The Seven Myths of Energy Independence
NEWS: Why forging a sustainable energy future is dependent on foreign oil
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Myth #1
Energy Independence Is Good
On February 1, 2006, Prince Turki al-Faisal, Saudi Arabia's ambassador to Washington, arrived at the White House in a state of agitation. The night before, in his State of the Union address, President Bush had declared the United States to be "addicted to oil, which is often imported from unstable parts of the world." He had announced plans to "break this addiction" by developing alternatives—including a multibillion-dollar subsidized ramp-up of biofuels—and had boldly stated that by 2025, America could cut imports from Gulf states by three-quarters and "make our dependence on Middle Eastern oil a thing of the past." "I was taken aback," Prince Faisal later told cnn, "and I raised this point with government officials."
Two years on, anyone who's been to a gas station or a grocery store knows the prince had very little to worry about. Despite supposedly bold initiatives such as last year's Energy Independence and Security Act, America is no freer from foreign oil: Since 2006, imports have remained steady at about 13 million barrels every day, while the price for each of those barrels has jumped by $30. And though federal efforts to encourage biofuel production have significantly boosted output, our heavily subsidized ethanol refiners now use so much corn (closing in on a third of the total crop) that prices for all grains have soared, sparking inflation here at home and food riots abroad.
Okay, so maybe ethanol's critics are right, and turning food into fuel isn't the smartest way to wean ourselves from imported oil. But the deeper lesson here isn't that Washington backed the wrong weapon in the war for energy independence, but that most policymakers—and Americans generally—still think "energy independence" is a goal we can, or should, achieve. Nine in ten voters say the country is too dependent on foreign crude. Every major presidential hopeful formulated some kind of strategy for energy liberation (Rudy Giuliani unveiled his at a nascar race), and between 2001 and 2006 the number of media references to "energy independence" jumped by a factor of eight.
And on the surface, the argument seems solid. Imported oil, some 60 percent of the oil we use, exposes our economy and politics to stresses halfway around the world (bin Laden calls it "the umbilical cord and lifeline of the crusader community"). It also increases our already massive trade imbalance, which must be corrected by ever-greater federal borrowing, and funnels tens of billions of dollars to the likes of Saudi Arabia, Russia, and Venezuela—countries that are unfriendly and, in some cases, actively anti-American. What's not to like about energy independence?
In a word, everything. Despite its immense appeal, energy independence is a nonstarter—a populist charade masquerading as energy strategy that's no more likely to succeed (and could be even more damaging) than it was when Nixon declared war on foreign oil in the 1970s. Not only have we no realistic substitute for the oceans of oil we import, but many of the crash programs being touted as a way to quickly develop oil replacements—"clean coal," for example, or biofuels—come at a substantial environmental and political cost. And even if we had good alternatives ready to deploy—a fleet of superefficient cars, say, or refineries churning out gobs of cheap hydrogen for fuel cells—we'd need decades, and great volumes of energy, including oil, to replace all the cars, pipelines, refineries, and other bits of the old oil infrastructure—and thus decades in which we'd depend on oil from our friends in Riyadh, Moscow, and Caracas. Paradoxically, to build the energy economy that we want, we're going to lean heavily on the energy economy that we have.
None of which is exactly news. Thoughtful observers have been trying to debunk energy independence since Nixon's time. And yet the dream refuses to die, in no small part because it offers political cover for a whole range of controversial initiatives. Ethanol refiners wave the banner of independence as they lobby Congress for massive subsidies. Likewise for electric utilities and coal producers as they push for clean coal and a nuclear renaissance. And it shouldn't surprise that some of the loudest proponents of energy liberation support plans to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and other off-limits areas to oil drilling—despite the fact that such moves would, at best, cut imports by a few percentage points. In the doublespeak of today's energy lexicon, says Julia Bovey of the Natural Resources Defense Council, "'energy independence' has become code for 'drill it all.'"
Yet it isn't only the hacks for old energy and Archer Daniels Midland who are to blame. Some proponents of good alternatives like solar and wind have also harped on fears of foreign oil to advance their own sectors—even though many of these technologies are decades away from being meaningful oil replacements.
