Nichols downplays the food-fuel competition, thereby letting our gas-guzzling habits off the hook. Biofuels and speculation does seem to me the critical drivers that pushed the system over a tipping point.  Here's how Eva Morales puts it:

And it's not possible to understand in this new millennium how there are governments, presidents, institutions that are more interested in a heap of metal than in life. They're more interested in fueling luxury cars than in feeding human beings. That's where we raise a question. First, land is to be for life and not land for scrap metal or a heap of metal.

I do think "delinking" food and oil is important. (As GreyFln indicates, food prices will continue to escalate as long as land is in competition for biofuels, which are linked in to the oil markets.) And I do think we need to fight for a new locally-based sustainable agricultural policy. But I think it's equally important to view matters through a global "ecological" framework. That is, we are reaching the limits of the natural world, in terms of population and resource use. Peak oil will soon be followed by peak natural gas and peak coal. We will need new ways of thinking, not just about the economics of food production but of all our resource use. Otherwise, we will continue to come up with inadequate "solutions" like biofuels that impact other aspects of our energy use.On What's causing the sudden run-up in food prices? posted 1 year, 7 months ago 39 Responses

Whatever happened to Mike Ruppert?

Mike Ruppert is a former LAPD officer who came to believe that the U.S. government was behind 911. He also believed that the U.S. was going to rapidly collapse due to Peak Oil and was behind much of the turn to survivalism that still underpins much of the peak oil movement. He moved to the country, and after his office was burglarized he had a nervous breakdown and moved to Venezuela.

Pananoia? In any case, Mike is back in L.A., driving his new car and enjoying the suburban lifestyle!On More than peak oil or financial crash, I fear angry men armed to the teeth posted 1 year, 7 months ago 31 Responses

A movement is a-brewing...

Socialscienist -- great blog! You probably already know about this upcoming conference at Portland State University (Oregon):

Towards Carfree Cities VIII: June 16-20, 2008
Rethinking Mobility, Rediscovering Proximity

The Towards Carfree Cities conference series brings together people from around the world who work to promote practical alternatives to car dependence. The conference attracts professionals, advocates, and community leaders who focus on the creation of sustainable transportation systems and on the transformation of cities, towns, and villages into human-scaled environments rich in public space and community life. The fundamental role of the conference is to share knowledge and assist the practical work of conference participants, whether it be organizing community events, promoting urban cycling, or building the carfree cities of the future.

Let's keep Grist family-friendly!

A lot of wise words here. But I'm still disturbed that the yes, vitriol would disuade new-comers from commenting. Everyone should feel welcome to participate in a safe and stimulating environment.

I know I am guilty too of hitting the "send" button too quickly (and apologies to all I have offended!). I do appreciate DR's hands-off style of monitoring, but I think that that freedom implies a responsibility to policing not just ourselves but those of other commenters who go overboard. We need to try harder to build respect and dialog, not an easy task and one to which we should try to help each other do a better job. Really because the problems we face in the larger world are going to require new ways to democratically interact which we need to begin to model here.

I'm also concerned that Adam's feelings may not have been taken into consideration. He has graciously commented, but I wouldn't blame him if he decided that the Grist crowd was too disrespectful to consider posting here again (which would be our loss). (I also haven't read a direct apology to him from Pangolin -- though I may have missed it).

What are we here for, if not to help each other through this weird and wacky world in which we find ourselves, as some existential philosopher (Canis?) once said? On Adam Werbach calls for a new movement of a billion consumers posted 1 year, 7 months ago 73 Responses

What will gas hunger do to the U.S.?

Great article! To make matters worse, the linear rise we currently see with gas prices (about 50c/yr) will likely turn exponential once we fall off the oil plateau (87-90 mbd). When new oil projects coming online in the next few years are added up, it looks net depletion will start winning out by 2011 (Oil Depletion Analysis Centre).

Thus we have about 2 years to put in place a mitigation strategy. Bus Rapid Transit should be put in place along major highways, while we build the rail infrastructure and compactified neighborhoods needed for an electrified transportation network. Companies ought to be thinking of setting up their own minibuses to pick up employees, like Microsoft is already doing.

The ethanol mandates should be dropped asap, a shortsighted and failed strategy to prolong car dependency. Even peaceful Thailand gives us some indication of our future if we fail to take action:

In the face of rising food prices and spreading hunger, the social order is beginning to break down in some countries. In several provinces in Thailand, for instance, rustlers steal rice by harvesting fields during the night. In response, Thai villagers with distant fields have taken to guarding ripe rice fields at night with loaded shotguns.

Peak Everything is closer than you think!

Wooaah! Steel prices almost doubling! Rice, wheat, corn ... similar.

Thanks for the WSJ link. Also found this tidbit:

Supply-chain woes are familiar to most energy sectors these days. Oil companies struggle to get rigs and other equipment for exploration. Wind turbine makers have been wracked by component shortages for years. Solar power makers are still struggling with a shortage of pure polysilicon.

But for the nuclear industry, the problem is more dire. Long lead times for plant construction can grow even longer thanks to bottlenecks of key components, while the safety issue is of more concern than, say, a faulty wind turbine

Must stock up on blankets! Or dust off those covers of "Atlas Shrugged"!
On Cheap clean coal now dirty, expensive posted 1 year, 7 months ago 9 Responses

Objective6 -- you do Monty Python proud!

Tourist: Yes I quite agree I mean what's the point of being treated like sheep. What's the pointof going abroad if you're just another tourist carted around in buses surrounded by sweaty mindless oafs from Kettering and Coventry in their cloth caps and their cardigans and their transistor radios and their Sunday Mirrors, complaining about the tea - "Oh they don't make it properly here, do they, not like at home" - and stopping at Majorcan bodegas selling fish and chips and Watney's Red Barrel and calamares and two veg and sitting in their cotton frocks squirting Timothy White's suncream all over their puffy raw swollen purulent flesh 'cos they "overdid it on the first day."

Bounder: (agreeing patiently) Yes absolutely, yes I quite agree...

Tourist: And being herded into endless Hotel Miramars and Bellvueses and Continentales with their modern international luxury roomettes and draught Red Barrel and swimming pools full of fat German businessmen pretending they're acrobats forming pyramids and frightening the children and barging into queues and if you're not at your table spot on seven you miss the bowl of Campbell's Cream of Mushroom soup, the first item on the menu of International Cuisine, and every Thursday night the hotel has a bloody cabaret in the bar, featuring a tiny emaciated dago with nine-inch hips and some bloated fat tart with her hair brylcreemed down and a big arse presenting Flamenco for Foreigners.

Bounder: (beggining to get fed up) Yes, yes now......

Tourist: And then some adenoidal typists from Birmingham with flabby white legs and diarrhoea trying to pick up hairy bandy-legged wop waiters called Manuel and once a week there's an excursion to the local Roman Remains to buy cherryade and melted ice cream and bleeding Watney's Red Barrel and one evening you visit the so called typical restaurant with local colour and atmosphere and you sit next to a party from Rhyl who keep singing "Torremolinos, torremolinos" and complaining about the food - "It's so greasy isn't it?" - and you get cornered by some drunken greengrocer from Luton with an Instamatic camera and Dr. Scholl sandals and last Tuesday's Daily Express and he drones on and on about how Mr. Smith should be running this country and how many languages Enoch Pow ell can speak and then he throws up over the Cuba Libres.

Bounder: Will you be quiet pleaseOn Gandhi, King, and climate change posted 1 year, 7 months ago 15 Responses

Joe's eggs all in one basket?

I think Joe is using the wrong number -- 450 ppm. As James Hansen's new paper says 425 ppm is the new ceiling. This may account for Joe's somewhat anemic take on the use of direct government funding to short-circuit the feasibility of new coal plants.

Further, Mr. Hansen writes: "We must be on a new path within the next several years, or, our paper shows, it becomes implausible to reduce CO2 below the dangerous level this century". So even if CSP is already competitive, we will need the infrastructure to pipe in that clean energy to the East Coast cities. So we need subsidized PV, wind and geothermal to replace out new coal plants on the books in the next few years!

Joe writes:

So, it looks like CSP currently is -- and PV soon will be -- in very good shape. They certainly don't need a a big government spending program aimed at generating breakthroughs in order to make them cost-competitive in time to play a very large role in beating 450 ppm.

More from Gore?

Interestingly, he did mention the exorbitant cost of the Iraq War, implying it could be diverted to combatting global warming. So that could be a sign of progress for him? (I don't recall him mentioning the war before, but I could be wrong.)

I thought this talk was much more up-beat than his movie. That could be the result of giving his previous talk 2000 times. But I think I would have "preferred" a little more doom-and-gloom to balance the unrestrained optimism. That could be just me.On Al Gore at TED posted 1 year, 7 months ago 18 Responses

From a "me" to a "we" economy

It's good to see Krugman come out against biofuels (following Time). But his framework seems narrow: "But it's not clear how much can be done. Cheap food, like cheap oil, may be a thing of the past"

So it's also good to see a broader approach being formulated by the IAAST. Presumably they'll bring more of a systems-science approach.

But what is remarkable to me is how quickly peak oil is having an effect on the global economic system. The growth economy is dependent on growing supplies of energy (among other things). Now that that is faltering we're seeing just how tightly coupled the economy is to energy.

Unless we are able to shift the economic system from "growth" to "security" we will be endangering the lives of millions of people. The simple dynamic that underlies the growth economy --- create as much money as possible -- will have to be supplanted by new metrics that value human and ecological communities.

A tall order, to be sure. But I do think we are entering a new era which requires a rethink of our intellectual tools. We are reaching the Limits-to-Growth and our resource use will be capped by nature. So unless we can learn to share equitably and organize our creative energies along those lines, we are setting ourselves up for a very ugly century.On 'IPCC for agriculture' has little teeth, but great timbre posted 1 year, 7 months ago 3 Responses

We need a "democratic" breakthrough!

Jon wrote:" All I can say is this: if the vast majority of the public wanted to redistribute power, change the direction of the society and make the society sustainable, it would happen"

Agreed. But doesn't the vast majority of the public already want action on global warming, the US out of Iraq and universal health care? (It wouldn't be too hard to dig up the data.) So why don't we have those things?

Of course, the agenda of the majority is not the agenda of the elites who control the government, corporations and the media. (And of course, the elites have to occasionally respond to the public to maintain some sort of credibility, at least for the 50% of people who vote.)

Let's say we even got a Democratic president and supermajority Congress. How much will things change? Well, even then the sincerest politicians will be running up against structural forces that have been consolidating over hundreds of years. So while the change we will see will be proportional to the grassroots efforts, it may not be enough to turn around the coal/oil/big utility lobbies.

