I know people – Page 14

December 17, 2009

Heuristic no. 65437929

Lester Brown has a new book, Plan B 4.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization, and he writes about it on Grist:

Each year, the Fund for Peace and Foreign Policy magazine rank 60 “failing states,” countries which on some level fail to provide personal security or basic services, such as education, health care, food, and physical infrastructure, to their people. The countries are evaluated using the Failed States Index, a ten-point scale for each of twelve political, social, economic, and military indicators (i.e., a state that is failing completely receives a score of 120).

Failing states have much in common. Seventeen of the top twenty have high population growth rates (several close to 3 percent per year or twenty-fold per century); these countries have seen enough development to reduce mortality but not fertility. In fact, birth rates in five of these seventeen states exceed six children per woman. Soaring population growth puts strain on educational facilities, as well as food and water supplies. It is perhaps unsurprising, then, that almost half of the top twenty failing states depend on food from the U.N. World Food Programme or that in fourteen of them, at least 40 percent of the population is under fifteen.

As breeding grounds for conflict, terrorism, drugs, and infectious disease, failing states represent a threat to global order and stability. In 2004, only seven countries had scores of 100 or greater. In just four years, the number of states in this category doubled.

Another concern addressed in Plan B 4.0 is how the growing consumption of the earth’s resources is clearly unsustainable. Examining commodity consumption in merely two countries, the United States and China, makes this point.

China now consumes more grain than the United States. It consumes almost twice as much meat, roughly three times as much coal, and nearly four times as much steel. But what would happen if China’s 1.3 billion people were to consume commodities at the same rate as the United States’ 300 million?

For this exercise, we look at how an 8 percent annual economic growth rate in China (a conservative projection) would put per capita income in China at U.S. levels by 2024.

At that point, if each person in China were to consume paper at the current American rate, China would need more paper than is produced worldwide today (there go the world’s forests). China would require over half of the current world grain supply. China would also need 90 million barrels of oil per day; however, the world currently produces less than 86 million and is unlikely to produce much more than that in the future.

These projections serve not to blame China for its consumption but rather to illustrate that the western economic model—with meat-rich diets, fossil-fuel powered utilities, and automobile-dependent transportation—will not work on a global scale because there are simply not enough resources.  Plan B puts us on a path toward a new kind of global economy, one that is powered largely by renewable sources of energy, that has a much more diversified transport system, and that reuses and recycles everything.

Now you know.

December 15, 2009

Knowing how much energy you use on an hour/daily/weekly basis would be one thing. As it is, we’re greatly ignorant of even this, and the idea that if we began unpacking what exactly is a kWh and what it takes to produce one, maybe, just maybe we could re-construct that perception – who knows, maybe even based on how fast a little whirl-y-gig on top your house would have to spin just wash your clothes or grind your coffee beans. Maybe we would decide a little whirl-y-gig just wouldn’t do the trick and other measures would be more effective, in tandem with using less or developing ways to use sunlight or building different kinds of houses or… you get the idea. While it may be hard to retro-fit our world – we should consider trying to retro-fit our habits based on everything required to support them. That would actually be much more difficult, though probably only at first.

Trying to understand how much energy you use on an hourly/daily/weekly basis in terms of how much people elsewhere in the world use at all, per the photo above, is a route to a wholly different transformation. Really, it has little to do with the first. We would have a hard enough time justifying our energy use in the first instance; there is very little chance we could do so at in the second. Alas this is the issue, and this is one of the reasons why there are climate change denialists.

So should we (the haves) pay more for our energy than those who haveless? This anecdote from Copenhagen paints a nice picture of our unwillingness:

That was the only talk about poverty for the night. But that’s not the discouraging part. This is: One of the moderators, CNBC anchor Louisa Bojeson, asked the crowd to raise their hands if they were willing to pay 10 percent more for their home’s electricity if it came from a carbon-free source. Two thirds of them, give or take, raised a hand. Would they pay 20 percent more? Fewer than half kept a hand raised. Would they pay 50 percent more? All but a minority, perhaps ten percent, dropped their hands.