Put another way, the "debate" over energy independence is not only disingenuous, it's also a major distraction from the much more crucial question—namely, how we're going to build a secure and sustainable energy system. Because what America should be striving for isn't energy independence, but energy security—that is, access to energy sources that are reliable and reasonably affordable, that can be deployed quickly and easily, yet are also safe and politically and environmentally sustainable. And let's not sugarcoat it. Achieving real, lasting energy security is going to be extraordinarily hard, not only because of the scale of the endeavor, but because many of our assumptions about energy—about the speed with which new technologies can be rolled out, for example, or the role of markets—are woefully exaggerated. High oil prices alone won't cure this ill: We're burning more oil now than we were when crude sold for $25 a barrel. Nor will Silicon Valley utopianism: Thus far, most of the venture capital and innovation is flowing into status quo technologies such as biofuels. And while Americans have a proud history of inventing ourselves out of trouble, today's energy challenge is fundamentally different. Nearly every major energy innovation of the last century—from our cars to transmission lines—was itself built with cheap energy. By contrast, the next energy system will have to contend with larger populations and be constructed using far fewer resources and more expensive energy.
So it's hardly surprising that policymakers shy away from energy security and opt instead for the soothing platitudes of energy independence. But here's the rub: We don't have a choice. Energy security is nonnegotiable, a precondition for all security, like water or food or defense. Without it, we have no economy, no progress, no future. And to get it, we'll not only have to abandon the chimera of independence once and for all, but become the very thing that many of us have been taught to dread—unrepentant energy globalists.
Myth #2
Ethanol Will Set Us Free
What's wrong with energy independence? Let's start with the sheer physical enormity of replacing imports. Even if we limit the discussion to oil (and America buys boatloads of foreign natural gas, electricity, and even coal), the job is far more daunting than many liberationists—or environmentalists—want to believe.
If we distilled our entire corn crop into ethanol, the fuel produced would displace less than a sixth of the gasoline we currently guzzle, and other candidates, like hydrogen, are even more marginal. The challenge isn't simply quantity, but quality. Oil dominates the energy economy, and especially the transportation sector (which is 95 percent dependent on crude), in part because no other fuel offers the same combination of massive energy density and ease of handling. As author Richard Heinberg has observed, enough energy is contained in a single gallon of gasoline to replace 240 hours of human labor—considerably more than oil's likely rivals.
And because oil is relatively easy to produce, the energy "investment" needed to exploit that massive energy content is small. On average, an oil company burns the energy equivalent of 1 gallon of oil to produce 20 gallons of oil. In other words, oil's energy return on energy invested is quite high. By contrast, the return for oil's declared alternatives is quite low. For example, hydrogen, once considered a natural successor to oil, is so tricky to refine and handle that, by one study, a gallon of hydrogen contains nearly 25 percent less energy than was consumed producing it. As for ethanol's energy return, scientists are debating whether it's slightly positive or altogether negative.
Oil's qualities were unbeatable when it cost $25 a barrel, and even at $100, it still has a critical advantage. Because it was generated ages ago and left for us in deep underground reservoirs, oil exists more or less in a state of economic isolation; that is, oil can be produced—pumped from the ground and refined—without directly impinging on other pieces of the world economy. By contrast, many of oil's competitors are intimately linked to that larger economy, in the sense that to make more of an alternative (ethanol, say) is to have less of something else (food, sustainably arable land).
Granted, oil's advantages will ultimately prove illusory due to its huge environmental costs and finite supply. But oil's decline won't, by itself, make alternatives any less problematic. Higher oil prices do encourage alternatives to expand, but in a world of finite resources, these expansions can come at substantial cost. Because good U.S. farmland is already scarce, every additional acre of corn for ethanol is an acre unavailable for soybeans, or wheat, whose prices then also rise—a ripple effect that affects meat, milk, soft drinks.... And for the record, to make enough corn ethanol to replace all our gasoline, we'd need to plant 71 percent of our farmland with fuel crops.
To be fair, ethanol can be produced in a way that is less disruptive to the food economy. Cellulosic ethanol, for example, is made from wood chips, crop detritus, and other organic waste. And in Brazil they make ethanol from sugarcane—a process a third as energy intensive as corn ethanol's. But cellulosic ethanol, though quite promising, is not yet commercial, while Brazilian ethanol is, well, Brazilian: It's effectively barred from our market by a 54 cents per gallon tariff, which U.S. lawmakers defend on the grounds of energy independence, but which coincidently leaves corn ethanol, with its massive federal subsidy, as pretty much the only game in town. So much corn is now going to biofuel that the food and energy markets are effectively linked, an unprecedented coupling that not only disrupts global food security but also undermines corn ethanol's usefulness as an oil replacement.
The ripple effect of energy alternatives isn't confined to the economic sphere. As eager farmers have expanded their corn crops (U.S. farmers planted more acres in 2007 than anytime since World War II), they've tilled land not suited for intensive agriculture, exacerbating erosion and other environmental problems. Corn is also the most chemically intensive commercial grain crop; runoff attributable to the ethanol boom is causing oceanic dead zones and pesticide-laden groundwater.