The lessons of history are that only extra-parliamentary movements combined with inspired leadership (eg. FDR) can force elites to move. Is this not true? On The implicit assumption in Pielke Jr.'s Nature commentary posted 1 year, 7 months ago 38 Responses

Great speech!

It's worth remembering too that King linked militarism to racism and economic expolitation, the "triple evils" of his day. See here:

that America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money like some demonic destructive suction tube.

U.S. economy on the brink?

 John, it's definately good that manufacturing has held steady as a proportion of GDP, even as we have lost manufacturing jobs. (Thanks for keeping everyone honest!) That portends well for a future where we could have more free time. Advanced computer-aided manufacturing (such as miniturization of electronic componets, etc) can cut down on the energy expended which will become important as energy prices escalate.

However, the increased economic efficiencies have so far not translated into more free time or higher incomes. Here is a (dated) excerpt from Juliet Schor's The Overworked American:

In the last twenty years the amount of time Americans have spent at their jobs has risen steadily. Each year the change is small, amounting to about nine hours, or slightly more than one additional day of work. In any given year, such a small increment has probably been imperceptible. But the accumulated increase over two decades is substantial. When surveyed, Americans re port that they have only sixteen and a half hours of leisure a week, after the obligations of job and household are taken care of. Working hours are already longer than they were forty years ago

The problem as I see it is the neoliberal economic model that has dominated these past 30 years has favored elites, while hollowing out the American middle-class. (Here is one way to illustrate that. The Gini coeficient, which is a measure of income inequality has increased for the U.S. since 1980 (while holding steady for Europe and Japan).)

Mamy of us are not as sanguine about the U.S. economy as you.( Alan Greenspan: "The current financial crisis in the US is likely to be judged in retrospect as the most wrenching since the end of the second world war". For instance, here is the Economist on the spreading rot of the mortgage crisis in an article entitled Waiting for Armageddon

A look at the firms with distressed debt shows that problems are rapidly moving beyond the long-term sick (airlines, cars) and the industries immediately affected by the crisis (home builders, mortgage lenders, monoline insurers). Craig Dean of AEG Partners, a restructuring-advisory firm, says he is now seeing troubled companies in retailing, restaurants, manufacturing and food processing.

Now it is possible that the G7 may bail out the dollar at its next meeting. That may indeed prolong foreign investment in the U.S. (and reduce our exports). But I'm with Jon on this one: we need a healthy, balanced economy that serves the middle-class. And that means new economic models. On Chinese miners and our appetite for cheap crap posted 1 year, 8 months ago 23 Responses

Pangolin, what big claws you have...

Pangolin, sorry to hear about your health also. Brings it home all the more why we're all here. From wiki:

Pangolins lack teeth and the ability to chew. Instead, they tear open anthills or termite mounds with their powerful front claws and probe deep into them with their very long tongues

Or, is that the wrong image? :)On NYT op-ed: pesticides wiping out songbirds posted 1 year, 8 months ago 8 Responses

More bird problems in the NW...

The front page of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer today had a story on deformed beaks which we apparently are seeing in all sorts of birds out here (hawks, chickadees, sparrows,...). The "long-billed syndrome" could be related to pesticides but why would it be restricted to the NW?

"It looks like the entire (Northwest) Pacific Coast is being affected."

Research has shown scientists that:

Deformed beaks occur in resident and migratory birds.

A study of black-capped chickadees in Alaska showed "significantly higher" concentrations of a pesticide breakdown product, heptachlor epoxide, in adults with beak deformities than in normal adults. The same goes for a form of polychlorinated biphenyl, PCB, an industrial chemical.

Baby birds from deformed parents in Alaska had higher concentrations of two of the most toxic forms of PCBs.

Beak deformities were a feature of a syndrome that affected birds in the Great Lakes area in the 1970s that was associated with exposure to contaminants, including PCBs, dioxins and dibenzofurans. The same thing happened to birds exposed to high concentrations of selenium in California in the 1980s.

The Alaska chickadees with the deformity had a "highly significant" amount of damage to their DNA.

Whatever works?

Sean, do you have any insight into how these two new (smallish) solar projects made it across the CA-regulator chasm? I assume these things weren't cheap?

Edison plans a massive installation of photovoltaic cells on rooftops, and FPL Energy proposes a 250-megawatt plant.
By Andrea Chang, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
March 27, 2008
Solar energy is getting a big boost in Southern California with the unveiling of two projects that will be capable of generating a total of 500 megawatts of electricity, enough to serve more than 300,000 homes.

At least, we'll always have Hollywood -- sorta

Not to worry about the economy or anything, but this one ought to inspire confidence. The NYT informs us, "Are we headed for another Great Depression, Economists don't think so."

Hollywood, which until now has largely catered to American tastes, might begin more explicitly choosing scripts based on how they would play in rising economies like India and China. And while exports of manufactured goods might accelerate, the outsourcing trends that sent some American jobs abroad might reverse. Already, Germany-based BMW is expanding a South Carolina plant, betting that the weak dollar will make American workers cheaper than those in Germany or Japan.

Is America doomed?

Indeed, here is how as our social critic Morris Berman puts it in his new book:

In this provocative, scattershot jeremiad, cultural historian Berman (The Twilight of American Culture) likens America to ancient Rome on the brink. On the geopolitical plane, he contends, the United States is a belligerent, overstretched empire, saddled with huge deficits and a hollowed-out economy, vulnerable to terrorist blowback and, worse, collapse if foreign creditors finally pull the plug. The rot is cultural and spiritual, too: Americans are cold, alienated shopaholics immured in suburban anomie, each encased in a private bubble of iTunes and media noise and indifferent to the public good. Culprits include globalization, technology and, more fundamentally, the individualism and commercialism that is the bedrock of American identity. Because American civilization is a "package deal," the author considers it impervious to piecemeal reform and, given Americans' ingrained "stupidity" and willful blindness, unsalvageable.

Another world is indeed possible!

Wildfire, I think here we can draw from history. I think we can anticipate a new New Deal before we could imagine warfare and pestilence.

And before we can get national consensus that we need to change our economic and foreign policies, we can make progress locally. The more susustainable our local communities, the more resilient they will be in the face of energy shocks and job loss. The cities that plan around mass transit, compact development and a robust social safety net will become more desireable places to live.

And as you suggest, we are morally bound to carry forward the best in our western traditions. We have a rich history of people helping each other in hard times. Those democratic strands are not far beneath the surface, if we can find ways to bring them forth.On A post-petroleum American dream posted 1 year, 8 months ago 17 Responses

To be sure, the sky may not be falling

.... at least immediately (ha!). Over at Counterpunch (thanks, Jon) Paul Craig Roberts suggests one solution:"The mark-to-market rule could be suspended in order to halt the forced sale and write down of assets and to provide time in which to sort out derivative values, which are higher than the fire sale prices."

I think it's also important to point out it's not necessarily a Democrat vs. Republican issue. I think it's more of a populist vs. neoliberal issue. Afterall, it was Clinton and Ruben (and Greenspan) who broke the barrier between banks and securities. Here's Roberts , Reagan's Assistant Secretary of the Treasury (!) again:

No doubt but that greed, fraud, and bad policy all played their roles. But at the heart of the problem is a 1999 "reform" that repealed an earlier reform known as the Glass-Steagall Act.

In 1933 the Glass-Steagall Act separated commercial banking from the securities business. It prevented securities speculation from destroying bank capital and shrinking bank deposits from bank failures and runs on banks by depositors. Congress and President Bill Clinton foolishly repealed the Glass-Steagall Act in 1999. The repeal of the 1933 law was driven by profit lust in the banking industry and by "free market" ideology, which claims the unfettered marketplace is always superior to regulation.

Gar, thanks for posting these...

great presentations. Always interested in how they went down and any other observations about this year's Environmental Law Conference.

BTW, you probably already know that the Green Festivals are expanding to Seattle this year. Here are the dates:

Seattle: April 12-13
Chicago: May 17-18
DC: Nov 8-9
SF: Nov 16-18

I'm particularly looking forward to Thom Hartman, John Perkins, Richard Heinberg, Maude Barlow, Frances Moore-Lappe...
On Shifting military spending to fund green infrastructure posted 1 year, 8 months ago 7 Responses

More alarmism!

Jason, sounds good! I'll hold you to that! :)

Of course, if we get a world-wide recession you could be right! But I tend to think insatiable demand growth from China and India will keep the oil price high. Keep in mind, though, that ASPO is still holding to 2011 as their estimate of the peak, and 2008-9 could be "the last good years". On Rising cost of oil pushes value of the dollar down posted 1 year, 8 months ago 27 Responses

Rethinking the global economy...

Sounds like more peak oil denial by CERA and Yergin to me. They have staked their careers on being mouth pieces for the oil industry, so they're not likely to admit rising oil prices are due to the 85 mbd flat production we've had these past few years.

Of course, market forces, speculation and the falling dollar all contribute as well. But until we get a clear accounting of existing reserves and an appreciation that peak oil poses a crisis for the world economy we will continue to miss the forest for the trees.

Once we accept the nature of the crisis, then we can start working on solutions at all scales. As Jon and others have been arguing we need to rethink neoliberalism in favor of Keynesian economics which combine markets with direct government intervention and planning. Hopefully before we find ourselves on the downside of peak oil.  

Where do we get the money? Well we can start by ending the Iraq War, which would bring in $12 billion a month. On Rising cost of oil pushes value of the dollar down posted 1 year, 8 months ago 27 Responses

George: good advice...

NPR's Radiolab had a good show about lying and self-deception recently. Here is a couple of snippets:

"She tells us that pathological liars have a surprising advantage over normal people: they are better at making connections between ideas in different parts of their brain."

"Psychologist Joanna Starek tells us that swimmers who lie to themselves swim faster than those who do not. And we explore the power of self-deception to make us more successful, and happier, people. "

I'd also recommend the video of the Chomsky/Trivers interchange. Self-deception may be rooted in a biological strategy to intimidate competitors!
On Bush's keynote at WIREC surpasses misinformation posted 1 year, 8 months ago 5 Responses

Intellectual laziness and the MSM

Joe, I think an important reason the MSM can't "cover humanity's self-destruction" is it is someplace most people don't want to go in their thinking. Most journalists don't have your science background, nor your intellectual honesty. (If they did, would they be welcome at the NYT?)

But I suspect it is for the classic psychological reasons of denial that people filter out the bad news they don't want to hear. As another example, we could be facing a global peak oil meltdown in just a few years. The MSM has had 10 years to scrutinize Colin Campbell and Jean Laherrere's Scientific American claims. Yet for most journalists and editors, it is beyond the pale. Easier to rely on conventional wisdom that technology and the markets will always save us.On What if the MSM simply can't cover humanity's self-destruction? posted 1 year, 8 months ago 33 Responses

jabailo...