These are the royalty of our age—well-compensated, well-heeled corporate leaders, the owners of at least some of the private jets that landed in Copenhagen last week. Home electricity bills, even for mansions, constitute a minuscule portion of their salaries. If they’re not willing to voluntarily pay more for the common good…

There are a number of conclusions you might draw. Maybe the business leaders were defending the right of consumers to choose the lowest price in a free market. Maybe they don’t like raising their hands. Maybe this shows clean-energy choices must be economically appealing—green has to be cheaper than brown if it’s going to catch on. Maybe it means leadership must come from politicians, or social movements. It wasn’t an encouraging moment.

Though perhaps a revealing one.

photo from Revkin’s blog.

November 10, 2009

Zwischenzug

A San Francisco couple challenges the Waxman-Markey climate change bill wending it’s way through congress. Yawn.

A San Francisco couple who are both lawyers for the EPA challenges the Waxman-Markey climate change bill wending it’s way through congress. Scandal.

Check out the video in question. After the scary music, they offer disclaimers about not representing the government or speaking for the president. And I can’t tell from a straight-up amateur video that these people are any more overzealous or weird than the editorial page editor of the Washington Post Kaplan Test Prep Daily. They work at the EPA, and have for many years. They have strong opinions about cap-and-trade – they think it won’t spur the urgent technological innovations and investments needed to usher in the mammoth energy transition necessary to drastically reduce carbon emissions.

At some level, I don’t care how amateurish their videos might be – which also means that at some level, I do. But I’m sympathetic to the argument that the bill, which gives away emission permits, doesn’t do enough. The EPA has every right to make sure their employees aren’t misrepresenting official policy – precisely because what their employees say carries more weight. That being the case, I’m interested in what they think. Most of what we hear about the climate bill is how much passing it will damage the economy. You can imagine that a couple of climate change deniers who were EPA lawyers would be feted as dissidents and we, treated to a new round of cable cause celebre. Harnessing the power of n, where n is anything other than coal or petroleum, will necessarily revolutionize much what we see and do. How are we possibly going to accomplish it? Let’s argue about that for a while.

October 22, 2009

Innovative Deception

via Yglesias, the folks who makeup the political opposition to the climate bill have been working nights and weekends, but luckily they’re not coming up with much:

Seven months after first trying to re-brand congressional climate change legislation as an “energy tax,” Senate Republicans were back at it today with a new report and op-ed that attempts to expose the climate bill as a “$3.6 trillion gas tax.”

Sens. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX) and Kit Bond (R-MO) gathered outside the Capitol today, flanked by aides wearing black stickers imprinted with the slogan “CAP & TRADE = GAS TAX,” to promote a new report [PDF] that presents their “gas tax” assertions.

There’s plenty of reasons at the link why this re-branding is lame, wrong and just might work (hey, there’s slogan!). But holy Chateau D’ what If, batman, what if that proposition was granted? That even though the numbers don’t support it, what if the climate bill was construed as a gas tax ( you know, the gas tax that’s actually needed)? Now, Bailey, Hutchinson et al are doing it simply on the basis of knowing that Amur’cans will reject any tax out of hand, especially a gas tax. But, and this is where we could really use the guile of Edmond Dantes, the only way we’re going slip the chains of present usage and wastage is if the price of energy – and the cost of wasting it – goes up. Land use and urban planning will follow, not lead, this curve. So their ploy might be doubly-ingenious, and may be we protest too much by rejecting it out of hand. Look at the arc of the health care bill; can the lies permeate and end up producing a stronger bill?

October 14, 2009

New Bronze Aging

There was a funny quote by a Saudi prince/oil official in an article I read a few months ago, something along the lines of, “the Stone Age didn’t end because we ran out of stones.” The implication for the fossil fuel age being, of course, that instead of completely running out, we will graduate to an improved energy source. Whatever your feelings on that, it’s a good line.