Ethanol is an easy target, but the sad truth is that all of the ballyhooed alternatives carry at least some environmental or other external costs. Wind requires vast amounts of land; solar-cell manufacturing is chemically intensive. Nuclear energy is steeped in safety and security concerns. And although the United States could fuel its entire car fleet with a synthetic gasoline made from abundant coal, syngas is even more ecologically challenged than oil. Industry likes to trumpet potential technologies to capture and sequester coal's carbon dioxide, but the federal government has cut research funding. And as Severin Borenstein, an economist at the University of California-Berkeley, points out, even if we do find climate-friendly ways to turn coal into fuel, that's only one end of the process: "We're still going to be burning that fuel in cars and thus releasing all that CO2 out the tailpipe."
Such problems drive home a critical flaw in the paradigm of energy independence—namely, that energy isn't a zero-sum game anymore. We can no longer look at the energy economy as a constellation of discrete sectors that can be manipulated separately; everything is tied together, which means that fixing a problem in one part of the system all but invariably creates a new problem, or a whole series of problems, somewhere else.
Illustration: Mirko Ilić
Energy Independence Is Good"
Energy dependence is good. Our dependence upon overseas oil is empowering the military-industrial complex to meddle in the affairs of oil-producing countries. We need to make their continued existence more difficult. They are creating terrorists by their meddling.
"Myth #2
Ethanol Will Set Us Free"
Cellulosic ethanol may be useful for fueling farm implements or mass transit but if we try to fuel the transportation status quo this way the results will be environmentally disastrous.
"Myth #3
Conservation Is a "'Personal Virtue'"
I don't see how anyone could argue with this - other than because Dick Cheney said it. The author doesn't seem to address this "myth" at all. He just goes off on some pitch about electric cars (ignoring the resources consumed in their manufacture) without even considering the possibility that most automobile use is unnecessary. Aside from their geopolitical and environmental effects, cars ruin cities, encourage sprawl and contribute to the obesity epidemic. One hundred years or so ago everybody got along without them.
"Myth #4
We Can Go It Alone"
The author assumes that other countries don't have responsible people in them who would be empowered by our actions to conserve energy, if we take them. China has several carbon-neutral cities under construction or in the planning stages. There would be more if there was credible evidence that the countries that consume most of the oil - like the US - demonstrated the will to cut back. As it is, at budget time people who want to conserve energy in developing nations aren't taken seriously since we refuse to do anything about our consumption.
"Myth #5
Some Geek in Silicon Valley Will Fix the Problem"
Undeniably a myth. But the author continues his pitch for electric cars while continuing to insist that people just have to drive around in their own personal automobiles.
"Myth #6
Cut Demand and the Rest Will Follow"
There is a lot of truth in this "myth."
"Myth #7
Once Bush Is Gone, Change Will Come"
What a laugh!
"solar and wind ...are decades away from being meaningful oil replacements." Christ, I've been hearing that since I was a little kid, and I'm in my 40's.
As "Jim" pointed out in his comment, the budget for solar is a joke, as it always has been. Why's this? Because the top players in the MIC can't put a meter on the Sun, of course. And our government is run by agents of those top players.
But don't go into anything like that; it's just too paranoid. Stick to your pro-big business, pro-MIC chant ("what America should be striving for isn't energy independence, but energy security" -- how much are the folks at Halliburton, KBR, General Dynamics, and all the rest, paying you?), and you'll have a long, illustrious career in "journalism". Nice work if you can get it.
The refreshing part of this article is the understanding that energy production, transportation, and use is a very complex model. There is no one "silver bullet" to address $118/barrel oil. Because oil is transportable, it is a commodity on the world market. I would bet a lot this magazine’s readers have small businesses – do you sell your product/service below market prices? You don’t? If you owned an oil well, would you sell your oil for anything less than the market bid? No, you would not. And the bidders for every barrel of oil pumped from the ground are not just local, but world-wide. Consider the oil market like a eBay for the world.
This is NOT a Bush generated issue and as such, Bush or Obama or Hillary will not solve it alone. In fact, a nation cannot solve this alone. As stated, China is the world’s worst polluter. Wear wool sweaters if you like, but I have to tell you, the Chinese do not care.