Very perceptive comment. Woodinville is hardly a hot-bed of eco-radicals. More of a woodsy, preppy, sort of place.

On the other hand, wouldn't all those eco-conscious Microsofties be lining up to buy those houses? I can't imagine they wouldn't sell, even in this housing market.

But we ought not to jump to conclusions until we have proof of the perpetrators. If it was ELF, I'd expect a press release. Given that a young woman is on trial for a 2001 blaze, it's hardly likely to be them.

Can we expect more of these suspicious fires as the housing market continues to faulter?On 'Eco-terrorism' suspected in Seattle-area arson posted 1 year, 9 months ago 80 Responses

Back to the drawing board...

I'm with Sam on this one. I'm all for government investment for transit and walkable communities, but those projects will take decades to finish. Peak oil will likely be upon us before we get any sort of carbon tax or cap-and-X.

"We may hit peak oil in the course of the next three, four or five years, in which case $100 oil will look somewhat quaint,'' Alfa Bank's Moscow-based Head of Research Ronald Smith said in an interview with Bloomberg television

And if Alaka politicians are any guide, the oil and gas industry trump global warming (and the survival of the polar bear) every time.

Better in my view to design a combined global warming/oil depletion initiative through the United Nations. Ration oil to cap the cost, (otherwise more and more of U.S. GDP will be exiting the country). Reduce the allowances 3-5% by country according to the global depletion rate each year. Give everyone an ATM card and enable them to trade carbon.

When oil is $200 and $300 a barrel, adding a carbon tax or enacting cap-n-trade will be politically difficult, to say the least. And with supplies being as tight as they are, we are all vulnerable to oil shortages. We need plans in place so everyone can get food and warmth, as well as getting to work.On Gas pricing, Big Oil, and carbon pricing posted 1 year, 9 months ago 13 Responses

Pump it up!

I think this post is spot on. There will be no silver bullet for our upcoming energy crisis and we will need all the tools we can muster. Stuart Staniford at the Oil Drum argues that global energy will plateau between around 2015-2025. He argues that renewables will take several decades to make a serious dent in our energy use:

With serious policy help, PV installed capacity can grow much faster than the 35% global average. Eg in Germany, PV has grown at a CAGR of 61% over the same 1990-2005 period. However, the global installed base of PV is miniscule - in 2005 it only comprised 0.0033% of marketed primary energy (on a thermal equivalent basis). The effect of all these trends - tiny current installed base, rapid growth, very fast learning curve, high EROEI tends to mean that PV can be of almost no meaningful benefit to the global situation in the short term, but in a couple of decades from now reaches critical mass, and then will potentially be in a position to provide almost all of society's power within a couple more decades from that.

So the sooner we get public policy that reduces our dependence on coal-powered electricity (and provides the upfront cost for building renovation), the easier it will be to reduce the chance of black-outs in the decades ahead.

Incidentally, the Oil Drum also has a recent post on ground source heat pumps. Apparently 97% of new buildings in Sweden are built with them.On How to kill coal in 10 years posted 1 year, 9 months ago 53 Responses

Do you want that sustainability strong or weak?

There is a nice discussion of "sustainability" over on the invaluable Wikipedia. For instance, I learned of the distinction between Weak and Strong sustainability:

Weak sustainability is advocated by the Hartwick's Rule, which states that as long as TOTAL capital stays constant, sustainable development can be achieved. As long as the diminishing natural capital stocks are being substituted by gains in the man-made stock, total capital will stay constant and the current level of consumption can continue. The proponents believe that economic growth is beneficial as increased levels of income lead to increased levels of environmental protectionism. This is also known as the 'substitutability paradigm'.

Conversely, strong sustainability, as supported by Herman Daly, holds the view that natural capital and man-made capital are only complementary at best. In order for sustainable development to be achieved, natural capital has to be kept constant independently from man-made capital. This is known as the 'non-substitutability paradigm'. Advocates of weak sustainability thus make a categorical error. So, for instance, and according to Daly, it makes no sense to substitute man-made capital, in the form of fishing boats, for natural capital, in the form of fish stocks, and the attempt to do so usually ends in ecological disaster.

No doubt other distinctions will emerge in the years ahead (until the terminology becomes sufficiently obtuse). But that could be a sign we're beginning to win!

Incidentally, one of my favorite quotes on sustainability comes from Joseph Stiglitz: "that which is not sustainable will not be sustained."On If people want to keep up with the Joneses, could they at least adopt a different set of Joneses? posted 1 year, 9 months ago 128 Responses

Why bother with Diamond?

Patrick, I'm still not sure if you read the Diamond essay. For instance, here you write:

The hunter-gatherer lifestyle seems to have been eagerly abandoned by most people on the planet.  There must be a reason.  It took them a long time to find a way out, but by golly, they did!!

As population densities of hunter-gatherers slowly rose at the end of the ice ages, bands had to choose between feeding more mouths by taking the first steps toward agriculture, or else finding ways to limit growth. Some bands chose the former solution, unable to anticipate the evils of farming, and seduced by the transient abundance they enjoyed until population growth caught up with increased food production. Such bands outbred and then drove off or killed the bands that chose to remain hunter-gatherers, because a hundred malnourished farmers can still outfight one healthy hunter. It's not that hunter-gatherers abandoned their life style, but that those sensible enough not to abandon it were forced out of all areas except the ones farmer didn't want.

The point is not to romanticise hunter-gatherers, but to use science to the best of our ability to learn lessons from the past. (And science could eventually prove Diamond wrong).

For instance, according to many, including some of Jon's references above, we are in ecological overshoot. The idea that we may be putting the lives of millions of people in jeopardy because we do recognize this is an idea that has trouble getting traction in modern society. As well as delving into the roots of racism, Diamond here offers us a cautionary tale -- that we are caught in a viscious cycle of increasing agricultural yields to feed growing populations. In an era of depleting fertilizer sources, I, for one, am extremely worried. It's not that I think we can "play make-believe in the past" that I think history and anthrology is important.On If people want to keep up with the Joneses, could they at least adopt a different set of Joneses? posted 1 year, 9 months ago 128 Responses

Swords and diamonds...

Jon, you'll have to explain to me how the first cities were able to support themselves without agriculture (according to Jane Jacobs).

In any case, Jared Diamond calls agriculture, the greatest mistake that humans ever made.

recent discoveries suggest that the adoption of agriculture, supposedly our most decisive step toward a better life, was in many ways a catastrophe from which we have never recovered. With agriculture came the gross social and sexual inequality, the disease and despotism,that curse our existence

Of course, that's all water under the bridge by now. I would in no way suggest that we can go back to the Pleisticene, as the Earth First! slogan went. I'm with you on the Ecotopia!

My only point was that to understand hierarchy and status today, one must realize that what we observe around us is a very forced circumstance where people have to compete for their bread and butter. Keeping up with the Jones, I claim, is an understandable survival mechanism, not an engrained biological trait.

In fact, I was just reading a book on Japan (by Patrick Smith) which illustrates the extent to which modern societies are still embedded in the feudal past. Did you know that most Japanese were not allowed surnames til after 1868? Here the author meets an unusual family:

The Meboso's are as proud of their uncommon name as they are of their craft, which cannot be separated. In the sixteenth century their skill was such that the local daimyo, the feudal lord, let them take a surname and carry swords."An unusual honor. Almost no one of our status could have a name or a sword", said Tadayoshi Meboso...

What do the philosphers say?

The best book I've ever found on this subject was written in 1930, "The Conquest of Happiness" by Bertrand Russell.

From memory, a happy life is well-rounded, easiest when grounded in a fairly egalitarian community, and involves a certain amount of contemplation (as recommended by most spiritual/philosophical thinkers). His views are not too different from Spinoza or the Buddha, but based on atheism and a libertarian form of socialism, where people voluntarily come together to work for the good of all. Most of all, a happy life for him was one filled with "zest". (I like to remind myself of this one!)

I have no doubt if he were still alive, he would be organizing committees of intellectuals to bring government action on global warming.On If people want to keep up with the Joneses, could they at least adopt a different set of Joneses? posted 1 year, 10 months ago 128 Responses

Dean Baker on bubbles...

Came across economist Dean Baker's (of the left-leaning Center for Economic and Policy Research) take on this article:

Question:   The current issue of Harper's includes an article by Eric Janszen, "The Next Bubble" which suggests that another financial bubble is actually necessary - given the structure of our economy and its reliance on FIRE (finance, insurance, and real estate) rather than manufacturing - to pull the economy out of its accelerating slump.

Answer:    Well, we relied on a bubble to support growth in the 1990s and in the current decade, but I don't think that this is the only route. We have to adopt different policies...     Most importantly, we should be willing to consciously use the public sector to build the sort of physical and social infrastructure that is most consistent with a strong economy and healthy society. We should be thinking broadly on this score.

More on markets and the state...

Falsecast wrote:

Does this sound right: the State needs a larger more dynamic economy to enhance its own power, so it replaces the cumbersome traditional and decentralized market system with a state-enhanced market society, then benevolently intervenes to correct the excesses that this transition and its continuation impose on its citizens? If so, then the state's thirst for power is the driving force behind the transformation.

An interesting take. You got me to dig out my "Great Transformation" and delve a little deeper into English history... As Polanyi saw it: The state has a much longer history than the "market economy", which Polanyi defines such:

The market economy is an economic sytem controlled, regulated and directed by market prices; order in the production and distribution of goods is entrusted to this self-regulating mechanism

I am in sympathy with your aims of localism (and anti-nationalism), but I don't think Polanyi's insights are widely-enough appreciated. A localism based on "free markets" would quickly degenerate into haves, have-little and have-nots. Which is not to say that markets don't have a role to play, only that the governance of the community has to re-integrate the political and economic realms. A more complicated task, but one for which we are well equipped, given that is how we evolved over millions of years. (I'm channeling Polanyi here!)On 'Green empire' like 'military intelligence' posted 1 year, 10 months ago 66 Responses

A green stimulus can be long-term valuable...

Accorrding to Dean Baker, Bush is caught between a rock and a hard place. He despises handouts to the poor and middle-class, but he is worried about his legacy (a failed economic as well as foreign policy). Thus, the Democrats are in a good place to forward their agenda. Given the extended energy crunch we are in, they would do well to follow Baker's recommendations here:

  Congress can also insist that a portion of the stimulus be "green," providing a down payment on reductions of greenhouse gas emissions. A generous tax credit (30-40 percent) for increased home insulation or other conservation measures would be the quickest green way to pump money in the economy. Given the collapse of residential construction, this would be a well-targeted measure.