But before we move along, as we do, such as the case may be, the House of Saud has a master plan to help themselves alongeven as their repositories are abandoned:

Saudi Arabia is trying to enlist other oil-producing countries to support a provocative idea: if wealthy countries reduce their oil consumption to combat global warming, they should pay compensation to oil producers.

The chief Saudi negotiator, Mohammad al-Sabban, described the position as a “make or break” provision for the Saudis, as nations stake out their stance before the global climate summit scheduled for the end of the year.

Can they take a hard line on that? Whatever your feelings, it must noted that the Saudis are working much harder to prepare for an uncertain future than we are, even taking preposterous hard lines in upcoming negotiations that will will wean us off of their product. It’s a question of need, of course, except that we need to get creative like this, as well. But instead, we largely continue to dissemble about what we will, should or might be willing to do, like it’s a waiting game and we only need to last through to the next iteration of… some variant of what we’re already doing. People aren’t even that interested in the upcoming talks in Copenhagen, talks that could create new sets of goals for emissions reductions that could have very significant effects on economies the world over, that could (but not like magic) reset the developed world on a path toward transition and incentivize the developing world to follow along. But most of the moral high ground will likely be compromised away with easier to reach, lower impact targets that everyone can agree on – more stones to decorate the third place age recital.

Meanwhile, even David Byrne bikes.

October 1, 2009

Concealment of Losses

Because it requires such hearty fortitude, reading Kunstler doesn’t seem to be for everybody. Which, of course, says more about everybody than it does about him. His noteworthy digressions on suburbia and the long, slow car wreck (sorry) that is the American economy are entertaining in that gallows humor sort of way, but enlightening for purposes of seeing into the green, as well. We are all pu**ies in the way in which we need the worst of our worst to be elided from us with dense statistics, acronyms and otherwise artificial routes to happiness, whether they come in the form of adjustable rate mortgages or doctor-prescribed pills. Even honest grappling with this situation would at least put us on the sidewalk to lifestyle changes that would begin to improve some of the worsts (planetary, transportation, communications). But, no; we must continually place ourselves at the mercy of the corporate fantasists who promise us Sweet Baby All in exchange for keeping things humming along, even if, as JHK fears, we’re humming right along into a buzz saw.

For example, take Kunstler’s Happy Motoring non-metaphor. This new battery technology – why is it problematic?

As a part of IBM’s 2-year-old Big Green Innovations program, the Battery 500 Project aims to boost the range of rechargeable batteries for all-electric cars from less than 100 miles today to as far as 500 miles. The consortium’s efforts are being led by the Almaden Lab in collaboration with several U.S. universities and the Department of Energy’s national labs.

“Batteries technology has improved, but is still far inferior to gasoline in terms of how much energy they hold,” said Spike Narayan, a key IBM researcher. “The energy density—which is the amount of energy a lithium-ion battery stores per unit weight—is really not enough to produce a family-sized sedan with a 300- to 500-mile range.”

Being able to continue rely on automobiles similarly to the way we do now… is that really a green innovation? There are four big reasons why plug-ins won’t be better than petrol-fueled cars, but lowly number five is the inference that plug-ins will largely allow most of what we now see/do to stay the same. This is the major plug-in FAIL.

Exhibit Dos: Download the new Visa Black Card commercial to your hairbrush, here.

September 22, 2009

A Female Deer (reprise)

We’re the world’s biggest polluter who has no idea what to do about it – can’t use less, absolutely cannot tax ourselves more. Meanwhile, our best and brightest have been working nights and weekends:

The Justice Department is investigating whether former Interior Secretary Gale A. Norton illegally used her position to benefit Royal Dutch Shell PLC, the company that later hired her, according to officials in federal law enforcement and the Interior Department.

The criminal investigation centers on the Interior Department’s 2006 decision to award three lucrative oil shale leases on federal land in Colorado to a Shell subsidiary. Over the years it would take to extract the oil, according to calculations from Shell and a Rand Corp. expert, the deal could net the company hundreds of billions of dollars.