Conversion to electric cars is a good idea for the reasons stated. However, the number of windmills and solar cells needed to charge our fleet of cars and trucks would create in itself an environmental disaster. Both have very large footprints. Windmills are not too kind to migrating birds and they create significant noise. Hydro is limited and in fact in decline as federal lawsuits brought by indigenous peoples are forcing the destruction of dams in the Pacific Northwest. Burn some more coal? How about burning clean natural gas, which is also limited in quantity - and have you noticed that home heating NG prices have skyrocketed? Why? Because you are competing for the same NG electric utilities are burning. Why are the electric utilities sucking up all the NG? Because natural gas plants can be built in a short time frame (relatively), with few opportunities for interveners to halt construction using frivolous lawsuits, providing the utility and its investors some certainty of a return on their investment. Activism can have unintended consequences.
Anyone can rant and rave. That takes no reasoning or rational thought at all. At least this author put some thought into their writings.
Not so simple, is it?
Is that not a contradiction? Does a contradiction not prove the assumptions made to arrive at it wrong? Or are you saying that conversion to electric cars i a good idea even though it would create an environmental disaster?
And then we have, "Wear wool sweaters if you like, but I have to tell you, the Chinese do not care." Over a billion Chinese making up their minds, changing their minds and competing with one another for decision-making powers (there is a competition even if it's not democratic) and we're supposed to forget about conservation because of your assurance that they all just don't care. This kind of cynicism is a self-fulfilling prophecy if adopted by enough people. If we refuse to address our excessive resource consumption because we assume that others don't care then they won't.
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Here's what Paul Craig Roberts won't tell you, for fear of the PC Police:
Oil is payoff for the West's efforts at providing PROXY COMBATANTS for Israel--for protecting Israel from expanding, encircling Islamic Arabism; a Jewish nation-state having supporters throughout the West willing to destroy the entirety of Western civilization for Israel's sake.
That's the gut-wrenching truth of why Western democracies are sacrificing blood and treasury in the Middle East; especially the U.S., which has enough off-shore and on-land oil reserves to last 300 years at her present rate of consumption, and which reserves were PURPOSELY capped and/or not drilled because Israel's supporters poured millions of dollars into ENVIRONMENTAL MOVEMENT groups' coffers, to work at
keeping America from oil/energy independence and tied to Israel's interests in the Middle East. That's the truth you'll NEVER see nor hear reported in Western mainstream news media, because Israel's supporters control what's fit to be said or printed about why the West wars with Islamic Arabism.
Regarding this oil-related food crisis, here's an excerpt from my essay, "The NAFTA Debacle":
“Because many nations’ agricultural production will decline under NAFTA and GATT, in becoming dependent on the
more productive nations’ capacity to export cheaper product to them, they’ll become gravely vulnerable to any of
the exporting nations’ food-production declines, possibly resulting from bad weather conditions or bad economies. ‘Free trade’ in food sets up a looming catastrophe (read my essay, GATT: Ubiquitous Treason)…Wouldn’t such worldwide economic interdependence necessarily set the stage for a worldwide economic collapse should any one nation seriously falter? Such a worldwide collapse would make America’s Great Depression appear like good times. Why aren’t the NAFTA and GATT crafters arguing for more economic independence for nations - for rugged individualism among nations – rather than building this One World interdependency that their brand of ‘free trade’ necessarily engenders?”
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Your comments on electric grid loading also a great myth. This has been well researched, and has been found to not be a problem. As peole typically work during the day, and can't charge their cars in their employers's parking lot. So electric cars are charged at night, while people sleep, and the sun and AC load are down.
Using Methane as a vehicle caried transporation fuel would be a big step backwards, however. As heating applications are 3 to 4 times more efficiency using natural gas than a car can be today. And electricity production from Methane is at least twice as effient.
We've bought oil for decades from countries that maybe really don't like us, if it comese right down to it, and now we've given them the economic means to blank around with the commodities market and sell their own propaganda and generally snowjob us like there's no tomorrow, and some backers of this administration are, in my opinion, in on the deal, and laughing all the way to the bank, arm-in-arm with the deed-holders of the oilfields. In the midst of all of this, you're still expected at work, Monday morning, which is 33(or so) miles from your home. And, if the only way you can afford the prices that they set for these commodities is to take out more credit, congratulations, you're well on your way to becoming an indentured servant for life. Which is right where they want us. Don't buy a word of it, it's all bunk. Energy independence scares the holy hell out of em, because if 'consumers' get an 'out' from this little game, then the gamesters themselves might have to find the dreaded 'day job' themselves, and it just gets ugly from there, can't have royalty punching the clock and stuff...just not fitting. Or, maybe it IS fitting...