    Congress can also allocate additional funds to public transit systems in exchange for specific commitments to reduce fares. This would effectively provide a tax rebate for public transit users. This would stimulate the economy by putting money in the pockets of transit users, but it could also have long-term benefits if temporary fare reductions lure more riders, and some of them change their travel habits permanently.

The circular firing squad...

Jon, you must be getting really bored at work! You a**hole!

Thanks for the compliment, but I can guarantee you I've managed to piss off somebody somewhere!On U.S. Green Party holds its first presidential debate of the season posted 1 year, 10 months ago 20 Responses

Dean Baker on funding transit...

Economist Dean Baker has a good recent column on stimulating with $150 billion our recession-bound economy. He includes tax credits for energy efficiency and pay-by-the-mile insurance policies. But also:

A second effective form of green stimulus would be to subsidise mass transit ridership. There are approximately 10 billion trips a year on buses, light rail or commuter rail trains. If the federal government gave transit agencies $10bn to reduce the average fare on these trips by $1, this would be a very quick way to get an additional $10bn into the hands of mass transit users. This would be a very progressive tax cut, which would also have the lasting benefit of promoting public transportation.

Lester does it again...

Tasermons, maybe you have an idea there. All the people who are in favor of wars could just all fight it out somewhere, thereby reducing populations and freeing up more resources for us to consume!

Incidentally,Time magazine has a review of Lester Brown's new book, Plan B 3.0. (There is also a plug for Grist!) Brown outlines a plan to reduce carbon emmissions by 80% by 2020. Although it is based on an increasing carbon tax, it puts into perspective how large military budgets are:

Altogether Brown calculates that his Plan B would cost the world an additional $190 billion a year. That might seem high, until he compares the price tag to the global military budget, which stands at more than $1.2 trillion. All we have to do is find the political and popular will to implement the plan.

More questions...

The concept of shared ownership in this view of a 'capitalist commons' is a blend of private ownership and common wealth.

Well, if people really are the rational, self-interested automatons that capitalism pre-supposes, then if poor people receive a payment from polluting corporations, then it is in their interest to keep receiving those payments. I would in fact want the corporations to pollute even more, so I would get more money. Or am I missing something?

Also, let's say I'm morally opposed to corporations polluting the atmosphere and support only efforts towards renewables. Then the Sky Trust would implicate me in a system I believed was evil. On A look at the framing behind the last climate policy proposal posted 1 year, 10 months ago 18 Responses

More on the oil sands...

Here is an update on the Alberta tar sands. Basically, production growth is limited by natural gas availability.

Statistics Canada tells us that tar sands production "jumped" four thousand cubic metres per day in 2007 over 2006. A cubic metre = 6.28994 barrels, so the increase was from 1.132 to 1.157 million barrels per day, a growth rate of only 2.2%.

Incidentally, here is a French perspective on $100 oil. The first article hopes that expensive oil will bring more change to the environment than 30 years of environmentalism! The second article reminds of that it is the developing countries that are/will suffer the most:

In 2005, at the G-8 summit, rich nations committed to reduce poor countries' debt by 50 billion dollars. Now, in 2006, the increase in the oil bill was already 10 times more than the debt reduction. Since, according to all forecasts, the world will have to live for a long time with expensive oil, it is urgent to envision not only transferring innovative technologies that will allow them to conserve energy to the poorest countries, but also supplying them with more financial aid.

Who is protecting the American consumer?

The British Independent had a story on this too a while back:

People should avoid using Wi-Fi wherever possible because of the risks it may pose to health, the German government has said.

I don't know what to make of it. I have WiFi at home. As JMG cautions, there are probably more important things to worry about.

But it seems that the cell phone manufacturers have cut way back on the amount of radiation exposure, in response to health studies. I suspect WiFi could be made to be just as useful with a factor or 10 lower in radiated power.
On Climate refugees and Wi-Fi pollution posted 1 year, 11 months ago 4 Responses

It's the economy stu...

Just catching up on the great discussion here. Here's my two cents. While I do think peak oil (and the threat of die-off) makes it imperative that we reduce global populations as quickly and non-coersively as possibly, I also appreciate that population is a loaded topic that cannot be tackled as a single issue.

Let's use the IPAT (or STIRPAT) formula. (Impact is population times affluence times technology.) Now population growth is positive but leveling off. Yet affluence is on an exponential increase -- with no end in sight. Even a modest 2% increase in GDP's leads to a doubling on impact in 70/2 = 35 years. So, as Murray Bookchin used to emphasize, even if population is stable, capitalism will continue to eat up the biosphere.

Even World Trade Organization Director Pascal Lamy asks "if we do not vigorously question the dynamic of capitalism, do you believe we will succeed in mastering climate change?"

I did check out the ecological footprint link (thanks John). My reading of the graphs suggested that the US can most easily reduce its footprint by reducing consumption (I don't see why we need to reduce the population level). While Asia and Africa can most easily reduce their footprint by reducing their populations. But finding a way to a sustainable zero-growth economy (see Czeck and Daly above) seems imperative, if longer-term, to me. Particularly in the Global North.
On Is it only OK to talk about limiting population after it's too late? posted 1 year, 11 months ago 117 Responses

What's wrong with supply-side economics?

Peak oil activist, Chris Vernon, made the same point as Monbiot earlier here.

Attempting to reduce atmospheric concentrations by demand side approaches is unlikely to succeed as it relies on billions of stakeholders making behavioural and technological changes. A partial adoption delivers a disproportionably small response and possibly none at all.
A supply side approach achieved through extraction limits, agreed by a small number of governments removes the complexity associated with billions of stakeholders.

Converging movements...

Chris, thanks for the great essay. I haven't read your book, but I did hear a radio interview with you. (I particularly remember how you vividly described the vileness of slaughterhouses.)

When you write:

But with ample pressure from urban and rural consumers, farmers, public health experts, antihunger activists, environmentalists, and others, cities can create model food bills that build a policy-driven grassroots alternative to our industrial food system. No better time than now to start showing Congress how it ought to be done.

Markets vs. local governments

Ron, I do appreciate having an economist here to dialog with, though this thread is growing so long that your answer to Pangolin might perhaps be better in a productive new thread.

It is definately good to have concrete examples to show how abstract ideology plays out in the real world. For the record, I do think carbon taxes and trading have an important part to play. But I'm not convinced from your examples that they show that government is a relatively poor regulator/distributer of pollution/goods.

For instance, I think Jon has already answered your "one-size-does-not-fit-all" objections to "command-and-control" (by the way, a perjorative designed to stifle debate) subsidies. Namely, the government could distribute funding to localities to tackle their own energy use using their local knowledge base. (Further, the government could employ the services of economists to ensure that equity issues are addressed as much as possible.)

Neither does the example of subsidized windows from Holland lead to any radical conclusion, other than localities may need to import goods from other localities. Subsidized renewable energy in Germany, for instance, has made them leaders in the field.

Finally, the Jevons pardox that you touch on in point 7 leads me to the conclusion that we need a closer integration between government and citizens, rather than a deepened reliance on the market.On Cato's Jerry Taylor responds to Michael Tobis posted 1 year, 11 months ago 131 Responses

You get the government you deserve...

Ron writes:

Given that there are hundreds of ways that carbon emissions can be reduced, could you please explain to us the process under which you envisage Big Brother the Government choosing among the different technologies, spending the money, and ensuring that both the contracts and the benefits alre allocated equitably?

How about "democracy"? One person, one vote, electing people who respond to people's needs and guard against corruption. This does happen! Think of social security and medicare as successful government programs. Where government is corrupt in the economic sphere I would lay at the feet of undue market influence.

Markets operate according to the principle one dollar, one vote, thereby distorting the effects of wealth and priviledge. They are also blind, unaccountable, and just as open to corruption as government.

While markets can bring jobs and lead to wealth creation for a few, they also lead to exaggerated class division and inequality. But governments can redistribute wealth, in effect making markets acceptable to the majority of people. However, it is only through the struggle of working people, particularly through labor organizing, that we have such things as weekends, vacations and the minimum wage. These benefits we take for granted were opposed, often violently, by the business class. A good place for the uninitiated to learn about our economic and social history is Howard Zinn's, People's History of the U.S.On Cato's Jerry Taylor responds to Michael Tobis posted 1 year, 11 months ago 131 Responses

Let's get on with it!

A very powerful essay that hits all the right notes, at least for me!

Michael Klare has also written, I would say, a companion piece recently:

Overcoming the global warming problem won't be easy. In fact, it may prove the most difficult challenge humanity has ever faced. Its successful management will require a total transformation in the way we power and organize our cities, industries, farms, and transportation systems. This, in turn, will require the full attention, imagination, ingenuity, and determination of our leaders, scientists, engineers, farmers, and industrialists.

But he has some explicit advice for the Democrats regarding the Occupation:

So the Iraq War, for all its distinctive features, has to be seen in relation to the massive catastrophe of global climate change that is coming toward us at a terrifying pace. Like the peril of all-out nuclear war, this will constitute an ultimate threat to our nation's survival. If we had any sense at all, we would terminate the war as rapidly as possible, reject all war-related supplemental funding requests, dramatically cut our reliance on petroleum, and transfer massive funds from Iraq War accounts to research on alternative energy systems.

The future is still open -- at least to me

One aspect left out of the discussion so far is growth of the money supply. Without new capital for investment (and growth in the money supply to repay loans with interest), I do think we would see a lot of urban decay and unemployment. (Presumably governments will resort to Keynesian measures to get us through the current housing bubble burst.)

The question in my mind, as we approach fossil-fuel energy peaks is, will the core role of energy in the economy be recognized by the elites? Will they seek to use the free energy available to us in the next few decades to rebuild a renewable energy grid? Or will industrial society fizzle out as elites decide to fight it out in resource wars?

It's also true that we haven't a clue how fossil-fuel decline will impact technological innovation and economic growth. Heinberg in "Peak Energy" quotes Jonathan Huebner who believes technological breakthroughs peaked in the nineteenth century. But I think it's also true that a new renaissance in education and organizing institutions along democratic lines could bring in new creativity as people come to realize our predicament.

  On The only way to a soft landing is down posted 1 year, 11 months ago 54 Responses

What am I missing?

Enjoyed the discussion here and the Heinberg essay (as much as one can say one enjoys contemplating the possible deaths of billions of people).

One question that sometimes pops into my mind when reading this sort of thing, is, Does it help to reduce one's personal consumption before our ecological predicament is grasped by most of the world? In other words, if I cut back on my use of energy, won't that just free up energy for other people to use? Worse, won't that land or oil that I free up be ultimately used to increase the population of the world somewhere. And thus carrying us further into overshoot -- with more lives at risk.

