Interesting perspective after the disappointing Doha Follies!
What To Do about Global Warming: "Austerity," Not On A
Global Government Scale But An Individual Private Scale?
By Nicholas C. Arguimbau
15 December, 2012
Countercurrents.org
Countercurrents.org
No question, avoiding serious
temperature increases from greenhouse gas emissions is one of the most difficult
tasks facing humanity today, likely the most difficult it has ever faced. While
the UN, the International Energy Agency, the World Bank and scientists all over
the world are predicting doom if major actions are not taken before 2020, the
earliest the governments, on their presently-planned time framework, will have
implemented anything at all. there is ZERO evidence of progress towards dealing
with the problem in the public sector or the energy industry. Greenhouse gas
emissions are going up at a rate that is faster every year, when they should
have been going down for decades. The Economist reports (December 1, 2012) that
international climate negotiations are a "Theatre of the Absurd," and "Climate
policy is going nowhere fast." http://www.economist.com/news/21567342-after-three-failures-years-un-climate-summit-has-only-modest-aims-theatre-absurd
An enormous amount of progress needs to be made by 2020, a
difficult task indeed, but if the citizens of the planet stop waiting for the
public sector, perhaps ridiculously simple, too. When it is boiled down to the
basics, all you need to know is a tautology: the way to reduce emissions is to
reduce emissions.
It is an immense relief that the urgency is now understood
broadly, in business circles as well as among those they might have passed off a
few years ago as "environmental extremists." As with any addiction, the first
step in curing the addiction to fossil fuels is recognizing the addiction. That
has been a long time coming, and as a consequence, the problem has been
enormously exacerbated. We are faced now with too many people using too much
stuff, and almost no time to change, but there is finally a consensus, except
among our moribund governments, that action NOW is essential.
But what to do? The way to reduce emissions is to reduce
emissions. But then people start putting on conditions that take over, like, "We
can’t reduce emissions if that will reduce total energy use," or "We can’t
reduce emissions if that will slow "economic growth." Demands that were
reasonable in other times may be literally impossible to fulfill now.
Unrealistic optimism about growth of the economy as a guideline for what steps
are or are not feasible is the hardest of all illusions to escape.
We have all had the giddying experience of the post-World-War-II
climb: we have come close to unraveling the ultimate secrets of the universe, we
have literally reached for the stars, we accomplished a miraculous Green
Revolution, we produced this marvel, the Internet, we have made intercontinental
air travel commonplace, we invented antibiotics, we ended forever the scourge of
smallpox, we invented the computer and it took over the world. But that half
century was two million years coming, and with unprecedented costs: the
exhaustion of fossil fuels, the destruction of the world's great forests, the
mining of all but a small fraction of phosphorus and potassium, two of the
handful of elements essential to all life, the draining of the earth's great
underground water supplies, the development and rapid degradation of virtually
every farmable acre on earth - the list goes on, You’ve heard it before. My
personal summary of the situation in first, "The Imminent Crash Of the Oil
Supply. . .," http://www.countercurrents.org/arguimbau230410.htm which Market
Oracle was kind enough to post on its site as the "financial analysis of the
week" two years ago (and which for reasons I do not have room to discuss except
a little below, is unaffected by illusions that the United States is "awash in
oil" and about to become "Saudi America"); and second, "Peak Food: Can Another
Green Revolution Save Us?" http://www.countercurrents.org/arguimbau310710.htm.
In short, and as the latest post on Market Watch points out, Arend, "The End of
the World and How to Profit from it," http://articles.marketwatch.com/2012-11-21/finance/35250413_1_grantham-climate-change-energy-reserves,
the halcyon days of 3% and greater world annual GDP growth are almost certainly
over, So we can no longer solve any problem by throwing enough money and
technology at it., assuming that whatever the cost, we could pay now, borrow if
necessary, and today’s bank-breaker would be tomorrow’s pocket change., .
This includes the global warming problem. The way to reduce
emissions is to reduce emissions, regardless of the formal means we use - a
carbon tax, "cap and trade," traditional regulation, voluntary conservation,
etc. There are essentially 2 devices for reducing emissions: (1) technofixes
like increased engine efficiency and "sustainable energy sources" (you know,
hybrid engines, solar power and so forth), with total consumption unchallenged
in the interim, and (2) simple reduction of consumption (driving less, turning
down the thermostat, having fewer babies and toys, etc.) The first route can be
followed without built-in reduction of energy-industry profits, The second
likely cannot. If reduction of energy industry profits is "off the table" for
government negotiators, then they can easily find themselves in a "theatre of
the absurd."
