Hi All

can a proper US-er please explain exactly what conservation reserve land is, and how harvesting it regularly could be compatible with its status?

Whiskerfish

Lovins says, "the interplay between business and civil society is even more important than between business and government" and implies that reforming energy policy is not very effective. How so?

...and there's a very strong political (but not economic) constituency against distributed power, particularly renewables.

Everyday I plead with Cassandra to sail across the ocean to more enlightened cultures.

Thanks for this interview, I feel less isolated.

CRP or the Conservation Reserve Program is designed to achieve conservation goals including reducing soil erosion and sedimentation in waterways, improving wildlife habitat, taking flood prone areas out of crop production, etc.  Much of this land is enrolled in ten to fifteen year contracts, although some of it is now in permanent easements. The emphasis has shifted over time toward utilizing more native species of grasses, forbs, trees, and shrubs.  

As currently written, CRP prohibits the commercial harvest of any type of crop from these lands while under contract.  The only waivers have allowed farmers to harvest forage or graze these lands when they have suffered extreme drought situations.  

There is now an effort by farm groups to combine some of the features of the CRP program with some kind of biomass energy program.  While this might preserve some of the benefits of CRP for soil conservation, it is difficult to see how this would benefit wildlife after all the top growth is harvested.  

I might also add that some farm groups are now lobbying to allow farmers to get an early out from their CRP contracts without being heavily penalized financially.  These farmers want to convert this land to corn production.  

One of the big problems with CRP was that the administrators of the program did not target the land put into CRP to achieve the greatest soil conservation good.  When crop prices were low, there was a substantial economic incentive to put just about any land into CRP instead of only the most erodible land.  So, a great amount of tax payer dollars were spent on a program that could have done much more good for the money spent.  

"And of course the perennials don't need any cultivation or other inputs."

I agree with Amory on most things he said.  But I think he is mistaken in his impressions about production of perennial grasses or forbs.  

Once established these perennials do not need cultivation.  So he got that part right.

But, like most grasses these native grass crops need a lot of nitrogen -- probably at least 50 pounds of nitrogen per acre  on some soils and probably more like 100 pounds of nitrogen on less fertile soil types.  Plus additions of the other major elements like phosphorus and potassium.  Remember, you are removing tons of material per acre and these remove a lot of minerals from the soil.  So, to avoid soil depletion and to maximize the economic and energy yield, these crops will be fertilized intensively.  

There will also be some inputs of herbicides to aid in weed management.  Farmers hate weeds and will not tolerate having a bunch of weeds infesting their fields with weed seeds.  Plus weed competition reduces yields.  And since you are removing the tops of these energy crops each year you are removing the fuel source to burn the fields and manage for weeds and encroachment by woody species.  

And how about water.  Some of this land will be irrigated.  If the economic yield is high enough, there will be an incentive to irrigate a lot of it.  In the more arid areas of the country there will be no production without adding water.  So, where is the water coming from and what energy source will you use to pump it?  

And obviously there is the input of energy, a substantial input of fossil fuel or biofuel energy for crop establishment, annual management, harvesting, storage, and transportation.

So, no inputs?  Fewer inputs than corn?  Yes, no doubt.  But don't think this is going to be some self perpetuating, cheap energy landscape.  

...his response,

We can do a lot better in that regard, with policy and technical innovation, and there are many countries that already do. But with the settlement patterns we have in the United States, it's difficult to make a large shift in a short time in that regard. It's much easier to make the cars, trucks, and planes three times more efficient, and that has respective paybacks of two years, one year, and four or five years with present technology.

was typical saying something nice about mass transit , although he goes further and gives an argument for why he should pay no attention.  Apparently all of his work on efficient buildings does not extend to land use or transportation systems as a whole.

Question for Mr. Lovins:

If the economics of distributed renewable energy so handidly beat those of centralized fossil fuels, then how should we best go about informing the marketplace of this to drive change?

In other words, if government is hopeless, irrelevant, or both, then by what other mechanism do we create more rational and efficient energy and transportation markets?

If we keep working company by company, as consultants or campaigners, then I fear we will not make the scale of change necessary, on the timeline necessary, to avert disastrous climate change.  Please tell me that there is some non-governmental strategy that I'm missing.

Your introduction says Amory Lovins founded the Rocky Mountain Institute.  Actually, his former wife, Hunter Lovins founded RMI, and gave Amory half the credit.  Amory didn't want to do it, because he didn't want to be bothered with staff, fund raising, overhead, infrastructure, etc.  Hunter talked him into it, and the rest is history, at least until Hunter was forced out in 2001.  So, to be fair, a more proper statement would be "...Rocky Mountain Institute, which he co-founded with his former wife, Hunter Lovins, and a host of mostly volunteer interns..."

That is my visceral response to Amory Lovins, whenever I read him. One of those insufferably bright people who only hang out with other insufferably bright people, who cannot understand why everyone does not see what they see.

I have one major reservation about Amory. He seems to be in the thrall of what I call the Cult of the Market God. This comes about as close as we get in this society to a state religion. It says that the Market God's word, as interpreted by the priest hood of CEOs and economists, is always to be obeyed by us dumb peasants who grovel before its altar. The Market God, like the Wizard of Oz, is all knowing, all wise and broaches no disobediance. Above all, don't pay attention to the men (for the most part) behind the curtain.

Other than that reservation, I think we are much better off having people like Amory running around, in spite of my reservation about his religious preference.

Randy Cunningham

The "market god" is merely capitalism.  It drove us off the cliff and will pick us back up.  Think Al Gore's book changed everyones' minds?  Think it was Katrina?  Nope.  It has been the price of petroleum.    Same thing that is, like Mr Lovins said, driving BP and the lot toward diversification.  It makes good business sense.  That's how the world works.  Not saying it's necessarily a good thing but...