I find this a frightening thought. The only conclusion I can draw is that it is morally more important to educate the world about overshoot than it is to consume less individually. Of course, once we have all grasped our predicament and drawn up plans to equitably divide up the world's resources, then that is the time to begin maximally conserving. Once we are on the downside of the energy peak, then our frugality will indirectly save lives. But if we are still on the upside of the energy peak, with increasing population, then our frugality merely puts more lives at risk.

Once we pass peak oil/energy/soil/water, then we are in a completely different world situation. But our current ways of thinking (and our political systems) are growth oriented (bigger houses, more efficient energy use, ...). We need to learn to think "ecologically" (on a limited planet) before acting "green" (a lifestyle choice).

Of course, I understand we need to develop workable models of sustainable living before TSHTF. And I can buy that the oil we don't use could be used by the developing world to increase their material standard of living, in theory anyway. (Or does the oil I save by bicycling just go to preserve the life of an SUV somewhere?)

Does this make any sense? Anyone else struggled with this? Could Gandhi have been wrong when he said, we must live simply so that others can simply live?On What a fossil-fuel free agriculture might look like posted 1 year, 11 months ago 68 Responses

new NW export?

Pangolin, we could sell you some! How about some Puget Sound spring water

...There could hardly have been better timing for a new report on the huge problems for the Sound caused by runoff from streets, roofs and the land. The runoff carries most of the worst pollutants plaguing Puget Sound. The study, released Friday, is the start of attempts to systematically assess the sources of pollution that threaten the Sound's ecosystems for orcas, fish and people. It found that lands developed for residential, commercial and industrial use contribute to the bulk of lead, cadmium, oil and some other prime pollutants.

Oe maybe not...On Water, water, everywhere posted 1 year, 12 months ago 7 Responses

How do we know how much is enough?

I'm wondering what is driving the growth in the economic system as you describe it. Would it be the outer circle of consumer goods and services? Or could it be at a community level where municipalities are buying green power and transit? Both?

The reason I make the distinction is that I see consumer-driven society as a dead-end (possibly literally). That is, where does this insane appetite for McMansions and $2000 televisions come from? It seems not only unhealthy to me, but pathological. Unless we can break that cycle of addiction to (luxury) consumer goods I don't see how we can open people's minds to the possibilities inherent in the personal growth that accompanies democractic decision-making, and participating in the arts and nature.

On the other hand, if individual passive consumers could be transformed into active citizens who organize for a local green manufacturing economy, then I think we would have a chance of designing a system for a reasonable and equitable distribution of goods that wouldn't endanger the earth. In other words, how do we get to the society that favors quality over quantity?On The economy is an ecosystem posted 1 year, 12 months ago 7 Responses

I'm afraid it will take rationing

Eventually we'll have to figure out a fair way to alot energy and resources. One scheme is Tradable Energy Quotas. The personal quotas are tradable and so set up a marketplace whereby the "energy-lean" can be justly rewarded. This would dis-encentivize large houses and gas-guzzlers. On Energy efficiency just leaves more money to squander, says study posted 2 years ago 9 Responses

Latest polling ...

Polls zig-zag a lot, but I found the latest from Zogby to be scary:

UTICA, New York - A new Zogby Interactive survey shows Democrat Hillary Clinton of New York would lose to every one of the top five Republican presidential contenders, representing a reversal of fortune for the national Democratic front-runner who had led against all prospective GOP opponents earlier this year.

Meanwhile, fellow Democrats Barack Obama of Illinois and John Edwards of North Carolina would defeat or tie every one of the Republicans, this latest survey shows

This was discussed on the Thom Hartmann program this morning: Is America too misogynist or racist to elect a woman or an African-American? Hell if I know...
On The next president needs to move with speed and clear vision on mitigating climate change posted 2 years ago 10 Responses

What will history say about us?

David wrote:

We need to figure out how to apportion differential responsibility without ascribing evil intent. We need to figure out how to coordinate internationally. We need to come to terms with our place in the world, the threat we pose to ourselves and the rest of the biosphere.

Nicely put. The "we" is presumably the environmental community, or, more generally, the American public. The truth is, as Americans, we bear the greater share of the responsibility because we are the biggest per capita emitters, presently and historically. We are now the only industrial country not to sign on to the Kyoto Protocol. We practically rule the world, invading countries and deposinging popular leaders (Mossadegh, Allende, Lumumba, etc.)  when it suits us (our elites, that is).

Further, we have the resources that are not available to most in the developing world.
Even among the American public, the responsibility is not shared evenly. Poor kids in the ghetto obviously oughtn't to be blamed as much as the utility CEO who opens another coal plant. The future of the planet is really in our hands. We are the only ones who can pressure the U.S. government into enacting equitable solutions, instead of promoting further obstructionism.On Is the analogy between climate change and Hitler's atrocities appropriate? posted 2 years ago 49 Responses

How many hamsters to power a plug-in?

BioD, thanks for alerting us to this good news story. Maybe we could one day have hamster-powered TV's! (Is that your cute hamster BTW?)

But I like this idea of tying wind farms together before piping the energy to consumers. But I wonder though if wind could ever be considered for baseload power. It might in coastal areas where winds are pretty constant. But I thought the Mid West was prone to summer high pressure systems that occasionally effectively reduced winds to zero over large areas (though this one-year study didn't seem to find this.)

Linking in a network of concentrated solar plants would definately help in that case. Or geothermal plants, of course. But for obvious reasons that sort of R&D will be mightily opposed by the fossil-fuel lobbies, just as they are gutting the energy bill of its Renewable Portfolio Standards. (Did you know there are over 60 lobbyists for each Congress person?)

Could wind generation feed PHEV's quickly enough? (I like your assumption of phasing out coal plants!) Could be a problem in the North West where only only 10 - 20% of our car fleet could be electrified currently. As you know, it will take decades to even get 25% of our power from renewables.

But the bigger crunch might be peak oil. Jeffrey J. Brown reckons world oil exports are currently shrinking over 3% a year (hence the run-up on prices). At some point U.S. consumers will have to reduce oil use commensurably. Three percent of 200 million cars (estimated U.S. cars on the road) is about 6 million cars. That's about half the cars made each year here. So could we see every other new car in the show rooms be a PHEV? I doubt it. Not for a few years, anyway.  On Innovative idea may reduce renewable energy costs posted 2 years ago 8 Responses

Are these the rich states of the future?

It would be interesting to see how these figures correlate with something like "average miles driven to work". Since 70% of oil is used for transportation, and 88% of Americans commute by car (see below), I assume transportation would account for a significant portion of the GDP intensity. That would perhaps explain why the top 3 states are relatively compact (with NYC biasing NY State). Though the next 2 states (Colorado and California) surprise me!

With regards to the country comparison you touch upon at the end of the article Lester Brown paints an even starker picture for the U.S.:

Some countries are much more vulnerable to an oil decline than others. For example, the United States--which has long neglected public transportation--is particularly vulnerable because 88 percent of the U.S. workforce travels to work by car.

Since options for expanding supply are limited, efforts to prevent oil prices from rising well beyond $100 per barrel in the years ahead depend on reducing demand, largely within the transportation sector. And since the United States consumes more gasoline than the next 20 countries combined, it must play a lead role in cutting oil use.

another question

Are there any examples of perfect markets?

In my understanding, the big fish eat the little fish -- they have to, to survive you have to grow in a competitive market. As they get bigger, they use their power and resources to corner the market (hire lobbyists, engage in massive advertising,...).On Pro-business vs. pro-market posted 2 years ago 14 Responses

Billhook hyperlinks...

Billhook, thanks for the update. I'm with you on Convergence and Contraction, with a goal of no net carbon by 2040. For lazy readers, here is the hyperlink that you give for www.gci.org.uk

Also the Carbon Equity report is definately important and should be better known to Grist readers. (Bill, I'd recommend reading how to do hyperlinks from the link in the Grist comment box.) On IPCC says debate over, further delay fatal, action not costly posted 2 years ago 16 Responses

Revkin's toxic optimism?

Michael, I liked how you put this in your blog, with regards to the Revkin "middle-of-the-road politics" argument:

Sometimes the truth itself is extreme. Nature does not subscribe to our political principles, and it is a futile sort of moderation that tries to get reality to compromise with culture, no matter how refined or well-intentioned that culture may be.

We are not necessarily doomed; we have the technical capacity to solve our problems, but we need to develop substantially changed descision making mechanisms. There are places where there is no room for compromise or the friendly impulse to split the difference.

Peak Oil will change everything

Congressman,

You are a rare voice of passion and reason. You demonstrate a rare understanding of the dangers and potential solutions to global warming. I'm with you in opposition to the Lieberman-Warner bill. We can do better.

You may already be aware of the recent study by German academicians that peak oil occured in 2006 and oil production will fall by 50% by 2030. This is similar to the warnings of ASPO and other geologists. The GAO has written:

“The prospect of a peak in oil production presents
problems of global proportion whose consequences
will depend critically on our preparedness. The
consequences would be most dire if a peak
occurred soon, without warning, and were
followed by a sharp decline in oil production
because alternative energy sources, particularly
for transportation, are not yet available in
large quantities. Such a peak would require
sharp reductions in oil consumption, and the
competition for increasingly scarce energy
would drive up prices, possibly to unprecedented
levels, causing severe economic damage.

Once peak oil breaks into public consciousness (and it is starting to in Britain with a few BBC reports) then the entire debate on global warming will have to be reconsidered. My question is, have you yet joined the Congressional Peak Oil Causus.On The Lieberman-Warner bill is not strong enough to do the job posted 2 years ago 16 Responses

Toxic Optimists indeed!

Michael, I share your skepticism of "delusional beltway optimism."

Even with a "massive shift" to PHEV's we won't be able to avoid the peak oil trainwreck. Look at what the EPRI report says:

At the same time, the report estimates that electric hybrids would displace the need for 3 million to 4 million barrels of oil per day by 2050, more than twice what the United States imports each day from Saudi Arabia

Let's say that a reduction from current levels (and not projected) of 4 million bd over 40 years. Or 100,000 bd per year. Or .1/20= .5% per year. But once we fall off the peak oil plateau, depletion rates will be greater than 4% (using CERA's number).

In other words , once we fall off the peak oil plateau, whether that's 85 mbd today, or 100 mbd in 2015 we'll still be down about 1 mbd each year -- even with this rate of PHEV penetration. On Delusional Beltway optimism about energy posted 2 years ago 32 Responses

Woe the pedestrian

After viewing BioD's post on fast electric motorcycles, I fear for the pedestrian in this future world of $100,000 sports cars.