The first route is neither economical nor fast, so we had better
rethink whether it can be a "nonnegotiable demand.". You need to invent the
technofix, then you need to manufacture it, then you need to replace the old
with the new. Invest in latter-day Edisons. Invest in factories. Invest in
retooling. Either the government pays or the public pays. Good things, but money
and credit and keeping particular segments of the economy happy, have their
limits, as we are discovering after the wild ride of debt accumulation since
1980. Picture scrapping all the cars on the road and replacing them with ones
that use one quarter the fuel, if that is possible. Maybe 150 million cars at
$20k each. $3trillion, yes? Not necessarily a U.S. job-creator either, given
out-sourcing .Picture scrapping 100 million CO2-generating home furnaces plus
the means for delivery of the fuel, and replacing them with electric heaters run
on carbon-free electricity. Who is going to design the heaters? Who is going to
pay for them? Maybe $2k each. And where are the three terawatts, in round
numbers, of sustainable electricity we need to replace fossil-generated power?
Solar and wind? No; at present they are too intermittent and only a fraction of
grid energy can be replaced with them. We need to invent and produce and install
economical storage devices for sustainable energy, thus far a hopeless task. Not
to mention maybe $30k per household times 100 million households. $3trillion?
Nuclear? Either too unsafe or too costly, probably both. And you’d better
believe, not in MY back yard. Fusion? The primary concept is to pack hydrogen in
a steel chamber at a temperature and pressure comparable to the center of the
sun without any leaking out and melting the chamber, so you can duplicate the
process in the sun of turning hydrogen into helium. The fusion scientists would
grumble about this explanation but would have to admit that it’s right. They’ve
been trying to do this for half a century and will probably figure out in
another half century that it’s a really klutzy way to get simple solar
energy.
And the cost of the three terawatts assuming we could design
something that would work? Depending on what you’re building, maybe $5 per watt,
$15 trillion for three terawatts of something we haven’t invented yet. Hmmm.
That’s a trick. Guaranteed it won’t happen before 2020. Then there’s the
retooling of all the factories and public buildings, construction of thousands
of miles of public transit . . . I guess we’re talking $20-40 trillion, simply
to permit us to go along as we have without growth, all to be spent or borrowed
NOW. Talk about a fiscal cliff. Try selling the idea in Washington or Europe
right now. It’s pretty to many folks to dream of the economy growing at
breakneck speed and $40 trillion being invested in the private economy NOW. But
it’s not going to happen. The magic word now is "austerity."
So look at the second route. "Austerity" at the personal level?
Close, but more a change of priorities, although radical. Some initial thoughts
about what to do:
Stop eating beef, which costs roughly thirteen times more
greenhouse emissions than chicken, 57 times as much as potatoes. Anyone can cut
out beef right now and get spending money in the process. That’s a surprisingly
large fraction of our ghg emissions (worldwide more than the entire
transportation sector), often more than from our car. If all Americans were to
give up beef, they would arguably accomplish more than all the government global
warming programs to date.
Splurge in some new woolens and turn the thermostat down to 50
degrees. Here in chilly Massachusetts that will reduce your heating fuel
consumption by over half. 100% in warmer places. Not everyone’s piece of cake,
but it puts a lot of money in your pocket. Look what only 0.8 degrees C of
warming has done to the world, and if we don’t do these things we’re talking 4
degrees or more. The critters out there have it right: Good coats to keep their
bodies warm and the rest of the world cool.
Anyhow, this is just practice for what Mama Nature will force on
us shortly as the fossil fuels disappear.
And they will. Thought all that had changed with shale oil? Not
yet and probably not ever. With all the brouhaha, they are only turning out
800,000 barrels per day, 1% of world demand, and they’re losing money because it
costs too much to get it out of the ground. The people who are saying it will be
a "go" are basing that on the GDP growing at 3.5%/year so we can pay double and
be happy without pain. Also, they aren’t taking into account that shale oil
wells run dry much faster than conventional ones. There are no solid figures as
to the actually retrievable shale oil, with estimates ranging, astonishingly,
from 4.3 billion barrels (the pittance currently estimated by the United States
Geological Survey) to six trillion barrels in the view of some industry people.
The "Saudi America" idea seems to come from a grim reality - that by 2020, Saudi
Arabia’s oil production may be down to what shale oil production may be up to,
with no net gain. And then there is reality: American demand for and consumption
of petroleum is dropping at 4.5% per year, Polczer, "America’s Missing Barrels,
Petroleum Economist, April 24, 2012 http://www.petroleum-economist.com/Article/3011141/Americas-missing-barrels.html
. precisely the rate predicted in "Imminent Crash," above; it is masked by our
economic morass and by our large-scale use of alcohol as a gasoline additive. So
it is at least premature to conclude that "peak oil" is no more.,
And by the way, if we are becoming "Saudi America," we are
setting ourselves up to be the ultimate climate terminators - if there is a
substantial amount of shale oil or tar sands oil that can be gotten out of the
ground economically, it has to stay there anyhow. So regardless of what’s there,
we’ve got to cut our emissions NOW. The way to cut emissions is to cut
emissions.