If it's decades, we're dead.
The most important place to save energy is where use creates CO2. That would be transportation. Only 9.9% of our warming gases come from the highway, according to the MJ chart--same as housing (which i presume is for heating.)
But this is where we can drop the greatest. People are already accustomed to traffic rules, and ruling out gas hogs should be easy. In fact, all autos could be electric by mandate in a few years. We will still need to figure out how to manage trucking--maybe by making all of it local, from farm town stations by electric trains to big city market stations.
Homes still need to have heat.
Our grid has to change to accomodate direct current. and many habits have to change also. mainly, the gas hog party has to come to an end.
I can see it being done within one decade not several.
Also, there is a chart, on Pg 52?, that shows ethanol at 85% of the mix. It is the other way around: gas is at 85.
whoops i see that has been addressed already.
There are various shapes that would warn the one-track minded birds. They are hungry and i now they have been hunting with both eyes on the ground for eons, but we can make propellers whistle and toot and bark like a dog. Imagine you were a flying eagle and you were about to flyinto a flying dog...mightn't you raise your eyes a bit? The idea is we got to find a way to use the wind first, then we'll save the eagles.
Sheees, man. Get your priorities in order. We will probably need a lot of the remaining oil to even build the electric system in its entirety.
Also, some windmills are almost cylindrical in shape. They don't turn into the wind--they spin no matter where it comes from.
I recently read a quote from an Arab sheik that seemed to sum it all up quite nicely. He said "My father rode a camel, I drive a Rolls Royce, my son pilots a jet, his son will ride a camel." THT
Think think!
We don't need energy independence per se we need effeciency.
There is a lot going on that is huge and positive - this article has a tone of "give up it won't matter" and "the problem is too complex we cannot fix/change it". Really? How about a $10,000 vertical shaft wind turbine for my house that also charges a Think City electric car? Power my house, power my car. Yahtzee. Was that so hard?
The value of the US Dollar and hence, the ability of the US Treasury to sell T-Bills is directly tied to the price and dependence on oil, since oil is traded in US Dollars. I will not ramble over the details herein. I will summarize:
1. We can't disengage ourselves from mid-east oil because we are--and have always been the "pushers".
2. Abundant existing technology exists to cut our use of raw energy and thus, also cut our inflation rate and pollution footprint. We have been sidelining such technology for decades for political reasons and we still do.
3. Lastly, if a person wants to do something within their power, stop using animal products, as such are highly consumptive of resources, including energy and very inefficient and polluting. If you don't, please don't opine over our total helplessness, or, how the 'Nazi-Jews' are controlling the Arab royal families.
This is pure propoganda and has more fallacious arguments than Swiss cheese has holes. I am more and more disgusted by MJ and regret the hundreds of dollars I have sent in years past as donations.
Energy independence is not only desirable, it's essential for the survival of human civilization. What would we do if the lights go out? James Kunstler, a periodic Mother Jones contributor, has some ideas that make sense. We need to re-engineer our societal infrastructure so as to reduce our energy needs to sustainable levels. It means the rebirth of the small town and cottage industry versus mega-corporations. Reduce overall consumption and then sources like solar, wind, geothermal, and hydroelectric might have a chance to cope. Stop wasting money, time, and food on biofuel and spend it on improving storage battery technology. Stop playing Russian Roulette with nuclear fission. Reduce the rate of consumption of fossil fuels so we can stop choking on the exhaust and prolong their availability until the gordian knot of sustainable fusion can be unravelled.
Today, a small, basic windmill costs $10,000 and produces about $400.00/month in electrical output, from a reasonable spot--that meets the min. req. of wind speed.
Numerous other technologies exist, such as tide, wave, solar and many others, which are clean and efficient. If MJ would allow me, I could post an expired patent, which can be added to any car for about $65.00 in parts and consumes a small amount of Marvel mystery oil, to significantly boost mileage and cut emmissions. A similar concept, using much more elaborate (and expensive) parts is linked below in a video:
http://dutman.vo.llnwd.net/o15/piccwin/piccwinlo.wmv
The above linked invention does produce far better results.
PS} about 15 years ago, Firestone purchased the patent re: the Marvel approach and did nothing with it.
Additionally, small windmills and solar arrays on homes, coupled with conservation, could possibly power many individual structures. The problem still is, it is not affordable...yet, for typical home owners or even on apartment buildings.