Saner in my view to promote mass transit, compact development and small neighborhood electric vehicles limited to 30 mph.On Plug-in sports car to hit showrooms in 2010 posted 2 years ago 10 Responses

Caution: Gross stupidity

BioD, I think you need to attach a warning to this. Not something to watch before breakfast! God, I hope that guy didn't die.

On your own bike -- I think you could have a second career selling those things! I may have missed it but how far can one travel on Seattle streets before recharging? (I'm assuming you only use the electric-assist on hills?)On Electric motorcycle delivers man to side of van posted 2 years ago 15 Responses

Is there intelligent life at Grist?

Martin, congrats on getting your film on the History Channel! (Though I hadn't heard of it before).

It's good to see a comment from another peaker. Though don't expect too much from the Grist crowd. (There are a few exceptions, e.g. bloggers JMG and Jon Rynn.) I've been trying unsuccessfully for six months to try to get the environmental leadership here to even explore the issue. But all I get is the cold shoulder. How many of them have read the books of Princeton geologist Ken Deffeyes? I'd be surprised if any had.

How high will it go before Gristers start to pay attention? Who knows? Futures on oil are now trading at $250 (from today's NPR Marketplace). Matt Simmons (on CNBC) is saying the economy can handle $300 (equivalent to European petrol prices). Though perhaps the lending crisis will move us into recession and depress oil prices, at least temporarily.

The frustrating thing about is there is a very simple solution that will inevitably have to come into being -- the Oil Depletion Protocol. The elites running this world are not going to let it all collapse. At some point, World leaders will hold a conference to find a way to put a cap on oil prices, and then ration the rest country by country.

But the sooner we get people to explore this issue open-mindedly, the sooner we can get a treaty and limit the damage. And then get on with the important business of transforming to sustainability.On Disturbing news is more likely to be ignored posted 2 years ago 41 Responses

Now we're talking...

Definately a lot of good stuff in there!

She even seems to be aware of peak oil (though the reference to "swing capacity" is disturbing -- there in none). The best available study on PO (IMO) predicts we'll be down about 50% of world production by 2030 . So this is encouraging:

Hillary's plan to cut oil imports by two-thirds -- or more than 10 million barrels per day -- by 2030 centers on setting tough new fuel efficiency standards for cars and trucks and providing retooling assistance to the automakers to help them meet these standards

However, I don't think we have a hope in hell that the increased CAFE standards or ramping up of PHEV's will cover this. The biofuels policy is very worrisome (wishful thinking). As is the lack of attention to mass transit.

The Strategic Energy Fund is too low ($50 billion) and by giving oil companies the option of participating in renewables or face windfall profits taxes, Big Oil will do the former. Big Oil will gladly participate in renewables -- by slowing up their development as much as possible. (Afterall, their overarching goal is make profits for their shareholders.) So I think there is a big missed, possibly disastrous, opportunity in her plan right there.On The full text of Clinton's plan posted 2 years ago 18 Responses

Wolves at the door?

Ryan writes:

If you legislate the actual changes in production, however, you sharply limit the extent to which the market can move resources around to find an optimal distribution given constraints

I'll let him speak for himself, but I don't think this degree of central planning is what Jon had in mind. More often than not, progressives suggest tweaking the system through carrots and incentives, as well as regulations. Here, for instance, is Jeff Faux, writing in the American Prospect.

Most basically, the United States cannot maintain its living standards in a global economy without a healthy industrial base. This will require increased public investments in infrastructure, education and training, and research and development -- but all geared toward ensuring that new products will be produced in the United States. An expansion of state and local technical assistance to manufacturing and the elimination of obsolete tax incentives to invest overseas should also be part of the package.

Towns and cities all the time try to attract high-tech (and biotech) companies through tax breaks on rents and profits. Though Jon also advocates for preferencing employee-owned firms to dissuade outsourcing, and promote infant industries.On We don't need to destroy our economy to save the planet posted 2 years ago 79 Responses

On healthy communities

I'd like to bring in a different perspective on globalization that moves beyond increasing GDP's. For instance, George Monbiot recently argues for a zero-growth economy, at least for the rich nations of the Earth. In other words, mindless growth (with or without a carbon price) is killing the planet like a cancer. That's why market fundamentalism is in my view the greatest threat to the planet.

Bart and Jonathan touched on this point already, but "efficiency" (a subjective category, according to Stiglitz, by the way, dependent on goals) should not be the main or only driving force as we negogiate our future with Mother Earth. We need new ways of looking at economies that foster sustainable, healthy and relatively equal communities. That's why it's important that we take seriously the pioneering work of people like Rynn and Philpott.

For example, I heard today on our local NPR station (KUOW) an interview with the founder of Great Harvest Bread Company. He was meeting with a farmer who grew local, organic wheat. Although the wheat was more expensive, he justifed his "illogical" business deal by the fact that he was forming a relationship with the farmer. That relationship went beyond money, which would be foreign to mainstream econommics. (Bill McKibben's "Deep Economy" touches on "happiness" and these sorts of these issues also.)On We don't need to destroy our economy to save the planet posted 2 years ago 79 Responses

Oops, that Pachamana Alliance link..

should have been this.

And I should have explained it was about waking from the dream:

It is as if we are living inside of a dream, sleepwalking toward oblivion, while self-serving, shortsighted interests encourage our slumber with managed news, celebrity culture and other weapons of mass distraction.

Econ 101

Joe writes (And I thought he never read the comments!):

I do expect to see oil prices rising relatively slowly over the next two decades (with spikes), giving people a bit more time to plan on which cars to build and which cars to buy.

Depends what you mean by "relatively slowly". Let's see. Oil has gone from $12/barrel in 1998 to $90+ in 2007. It has risen over 50% this year so far. Up $10 in a week or so. Now there is no end in sight, as enough investors have realized that the cat is out of the bag, and that oil production has reached is geological limits. At this rate, we'll be over $125 by Christmas.

Well, there is an end in sight to escalating oil prices and that is an inevitable global recession that is the only sort of demand reduction we're likely to see in the global North. After that, if we get rationing and an Energy Depletion Protocol we may be able to plan for an orderly transition to a fossil-fuel-free future. That's the only scenario where I can see stable oil prices, and avoid Kunstler's Long Emergency.On Why I don't agree with James Kunstler about peak oil and the 'end of suburbia' posted 2 years, 1 month ago 65 Responses

Arise, Sir Knights!

Jon, don't know about Susan George's (above link) idea of an Order of Environmental Knights. But if it comes to pass I'll annoint you Sir Jon.

This passage reminded me of your writing. Who knows perhaps she once lurked at Grist!

I'm not an economist but the only new tool I can think of to pull the United States out of the economic doldrums is a new Keynesianism, not military this time, but environmental; a push for massive investment in eco-friendly industry, in alternative energy, in the manufacture of lightweight materials for use in new vehicles; in clean, efficient public transport; in the green construction industry, etc.

More Peak Oil Illiteracy!

This sentence jumped out at me:

Reduce our dependence on foreign oil and reduce oil consumption overall by at least 35 percent, or 10 million barrels of oil, by 2030

Looks like he expects us still to be consuming 20 mbd by 2030. Since we're already at or close to peak oil, depletions are starting to come in at 4% and discoveries which peaked in the 60's are continuing to peter off this is just wishful thinking of the worst kind. Unless he plans to invade a few more big oil producing countries to continue with his auto-centric vision!

The ASPO graph seems to indicate we'll be down by about 30% in oil production by 2030, or (in units that Colin Campbell quotes) from about 22 billion equivalent slaves working 24 hours a day to 14 billion equivalent slaves a day (BESD).On The details on Obama's just-released energy plan posted 2 years, 1 month ago 10 Responses

May the Revolutions Continue!

Margie, I can almost taste the wonderful Parisian bread from your writing. Hope you can give us a mid-winter update as to how the program evolves.

I wonder if this plan could work in the U.S. (or are there any successful programs already?). I suspect the bikes would be vandalized at night. And the bikes look a tad unmanly for the American Male. Maybe a selection of bikes would be better?On A Parisian tries out the city's new rent-a-bike program posted 2 years, 1 month ago 16 Responses

More on Lovelock's idea ...

Thanks Suzannah! That site required a fee, but you did encourage me to search and find this on National Geographic.

There I found out that the tubes are about 10 m in diameter with a one-way valve. Tens of thousands are envisioned. But critics have pointed out that the tubes could end up releasing more CO2 into the atmosphere. We will have to wait for more study.

I wonder why you just couldn't sprinkle the DMS cloud seeder on the ocean surface?On European fisheries 'poor,' island nation Palau rich in corals posted 2 years, 1 month ago 8 Responses

The importance of non-carbon forcings

Another treasure trove of a paper.

I didn't realize the importance of the non-CO2 forcings -- 0.5-1.0W/m2, enough to save the Arctic, if we eliminated them! That got me thinking, how do we do that?

I looked up one, nitrous oxide, on wiki and found this:

Despite its relatively small concentration in the atmosphere, nitrous oxide is the third largest greenhouse gas contributor to overall global warming, behind carbon dioxide and methane. (The other nitrogen oxides contribute to global warming indirectly, by contributing to tropospheric ozone production during smog formation).

Nitrous oxide is emitted by bacteria in soils and oceans, and thus has been a part of Earth's atmosphere for eons. Agriculture is the main source of human-produced nitrous oxide: cultivating soil, the use of nitrogen fertilizers, and animal waste handling can all stimulate naturally occurring bacteria to produce more nitrous oxide. The livestock sector (primarily cows, chickens, and pigs) produces 65% of human-related nitrous oxide

There are 3 avenues to approach just there to save the polar bear: go organic, go vegetarian and go car-lite. Now multiply by 6 billion.

I wonder if atmospheric chemists could come up with a way to reduce nitrous oxide (or methane, chlorofluorocarbons, ozone) levels further...  
On 'Long-term' climate sensitivity of 6 degrees C for doubled CO2 posted 2 years, 1 month ago 3 Responses

Who killed the Renewables?

Most ordinary people I talk to don't believe it's a technological problem. They get it right immediately, in my opinion: the oil companies. That is, they intuitively understand how power works in this country.

Unfortunately the further one moves up the educational chain, (and the more people buy into the current system) the less likely people are to see this basic truth.On Techno-obsession posted 2 years, 1 month ago 18 Responses

A counterstatement to DR's above quote...

If only the world was as simple as Adam Smith or Karl Marx thought!

I only offer the following quote to illustrate the complexities of our situation, in order to open seemingly glib statements to intellectual rigor. To be honest, I haven't a clue what these theorems are about (maybe Jason could enlighten us?). (Wikipedia can make anyone sound like an expert.) But it does seem odd to me that the future of the planet may depend on obscure economic theorems, and that so much hinges on crash courses in economics! I just note that Stiglitz is a nobel-prize winning economist.