And then there are the cars, which cost us something like $8,000
each to run annually, a $trillion per year, give or take, nationally. If we’re
thinking "austerity" is going to be forced upon us, that’s certainly a good
place to start. Our grandfathers or great-grandfathers didn’t have cars at all
and neither did the folks who settled the continent. Take the backed-up commuter
traffic. Thousands of cars, all going in the same direction, and because they
are barely moving, unlike the commuter train that goes sailing by, there’s time
to take a look. Most likely there’s not one in sight without four empty seats..
So everyone should be able to find a less wasteful vehicle. And apparently close
to four out of five clogging the road could be carpooling. It’s only a matter of
computer-aided logistics. There are carpool lanes in many cities, you know, and
they don’t jam up. And if you’re not commuting, then stay home except for
necessities.. Is there any earthly reason not to carpool with your neighbors for
groceries? There. That should be good for at least a 50% cut in your gas bill.
And if you’re a businessman, you should be able to invent a system for making
carpooling simpler, and market it. Because everyone will be saving in a big way
on their gas bills and their carbon counts. A little difficult, but not
impossible; failing to do it only postpones the inevitable a few years. And how
about giving out public transit passes as alternatives to coupons? I don’t know,
but the twentieth century wasn’t the only century.
And if you stop buying "stuff" that is unnecessary or comes from
unnecessarily far away, that’s another big cut. Buy local, employing what’s left
of the workforce not already overseas. Your "i-phone" (what do the damn things
do, anyhow?), if it’s got the Apple or Microsoft or HP or Samsung brand name on
it, should have the Fox.conn brand name, because that’s the company that makes
‘em all.. They’ll come from Fox.conn to the US on massive diesel freighters that
are completely unregulable about how much they pollute the atmosphere while
they’re on the high seas. So the less you buy from China (or anywhere in East
Asia) the lees diesel fuel you’re responsible for. The same is true, of course,
if you live in the Northeast and buy vegetable and fruit from California and
Florida.
Dunno, but that’s a recipe for cutting personal American carbon
emissions by half, RIGHT NOW, and if we don’t do it now, Mama Nature will do it
for us in about 25 years and the cost of 25 years of indulgence will be
thousands, likely millions of years of a devastated planet. We’ve been waiting
decades for someone else to tell us what to do, and they never have. This is
real; I’ll give links discussing every fact in this harangue to anyone who
asks.. narguimbau (at) earthlink.net.
Does it seem fanciful that we would reduce our carbon emissions
by half overnite through conservation? Not really; ours are twice Europe’s, and
they are hardly hurting.. That will do for this week. Does it seem fanciful that
we could settle the North American continent without a drop of oil? Of course,
but we did it. Does it seem fanciful that we could destroy 90% of the earth’s
species, perhaps including ourselves and leave the planet devastated without
making a serious effort to avoid it? Yes, but we are about to do that also. So
if we are going to do something in the near future that now appears fanciful,
let it be positive.
We’ll all have to muddle through with some help from our
friends. We can start by finding out our carbon footprint and how it compares to
those of our neighbors and countrymen. Try a footprint calculator, which should
include a pretty comprehensive and detailed coverage of your activities, because
everything we do costs carbon. Carbon heating the earth and creating Katrinas
and Sandy’s and massive drought and destroying the polar icecaps and acidifying
the oceans, and it’s hardly begun..
Here’s a carbon footprint calculator: Carbon Footprint, http://www.carbonfootprint.com/calculator.aspx.
I don’t know that it’s the best, but it’s a start. (It will also invite you to
buy "offsets" so you won’t have to feel guilty - that’s where we part company.)
It will tell you what you can do and hopefully convince you that you can and
should reduce your fingerprint to 80% below America’s current norm. If everyone
does that, the global warming problem is at least not going to get worse.
Humankind can’t figure that out and see it’s better than destroying 90+ % of the
world’s species and leaving our grandchildren a barren desert? We all need to
know our carbon footprints and start cutting. Hopefully people in business and
government will work not only to do it for themselves, but o make it easier for
others. Of course no one gets to wait for that, which to date hasn’t happened.
The problem to date with global warming is that everyone has been waiting for
someone else to act. I mean everyone - the governments, the oil industry, small
businesses, conservation organizations, consumers. NO MORE!