Helium-3
This isotope is almost no-existent on earth but is abundant on the moon. The P.M. was issuing an invitation to other nations for collaboration. I have not studied this theory closely but as far as I am concerned, if it came out of IIT, I presume it is valid until proven otherwise. The H-3 allows fusion at controllable temps and hospitable conditions. A suitcase size container of the stuff is theorized to allow for the production enough electrical power for the entire USA for 1-month, with very minimal pollution or danger and no toxic residuals.
He was ignored. The Hindis are always ignored. Shame, they are very smart and capable scientists.
Already operating with electric motors, developing hyper-capacitors capable of pulling 150 loaded cars for 600 miles before being recharged would set the standard for lesser applications like cars and trucks.
Recharging in less than 5 minutes for automotive applications would be comparable to a gasoline refuel. A range of 400 to 600 miles would kill the gasoline and diesel engine deader than Elvis. And the infrastructure for energy delivery is all but in place as you read this.
Look under the hood of your car. Except for the a/c every appliance is electric and runs off the alternator. With high efficiency hyper-capacitors (or a battery equivalent) even gas powered cars and trucks could be converted with relative ease and not unreasonable expense. Witness the tinkerers that are converting gas powered cars today. All they lack is a high-energy density power source like these hyper capacitors.
To do it right, though, will require an expansion of our nuclear power facilities to truly reap the carbon load reductions and get out from under the boot of the oil barons. As problematic as it may be to deal with the spent fuel, we are faced with two stark choices: We can continue to dump millions of tons of carbon, ash and other pollutants into the atmosphere with all that this dismal future portends or we can continue to store the very small amount of detritus of the fission process as we develop a new generation of reactor that consumes the fuel entirely, including the daughter radionuclides that complicate the long-term storage of the spent fuel.
We are going to an all-electric future whether we realize it or not. We'd best get started.
MJ is falling into a major MYTH! Energy, when costs are fully accounted, can not be cheap. Maintaining cheap energy is only possible at the expense of future generations and should be considered a crime against humanity. The record of human history is that those who control societies have often been prepared see the whole of society plunge into disastrous chaos and collapse rather than accept change that undermined their power. The extraordinarily urgent problems of peak oil, global warming and the failure of the American Government have resulted in an unusual crisis. Our government has become destructive of the public’s right to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness. It is now necessary to alter the systems of government.
We need to create a ‘Climate Corp' based on home energy audits. We need local food production, a redistribution of wealth and technology transfers, land conservation and reforestation, reform in government, media and education, etc. (See: Rio Declaration for sustainable development.) We need a sustainable and egalitarian society. And we need immediate action to prevent widespread suffering and violence.
Why are we so attached to the notion that power has to be generated in some centralized, industrialized fashion? Since we're willing to deficit-spend like there's no tomorrow, I say, Take a month of Iraq funding, about $50 billion, and simply equip every household in the US with a grid-tied, battery-backed-up solar power system, including direct solar hot-water/heat (it's why God made roofs), and an electric car, using what you can buy right now. (If my PV system works in the deep woods of coastal Washington, I know yours will do better.)
Tax gas to $10 a gallon or more, so we'll quit mistaking oil for food -- it's what we need to make useful plastics, drugs, and so on. Create economic incentives to use rail, for freight and travel, and modernize our rail system. Then we'll have the elbow room to start having defeatist but interesting philosophical discussions like this one.
Got a little muddled, with us mistaking food for fuel and all...
countries like China. Berkeley's Borenstein, for example, estimates that the 3.6 million barrels the United States would save by 2030 under the 2007 energy
bill will be more than offset by growth in demand elsewhere."
So what does this have to do with "energy security?" If China and India etc. etc. are burning more than we save with the 2007 energy bill -- who will pay for
it when the oil starts trickling out rather than gushing (as the "peak oil" theory or reality or whatever predicts)? Well, the countries that haven't embraced
efficiency. If on the other hand, we have managed to become 10 times more energy efficient, that will be that much more security for us. But if we remain
an island of wasteful technology and wasteful habits, it will be us who pay -- as we are already doing at the pump. To try to separate "security" from
independence, as the article tries to do, doesn't make a bit of sense (even though it does have many good points).
Here are some interesting "can-do" realities that ignore all this pessimism in the article:
Denmark -- that little country in Europe -- already gets 20 to 30% (depending on wind speed) of their energy from wind.
Sweden uses farm bio-waste as a substitute for coal. Both their coal and biowaste generating facilities are nearly 90% efficient (as opposed to Britain's,
whose antiquated coal-fired plants are only around 30% efficient).