…

Norton, 55, was President Bush’s first Interior secretary. She had worked as an Interior Department attorney before being elected Colorado’s attorney general. Later, as a private lawyer, she represented mining, timber and oil companies.

As Interior secretary, she embraced an industry-friendly approach to environmental regulation that she called “cooperative conservation” and pushed the department to open more public land for energy production.

I hear people say, quite frequently, that corruption in the US isn’t as bad as it is in Europe and elsewhere. If that’s somehow true, it must be a comment on the failings of our system of government. And media. And embarrassment. Norton’s alleged traverse is all too common, and when that’s the case, who needs other forms of corruption? We seem to have found the sweet spot. The revolving door that lets foxes traipse into and out of the hen house with impunity, all the while castigating government as ineffective and ‘the problem’ would be the height of contempt were it not for the self-lubricating irony with which we find no bounds to our amusement (nor depths of silent admiration for these guileful players and their cunning stunts), even as we free ourselves from all possible insult. And this is not to single out literary critics for special abuse. In medicine, they induce this kind of insentience with anesthesia.

And what will it take for this to be reported with the relentless scorn given to ACORN, Van Jones or Henry Louis Gates yelling at that cop not to arrest him in his own house? Wait… those stories had black people in them! Wait… there’s a black guy in the White House!

This Norton thing hardly compares.

September 16, 2009

Industrial Solar

Oh, man. In a stopped-clock-is-right-twice-day sort of way, I give you the Moustache of Understanding:

China now understands that. It no longer believes it can pollute its way to prosperity because it would choke to death. That is the most important shift in the world in the last 18 months. China has decided that clean-tech is going to be the next great global industry and is now creating a massive domestic market for solar and wind, which will give it a great export platform.

In October, Applied will be opening the world’s largest solar research center — in Xian, China. Gotta go where the customers are. So, if you like importing oil from Saudi Arabia, you’re going to love importing solar panels from China.

Maybe when our dimmer bulbs are spouting the bullfrog-obvious, it’s a sign of some sort of back-handed momentum that, while not the same as regular momentum, is also not the same thing your usual kind of hope. Wow. That… doesn’t sound so great either.

August 26, 2009

Are We There Yet?

When we realize that something is not sustainable, part of that is knowing that it is, not would be but is, impossible to make it so. So, instead of trying to make our fossil fuel use more sustainable, we transition to a form of energy on which we can rely. Neat.

How long will this take? Everyone wants to know, and to the extent we set about reducing our dependence on the unsustainable, we set in motion all sorts of other activities which in turn effect the overall duration of the transition. With lifestyle changes and altering the modes of transportation in service of the former, we induce, and thus shorten, the latter. To the extent that halfway there may begin to resemble being there, simply because of what else can be sensed, seen or acknowledged from certain vantage points, the transition will appear to have become increasingly easier or less difficult from some points along the way, when in fact it may have always been so. It’s just at the beginning, from here – this point of realizing the unsustainability of our position – the whole idea of doing/living/powering/growing any other way seems so daunting and impossible. When, really, the impossible thing is to continue in this way.

Now, one might think that there would be a distinctly non-ideological flavor to this whole discussion. And one would of course be wrong. Because the transition to other energy sources [on which we can rely] is somehow liberal socialist and must be opposed by the other side. Who is the other side? The suppliers? Well, that makes sense. But so much of the opposition to change comes from those who would ostensibly benefit from the transition, who are, effectively, home grown; what’s their angle, beyond the unsustainable status quo?

In a kind of truth, not having to worry about how long the transition will take, how much it will cost and how much it might disrupt the way things are is a great and wonderful luxury, for as long as it lasts, which is also its major downfall, which is really the point of the conversation. From here, any change looks like the downfall of western society, and will until we begin the transition, which is the only thing that will make the view different. The Saudis know it and also know our transition will destroy their economy. That’s why they counsel against it, even though they know it makes no sense [for us] whatsoever. The strains on all the rationales are showing. Maybe that’s what the beginning of the transition looks like.

Category: I know people