Let’s be clear about this idea that investing in conservation is
MUCH cheaper than investing in new energy sources, with an example. In VERY
round numbers, and it doesn’t matter too much how it works, the capital cost of
a power plant is around $5 per watt of production capacity, generally not less
than $3 nor more than $10, and then there’s the fuel, or if the power plant is
truly sustainable, there is something else like sunshine.. The cost of compact
fluorescents is about $.06 per watt saved, or if you only light them 4 hours per
day, then $0.36 per watt saved, and there isn’t any fuel. Less than ONE TENTH
the initial cost and no fuel?. And how many really wonderful woolen sweaters
could you splurge on every year with the savings from turning down the
thermostat? There’s just no comparison in the costs. Investing in energy
conservation is MUCH more cost-effective than investing in energy consumption.
The fundamental idea behind "alternative energy" is to cut carbon emissions only
when the alternative shows up on the scene, so your energy use never
decreases.The idea of cutting consumption hasn’t been popular because everyone
has been hung up on increasing or at least maintaining consumption. That’s
called "economic growth." We can’t be afraid of threatening "growth" if
ultimately it is growth of carbon emissions that threaten life itself. The time
for buying or borrowing our way out of problems is behind us, or if under some
fantastical circumstance it’s also ahead of us, then there’s no time to wait.
There’s an element of "feel good but don’t make a difference" in
this unless we’re all careful. It comes back to the footprint calculator.
Everyone needs to recalculate their footprint with an eye to reducing it SOON by
80%, and at least say 10%/year without fail. Businesses can help with accurate
and complete carbon costs marked on everything they sell. This is a war. We all
worked together to cut energy consumption in World War II, so we can all do it
now.
How did we get into this mess? Dunno. Of course business has
traditionally wanted consumers to consume, not to conserve. And the mainline
"conservation" groups are disturbingly quiet about conservation, just as they
are disturbingly quiet about population.. I guess sometimes people become so
afraid of looking "extreme" or of not being able to pay the mortgage because
what they need to say won’t be paid for, that they forget where they’re going.
Pretty sad. Conservationists won’t push conservation? No, they won’t. See "Bill
McKibben Is Wrong, We Must Not Forget That ‘We Have Met The Enemy And He Is
Us’."Countercurrents,
http://www.countercurrents.org/arguimbau300712.htm,
Countercurrents Editor's Picks, http://www.countercurrents.org/editorspicks.htm,
Energy Bulletin, http://www.energybulletin.net/stories/2012-07-31/bill-mckibben-wrong-we-must-not-forget-we-have-met-enemy-and-he-us.
And if you’re not fed up with getting sent to read things I’ve written, then
about the moral issues here, there is "A Greeting For 2012: Looking Back At
Durban And Other Progressive
Failures, And 'Occupying' Ourselves," By Nicholas C. Arguimbau, http://www.countercurrents.org/arguimbau020112.htm Bill says explicitly that he won’t push conservation. And he’s far from the only one.
Failures, And 'Occupying' Ourselves," By Nicholas C. Arguimbau, http://www.countercurrents.org/arguimbau020112.htm Bill says explicitly that he won’t push conservation. And he’s far from the only one.
The point of all this is that we ALL have responsibility for
global warming, and if everyone keeps pointing the finger at everyone else, we
are doomed. It just happens that the only ones who can do enough, quickly and
economically enough, are the consumers; even if that weren’t true, everyone else
- government, industry, even the traditional "conservationists," have dropped
the ball, leaving the consumers left to play. Everyone else, if there is anyone
else, has to help them in the onerous task.
NOW. Technofixes - alternative
energy, efficient engines, things that let us go on doing what we did before but
with less carbon -will help, but we have to come up with money to buy them
before they’ll help. Standing alone they will be too little, too late, and VERY
expensive. We CANNOT go on doing what we did before if the planet is to
survive.
The governments may begin to act, now that unprecedented
pressure is on them, but even if they do, the technofixes approach alone or
arguments about whether we can afford it, are all too likely to prevail until it
is too late. And there is out there among the earth’s 7 billion or the United
States’ 300 million, a Gandhi - a person of vast energy, vast integrity, vast
compassion, vast intelligence, who could come forth as a leader to help us
along.. That would be a plus.
But we cannot wait for the Second Coming while the Four Horsemen
are about. So let’s get on with the show.
Nicholas C. Arguimbau is a semi-retired
semi-tired lawyer with licenses to practice before the California Supreme Court
and the United States Supreme Court. He takes pictures and writes, and gets his
dogs out to sniff the mushrooms, but less than is good for them or him.
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