Holland has been sequestering their C02 emissions from coal plants and channeling them to greenhouses where the C02 acts as a "fertilizer" (everyone
knows CO2 is healthy for plants, of course). In addition, the Dutch have for years been channeling the heat from the coal-burning process to heat houses
(and the aforementioned greenhouses that grow food)-- the heat that is normally wasted -- and in doing so they have increased the overall efficiency of their
coal plants by 50%.
(See the 18 minutes film below from Greenpeace UK, and see how the Europeans have slashed their CO2 emissions without compromising their comforts!)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=klooRS-Jjyo
Twenty two years ago a refrigerator company began business whose unit was (at the time) 10 times more efficient than the average one being sold by GE,
Whirlpool etc., and that this was accomplished primarily by simply putting the compressor on top of the unit, and making the walls thicker and better insulated.
Even today this refrigerator (the Sunfrost) is still more efficient than most other models, although federal regulations that began in 1991 have forced other
manufacturers to slowly increase their efficiency. At present, the Sunfrost is perhaps only 1/2 to 1/4 more efficient than the other best Energy-Star rated
models.
There are so many examples of how America could slash its wasteful habits without much effort -- but cynicism and just plain stupidity are preventing it from
doing so. Everything from graywater systems for houses and catching rainwater and storing it, or removing building code limitations on solar panel
installations and streamlining the process, to building plug-in hybrids -- are all still meeting extreme resistence in this country -- and for who or what? To give
you a small hint: When Bechtel took over Ecuador's water system awhile back (before they were mercifully kicked out), one of the stipulations that they
managed to get the government to agree to before they took the reins from the government utility was that ALL RAINWATER COLLECTION be made
ILLEGAL in Ecuador! Another example: here in Alabama, to get a grid-tie system, one has to pay Alabama Power's (a Southern Company subsidiary)
insurance company $5000.00 a year (no matter how small the system is) in case the grid-tie inverter malfunctions and allows solar panel produced power to
flow back into the grid during a power outage. This law exists despite the fact that grid-tie inverter technology that is used worldwide today is almost
perfectly reliable at cutting all power flow during such outages, as has been shown again and again and again. And yet another example: some states are
trying to make it ILLEGAL to produce one's own biodiesel.
The point is that being self-sufficient is the LAST thing that the Fortune 500 companies want us to be. I agree with those that this author is probably
inadvertantly promoting the agenda of said power structures.
The correct country is Denmark, the same one with so many wind turbines.
Ok energy independance is not possible for the foreseeable future. But changing the way that current energy sources is used is possible. A shift in the concept that every American should own a car can be changed to you get a permit to own a car if you can demonstrate need in business or occupation. Tear down a lane on every freeway in America, force the building of massive commuter rail systems across the nation. We are already in debt-we might as well do it right and at least build an infrastucture for the future. This would help the economy fdr style with an immediate benifit of jobs to help stimulate the economy. The trolley systems of days past were torn down for the economic benifit of The auto industry . Simply shift back to a more logical transportation system and we save gas, help the mother nature, create jobs. And can use tech improvements in train speeds, and relability. Start with the cities and spread outward. At the current rate of spiral in gasoline prices sub divisions are doomed anyway. At $7 a gallon projected in 5 years-you might as well lease a penthouse suite downtown. Business could be protected by allowing the auto manufacturers to assume production and implementaion of the rail systems. An entire economy could be created with the production of replacemenrt parts for the rail systems. Certainly some jobs will be lost. But it beats dying from co2 emmisions and is one step closer to energy independance.
All people will have to do with less, and that means less of everything, the extravagances of the wealthy, or governments and collective ignorance will kill all our futures. The hard lesson is to not get mad at our issues, rather lets get smart in our approaches to it, the adult thing is to examine ourselves as a people in the mirror of truth and see the image of the enemy…Ourselves. I am deeply worried at the loss of fisheries, starvation in third world nations, and a rush to nuclear weapons by them, global warming and the populations a rising sea level will displace…Oil will not be the only issue in our futures.
An asteroid which is approaching our planet may make mute all of this and it will make environmental issues an academic only argument or its approach may wake us up to the fragile commonality of us all. I am shocked at the lack of press here about it.
We still argue about God/Goddess insanely and really believe what we see in our dramatic fantasies played on various electronic stages are real…This is a huge problem because the real resources we waste are in our minds and collective energy to solve any of our problems.
I agree that any candidate in any election is going to fall short…Any one person regardless their genius is a small part of the solution…I think motivational leaders who inspire gifted men and women to dare theses issues may rally the collective all we can be and that would do more than the political policy maker ever could.