But the Greenwald-Stiglitz theorem posits market failure as the norm, establishing "that government could potentially almost always improve upon the market's resource allocation." And the Sappington-Stiglitz theorem "establishes that an ideal government could do better running an enterprise itself than it could through privatization"

PS I thought these were towo great pieces of writing by both DR and Rynn.On A reply to Shellenberger & Nordhaus posted 2 years, 2 months ago 20 Responses

Beware false profits?

Adam, you ask N&S for clarity (sharpen their thinking). But who I ask, has all the answers and knows how the climate debate will play out? Their doubled-pronged strategy (regulation + investment) makes sense to me. I see no guarantee that cap-and-auction will work at all. But I see investment as essential.

Your "projections" of delaying action onto N&S seem unfair.On Ted Nordhaus responds to NRDC's Dave Hawkins posted 2 years, 2 months ago 14 Responses

Waiting for Godot, part 2

Jon, yeah it's weird. Almost as if people worship the market like a
cargo cult. That is, we are mysteriously given amazing things by the Market God (ipods, Mazerati's,..). We don't know where they came from, but we like them. We invent uses for them even if don't solve any needs in our lives (Game Boys, flat screen TV's...).

Now we pray that one day the market will deliver to us some fantastically cheap and clean enegy device. We even make offerings (subsidies, cap-and-trade allowances) to the very companies that bring us coal and oil in the hope of pleasing them. We just have to be patient.

The old-fashioned idea that people could collectively solve a problem directly seems to have gone down the memory hole.On Shellenberger & Nordhaus respond to critics posted 2 years, 2 months ago 23 Responses

The battle of ideas...

Mkayser, you raise good points. Greenspan deserves some credit for stepping into the lion's den.

But he is (was?) a very powerful person (and now author)and ought to be held responsible for how he controlled those interest rates. Many hundreds of thousands of people are losing their homes because of a housing bubble he should at least take some credit for inflating.

Now the long-term viability of the current US economy is under question. Now that housing is no longer the driving force in GDP growth, what will replace that? Or have we outsourced our manufacturing ability through globalization so much that we are now entering a period of extended recession?

Then look at the astronomical debt levels we have been living on. Greenspan says although he supported the tax cuts it was only because he wanted to see financial restraint on the part of government. But that seems disingenuos to me. By supporting those tax cuts he was implicitly giving his OK.

It's not about bashing Greenspan. Only trying to raise the level of thinking to try to effect the direction this country (and the world) is going, as the old era of cheap energy comes to an end!On A remarkable bit of radio on Democracy Now posted 2 years, 2 months ago 6 Responses

Arctic melting and Greenland basal lube

According to this article it is the warming Gulf Stream that is pushing back the Barents Sea ice. Meanwhile, the Aleutian Low storm system is causing the Bering Sea ice retreat.

On the other hand, ocean temperatures would only be one of many factors in the melting of the Greenland ice sheet. As far as I could find out (from the wikipedia "Greenland Ice Sheet" entry and links therein), warming air is the main contribution to glacial acceleration. Thus:

"The higher velocity of the ice is thought to be related to higher temperatures causing increased melt-water which can penetrate to the base of the glacier and hence reduce the ground friction...Unfortunately, the physics of basal lubrication ...are very poorly understood and not fully accounted for in current ice sheet models. Until those models include these effects, there is a danger that we may be under-appreciating the dynamic nature of the ice sheets.

Maybe someone else better informed could enlighten us, but I don't think there is any direct knowledge that the disappearing Arctic sea ice will have a first-order effect on the Greenland ice sheet.
On Ice loss hits record low this month in the Arctic posted 2 years, 2 months ago 6 Responses

When does decentralization work best?

I like this idea of cities (responsible for 75% of GW I see) working together. The radical eco-philospher Murray Bookchin proposed a "confederation of municipalities" as a counter-power to the State about 20 years ago at the tail end of the First (Second?) Wave of Environmentalism. Now we're seeing confederations of cities pushing forward the GW agenda (in the US). Can US cities now work together to guarantee markets for sustainables and mass transit? Why not? (By the way, Seattle has just bought some streetcars from the Czeck Republic and light rail cars from Japan, if my memory serves me.)

With recession looming, I see this possible renewable-energy/mass-transit manufacturing paradigm that Rynn keeps telling us about as a way to both stimulate the economy and transition to low-carbon.

Incidently, Tyler Slocum of Public Citizen recently voiced similar ideas about decentralizing renewable technologies here:

Public Citizen, in contrast, goes to congress and says: "Repeal all subsidies to the coal, nuclear and oil comapnies and instead invest those billions of dollars in grants available to families so they can afford to install home-based solar systems, and so they can afford to make eco-friendly renovations to save energy."

However, I still suspect we would need a national grid that could could connect energy-rich with energy-poor regions. If not, we could see a fracturing of the country into rich and poor states. The BPA and TVA federal programs seem to me good models for expanding into wind, solar and geothermal generation.On The promise of governmental buyers' clubs posted 2 years, 2 months ago 5 Responses

Another magic pony?

A counter-argument to energy deregulation is describes here by Public Citizen.On 'Carbon-friendly' utilities may not necessarily be in the public interest posted 2 years, 2 months ago 7 Responses

An oil executive breaks rank?

I read this article somewhat differently: an acknowledgement from a high oil executive that we are about to enter peak oil.

I'm in agreement with him, too, that governments and companies must make CCS a priority. Surely a few government CCS demonstration projects plus a requirement that all new coal plants sequester their coal is good policy.

And, more importantly in my view, and echoing DR, in addition we will need massive government intervention to ramp up the renewables industry as fast as possible. I don't have much faith that CCS will be particularly effective -- it's an untested technology, still decades away from wide deployment.

Peak oil could be just a few years away (or already plateauing). The pressure for CTL will be intense. Meanwhile the outlook for liquid natural gas is grim.On Carbon sequestration is a costly alternative to renewables, not a transition to them posted 2 years, 2 months ago 21 Responses

Chomsky on environmental economics...

Even with externalities accounted for, capitalism will lead to planetary destruction:

"Take the Kyoto Protocol. Destruction of the environment is not only rational; it's exactly what you're taught to do in college. If you take an economics or a political science course, you're taught that humans are supposed to be rational wealth accumulators, each acting as an individual to maximize his own wealth in the market. The market is regarded as democratic because everybody has a vote. Of course, some have more votes than others because your votes depend on the number of dollars you have, but everybody participates and therefore it's called democratic. Well, suppose that we believe what we are taught. It follows that if there are dollars to be made, you destroy the environment. The reason is elementary. The people who are going to be harmed by this are your grandchildren, and they don't have any votes in the market. Their interests are worth zero. Anybody that pays attention to their grandchildren's interests is being irrational, because what you're supposed to do is maximize your own interests, measured by wealth, right now. Nothing else matters. So destroying the environment and militarizing outer space are rational policies, but within a framework of institutional lunacy. If you accept the institutional lunacy, then the policies are rational."

More "childish thinking"

As William Clark puts it in his essay "It's the energy and the economy, stupid":

The 21st century will likely be defined by three overarching forces: climate change, Peak Oil, and macroeconomics...

5. Revitalize the US Manufacturing Base with Energy Reconfiguration.
Alan Greenspan, the former chairman of the Federal Reserve, gave Americans the peculiar impression that it does not matter where American products are made, as long as people can continue to buy them. Nothing could be further from the truth. The loss of over 3 million US manufacturing jobs since 2000 has led to decreased real income, growing personal debt, and record numbers of personal bankruptcies. A superpower that loses its manufacturing base will not be a major power for very long.

The most viable careers in the 21st century will likely revolve around the "green" job sector. The US must substantially invest in alternative/sustainable-energy technologies, and other export sectors to gradually but earnestly move the economy from a trade deficit back to a trade account surplus. This will take decades, but the imperative for large-scale domestic energy reconfiguration projects and the deployment of alternative energy would provide the US with new employment opportunities that would be safe from overseas outsourcing, while also enhancing our long-term national security.

I'll take the green one...

A little small (9 cubic feet), and pricey ($2000). But that's less energy than a 40 W bulb! So it could easily pay for itself, if I'm not mistaken.On Smeg me posted 2 years, 3 months ago 12 Responses

A winning compromise?

This is a dilemma for me too. But I'm tending towards the road/rail package compromise.

I suspect Sound Transit has done their homework (with public opinion surveys, etc.) to produce a winning formula, in the volatile political environment here, where a right-wing backlash could easily derail transit planning once again as it has in the past.

A major concern is the regressive nature of the tax burden(sales tax). But even at a few hundred dollars per year per average family I think it's a good bargain. As peak oil unfolds, having a light rail skeleton across the region will make all the differerence to keeping the local economy afloat as oil shocks start to take their toll.

The light rail is not cheap (and opponents claim we could build a network of Rapid Transit buses for ten percent of the cost), but the light rail if approved will bring additional advantages in the form of Transit Oriented Development and increased urban density. (Most of the money spent will recycle and stimulate the local economy, anyway.)

Of course, if it's not approved, we may have the future opportunity to build a network of street cars along the major arterials and reclaim our transit heritage. But it does seem to be the case that the longer we postpone mass transit, the more expensive it becomes.On Seattle enviros face a Hobson's choice in November posted 2 years, 3 months ago 17 Responses

Complicating your picture...

BioD, thanks for the great review (and the personal stories).

Let me muddy the waters a little on your clear exposition on government intervention in the economy. Instead of just a unidimensional scale from State Communism to free market libertarianism ("political freedom"), how about we add another perpendicular axis of "economic democracy"? Then we can account for a richer variety of economies (such as Yugoslavia or Venezuela).

This creates more space for the kind of political/economic system I would advocate for -- economic democracy, political freedom.

Of course, in the current system, I understand that only the government can protect us from the predations of the free market with regulation and safety nets. But as far as possible, I want the government to create the political space for new economic forms to emerge (cooperatives, democratic workplaces, etc.) that more respect our evolution as group participators.

In other words, for me, both corporations and government bureaucracies can stifle individual resourcefulness. On the other hand, free market entrepreneurs direct thier creativity in a way that leads to increasing inequality (and usually end up selling out to corporations for personal greed, anyway).  I would like to see a system whereby people are able to use their talents to help save the earth through "social entrepreneurship" and new non-profit models. I don't think the wild pursuit of profit is appropriate anymore (if it ever has been).

Anyway, I'm sure there are other ways too of looking at the economy. I bring this up here since authors like Bill McKibben have written that happiness ought to be a more important goal than continued economic growth and BAU.On Along with a rambling social commentary posted 2 years, 3 months ago 20 Responses

Thanks. A great readable paper, but ...

I wonder if it is superceded by Hansen's recent work on the "albedo flip property of ice/water". For instance, compare each author's words on the Greenland Ice Sheet.
Hansen:

An ice sheet response time of centuries seems probable, and we cannot rule out large changes on decadal time-scales once wide-scale surface melt is underway.

Lenton:

The timescale for the ice sheet to melt is at least 300 years and often given as roughly 1000 years.

We find it implausible that BAU scenarios ... would permit a West Antarctic ice sheet of present size to survive even for a century.

Lenton:

The West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) is thought to be less vulnerable to warming than the Greenland Ice Sheet but a threshold could still be accessed this century

I'm no expert, and there could be no real contradictions here between the authors. But there does at least seem to be a difference of emphasis. The albedo-flip picture could be a more important, more holistic way to look at the Earth than a series of tipping points.

Incidentally, I heard on the radio today that the Arctic ice cap extent is at its smallest size ever -- yet we still have at least another month of summer melting to go.On And at what temperature Greenland's ice sheet will melt posted 2 years, 3 months ago 5 Responses

doing without or better living?

It's good to see the optimism memes thrown in once in a while. Like everyone I vascillate on how I think things will be.

I'd hesitate to call it modernism (aren't we supposed to be post-modern -- or was that a fad?)-- versus "slow, mini-modernism". Or linear West versus mystical East.

How about a corporate-driven outlook (the infamous Corporate Oligarchy?) vs. a democratic-driven outlook?

That is, corporations favor infinite growth in their quest to turn the Earth into a parking lot. Ordinary people favor those intangible quantites that can't be dollarized (relaxation, art, companionship,...)On Substitution isn't the solution to peak oil posted 2 years, 3 months ago 17 Responses

What about Germany?

Germany has a large Turkish population, yet they lead the way in terms of renewables. Here is an excerpt from the British Guardian, care of the invaluable Energy Bulletin:

Germany, with a strong system of support for solar, wind and hydro power, has been expanding its use of renewables rapidly and now has 200 times as much installed solar power and 10 times as much wind power as Britain...
Germany has a simpler system of renewables support: a feed-in tariff. This guarantees generators pay a fixed price - several times higher than the market rate - for power generated by renewables and fed into the grid. Companies are encouraged to expand production because of a guaranteed flow of funds. The higher volumes lead to lower costs. The system costs the government nothing, since the costs are spread across all users. Introduced in Germany in 1999, it has added just £1 a month to the average electricity bill. Up to 47 other countries have now introduced a similar system.

Who says market competition brings about the best outcomes? On Economist goes over to the dark side posted 2 years, 3 months ago 17 Responses

A nice fat tax rebate...

I agree with BioD here that we ought to do this in steps. Getting people on to public transit 5 days a week would do a lot to cut emissions as well as free up our clogged streets and clean the air....

A while ago DR posted a funny commentary by a Neanderthalic Republican ridiculing Democrats for proposing a $20/month tax rebate for cycling. (First they mock you!).

We have something similar in WA state (Commute Trip Reduction Act) whereby we do get $20/month for leaving the car at home, at least 50% of work days. (Large businesses are mandated to comply!) The twenty bucks makes a difference to me on those wintery months where taking the car seems so much more appealing than my trusty 10-speed.

So why not extend this idea, so that all "eco-commuters" (walkers, cyclists, bus riders) are eligible for a tax rebate on April 15th for not contributing to road wear-and-tear and helping the US meet its (soon-to-be?) Super-Kyoto obligations?

I also suggested a similar idea here -- a 35 hour work week (for 40 hours pay) for eco-commuters.

I must say I like having the car, especially for those hiking tripsOn Current TV wants to know posted 2 years, 3 months ago 13 Responses

How are your boating skills?

Thanks for the reassurance, bioD! That means there are at least 6 of us talking to each other here!

Yeah, the Head for the Hills rhetoric does seem a little over the top, something we'd expect from Kunstler, and not an academic (with an even more famous father).

But you probably saw this map of Florida under water in Hansen's recent piece in New Scientist. You'll stop laughing when the cold waters of Puget Sound start lapping around your ankles! You do live on higher ground, don't you?On Reversing Reagan's joke posted 2 years, 3 months ago 12 Responses

The New School of Environmentalism?

I think it's worthwhile to remember that Galbraith is not just acting out of liberal goodness, and optimism. Like many of us who have studied peak oil, he is terrified of what the future could bring:

The climate collapse--which may bring the flooding of New York, Boston, London, Calcutta, and Shanghai--will be a calamity next to which the end of the Soviet Union will seem very small. Long industrial chains, for jet aircraft, automobiles, telecommunications, electricity, and much else, will crumble, as they did in the USSR and Yugoslavia, particularly if new interior boundaries form and countries break up. And interior boundaries will form, as those on the high ground seek to defend it. The demographic effects will be similarly dire: Older, urban males (like me) with no survival skills will die. Rural New England will turn into a deforested exurban slum.

On the Masters of the Universe...

The Roger Cohen quote reminds me of John Dewey , the great American philosopher. Writing eighty years ago he says:

politics is the shadow cast on society by big business... Power today resides in control of the means of production, exchange, publicity, transportation and communication. Whoever owns them rules the life of the country, even if democratic forms remain. Business for private profit through private control of banking, land, industry reinforced by command of the press, press agents and other means of publicity and propaganda, that is the system of actual power, the source of coercion and control, and until it's unravelled we can't talk seriously about democracy and freedom.

Of course, unlike Cohen, Dewey was a passionate believer in democracy.
On Reversing Reagan's joke posted 2 years, 3 months ago 12 Responses

Liked this part even more: a stategy?

In order to become a Fairtrade town, the local council must pass a resolution supporting Fairtrade, a range of Fairtrade products must be readily available in the area's shops and served in local cafés and catering establishments and Fairtrade products must be used by a number of local workplaces and community organisations. Fairtrade town and Fairtrade city initiatives are a means of raising awareness around issues of global inequality and trade justice, as well as transforming collective infrastructures of provisioning so that everyone, irrespective of their `choice', becomes an `ethical consumer'.

Sean, it's not really goofy unless...

you believe that your approach to GHG reductions is the one and only TRUE path. I agree there is some merit to some of the ideas you promote (self-promote?) -- decentralization, cogeneration, natural gas instead of coal.

But the reliance on natural gas will involve massive new LNG terminals, bringing in a flammable substance from volatile areas of the world that may only last a few more decades (in significant quantities). While this could serve as some sort of bridge technology, it is not the real thing -- sustainable energy.

That is why we need to develop solar, wind, geothermal, etc. as rapidly as possible. (I don't think we should put all our eggs in one basket and pray that nuclear fusion will eventually save us.) This can't be done with the "free market" -- otherwise the cheapest energy would win, probably coal. So we need the government to develop and subsidize renewables, train a new generation of workers and rebuild the depleted manufacturing sector of the economy. The energy infrastructure is a common, shared resource, critical to national security, and too important to be left to the vagaries of the market.

As well, it makes perfect sense to try to level the playing field by focusing on the communities that have been pissed upon the most by the free market and government policies of neglect -- "urban youth, returning veterans, struggling farmers, displaced workers from our manufacturing sectors". Congratulations to Van (and others) who have worked so hard to change the direction this country is headed.On Pelosi's plan to save the polar bears -- and poor kids, too ... posted 2 years, 4 months ago 45 Responses

Edwards on the Saudi deal

All good points (above), but sometimes we forget to state the obvious: The Saudis claim to have 250 billion barrels of oil!

Also, this from AP:

   Edwards is the first Democratic presidential candidate to speak out against the deal. Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice visited Saudi Arabia Tuesday as part of a two-day visit with Arab allies that opened talks on the proposed U.S. arms package.

    Edwards said the arms deal could backfire by giving Iran an incentive to build its nuclear strength.

    "They have to try to offset the conventional arms deficiencies that they're faced with," Edwards said. "That's the whole problem with this idea that you deal with these things in terms of what's helpful at the moment instead of what needs to be done over the long term."

The US is still number 1!

Noolympics, it seems like you are trying to deflect from Hansen's point that the chief responsibility for GW lies with the US. You don't address his point that we must get our own house in order first. And that the developing world will follow for reasons of self-interest.

When Hansen writes the US is responsible for more than 3 times as much climate change as China, I think he talking about the cumulative effect of US emmissions, not the per capita emmissions. In fact, he says "On a per capita basis, U.S. responsibility exceeds that of China by an order of magnitude." Not the 3 times you suggest above. In the paper, Hansen says "The United States will continue to be primarily responsible for climate change for decades to come.

Also your "per-polluter" argument is misguided because the Chinese manufacture a large fraction of goods for the American market. Thus our leaders have found a way to outsource not just American jobs, but to outsource the carbon emmissions from the manufacturing sector in the process. (And no doubt they will continue to outsource manufacturing to avoid cap and trade costs.) In this respect, you are right to consider tariffs on Chinese products (made from "coal" energy). But let's not forget that our main task is to change US policy, and not to scapegoat the Chinese.

Argue with Hansen if you like. But don't try to change the subject without first countering his arguments.On Two actions and two 'tweaks' posted 2 years, 4 months ago 2 Responses

Power for the future technologies

Jason,

Will look forward to your next post. I hope you address this concern: Given that the lead times to get new technologies to market are on the order of decades, and the IEA is predicting oil shortfalls within five years, do you agree that we will be trying to develop new technologies just as we begin the net-energy downslope?

Just how "fully aware of resource constraints" are you? Is your bet that oil won't rise above $65/barrel in the next 5 years still on? What is your latest thinking on peak oil and substitutes?
On For reducing the climate crisis posted 2 years, 4 months ago 39 Responses

Saving the Earth is an EMOTIONAL business!

SustainableDave, remember "sustainable" means being around forever! We wouldn't want to lose you. It's suicidal around here to go breaking the posting rules about personal attacks. Never mind, telling the chief honcho to go F! himself, or posting private emails.

To be sure, DR's email was hardly polite, and I don't know who you insulted to draw his wrath(I doubt they were offended?) You could have written him privately or written to others of us separately for advice. But if I were you, I'd apologize to DR and ask humbly to be allowed to keep on posting. We need your perspective and insights! We need the ability to live together and to respect each other if we have any chance at all of saving the planet. If we can't do it at Grist, what hope is there for the wider world?
 On New investigative report posted 2 years, 4 months ago 14 Responses

Great post! Essential reading!

One wonders why the national media is not all over this story. It looks like it coul