We must stop waiting for the next invention…That was for our fathers and they are gone, they brought us to this brink in what they thought was a progressive strategy and they will not pay the price we their children will. This succeeding generation inherits the issues they gave us as an inheritance with its bills due beginning today. I suggest we start bargaining with each other as a planet about what is the minimum each of us needs to live not argue how some of us are going to keep the past 100 year party going. This is a numbers issue, pretty cut and dry and religion, or economics, and social consciousness’ are big players today that need to be set aside.
It would be wise to consider ourselves first human beings and citizens of planet Earth before we adopt other titles of citizenship or affiliations.
I wish us all good luck.
It is possible today to dramatically cut your carbon footprint.
Peace
Peter and Linda
You also failed to mention in your comparison of fuels, and how much energy it takes to produce them, the gazillion to one ratio of just putting a fifty gallon drum on every home in the sun belt to pre-heat water
Suffice it to say that Roberts' argument presents itself as if oil will be unlimited, despite admitting (only in passing, as if it doesn’t matter) that it is, in fact, a finite resource. But the overriding shortsightedness of Roberts’ argument here is his apparent postulation that any policy for energy independence would necessarily entail ceasing oil use immediately and completely. It is a classic “straw man” fallacy that also incorporates the fallacies of “false dilemma” and “circular reasoning”.
I find it highly questionable that this poor reasoning has been given a voice on MotherJones. Wha’sup widat?
The mindset that we need 2 or 3 major alternatives to petro-fuel is a problem. Obviously it's got to be a lot of different energy-sources that have to pinch-hit. Monocultures of any type (farming, petro-dependency, one-dimensional stock portfolios, etc.) are incredibly vulnerable while diversity creates greater stability.
I'm having a serious problem with why biodiesel made from discarded restaurant oil is getting harder and harder to get, while that made from new veggie oil (which is driving food prices up) is getting ubiquitous.
There are SO many energy sources that we're simply throwing away. Scientists have come up with ways to use the POLLUTING particles from coal exhaust for energy. They've found ways to use (as fuel) the glycerin that comes out of oils in making biodiesel.
When we have very diverse sources of energy, we don't have to sweat it when one or even a handful of those energy sources falters. We weren't meant to live in a one-energy-source-fits-all world. Nature's not set up that way--and for good reason.
1. Re-see "Who killed the electric car?" for instance. The G.M. EV1 got 60-120 miles per charge, had good performance and all the amenities of a standard passenger car. When G.M. forcibly recalled the all-leased cars, people literally laid down in their driveways to prevent it. G.M. sold the technology to Chevron (as I recall), who buried the technology, and now has the nerve to tell us that the promissed chevy Volt, which gets less than 50 miles per charge is innovative. The EV1 came out in 1996!!!
2. Pay attention to what's happening out West as every nook and cranny is drilled for oil. Ranchers are teaming up with environmentalists as their land is destroyed by pollution. Trade oil wells for Wind Turbines!
3. Hard to see why Paul Roberts thinks we can't go green; Germany, France and SPain are already a long way there as even he admits. We have more windy, empty plains, more sun, more steelworkers who need jobs. What kinid of country do we want?
Looks like the only solution is less people.
In the end, people will adapt to whatever life throws at them. As most people are hopeless optimists, the result is what you see right now.
technologies look promising...lets hope they pan out
1. Sunrgi has announced a new solar energy
technology which supposedly will produce electricity at a wholesale price of $.05 per kwh...
2. Coskata has announced a cellulostic
ethanol process that will produce a
gallon of ethanol for $1.00...
Nick on the other hand has hit the nail on the head with his revolutionary concept of fewer humans. One caveat I would add is to enforce rather than encourage fewer human births.
That's it? Write off nuclear with one sentence? It's the BEST ALTERNATIVE we've got, and it IS SAFE when done properly.
Compared to nuclear energy, food riots are LESS SAFE, pure oil dependence is LESS SAFE. And planting sugar cane is only a drop in the bucket compared to nuclear.
Our “addiction to oil” is mostly due to our addiction to the automobile. You can’t talk about energy security without addressing mass transportation as part of the solution. As resident of Los Angeles, I would gladly jump on an intelligently designed rail or subway system but one does not exist here. When oil hits $200 per barrel, a lot of folks like me will be wishing that one did. After 9/11, Bush should have committed building a nationwide mass transportation system. Then he could have told us to go shopping. When gas rises to $7 per gallon, perhaps as soon as next year, no one will be able to afford to go on a shopping trip. Bye, bye consumer economy! Hello food lines!