We Need a Sustainable Economy
To reach back out of this economic meltdown we have two divergent choices: Go back to the way things have always been, or fix the underlying problems so that we can live smart for generations to come. Guess which view I’d like to see us take?
The Obama Admnistration is about as pragmatic an organization as we ever could’ve hoped for. They’re trying hard to remain centrist and fair, without falling too hard into the pro-WallStreet or pro-MainStreet camps. They have pointed no fingers, but looked only for solutions. While this is all constructive and positive, I feel they have missed a gigantic opportunity to reform a failed system. It fails because it is not sustainable.
Observation from Jim Kunstler, a peak oil advocate:
Perhaps his ease and confidence masks a tragically conventional world-view, an incapacity to imagine “change” outside a very narrow range of possibility. I must say I doubt this is the case. I think, he is going along, for the moment, with a consensus of wishes to prop up life as we know it at all costs. This consensus emanates from the top down and the bottom up. The millions of “Joe-the-Plumber(s)” out there don’t want to rethink the terms of existence anymore than the lords of Goldman Sachs. I also think that circumstances will force Mr. Obama’s hand before long — specifically that a moment will arrive when he goes on TV and tells the American public that things have changed way beyond the scope of what they even imagined when they pulled the levers last fall and voted for an uncharted future.
We now are operating under a fractional reserve economy leveraged to the hilt in debt: personal debt, government debt, and a debt of jobs. Another form of debt? We’re running out of environmental capital with species extinction, peak oil, and loss of habitat.
Yikes. We need a sustainable economy. From the New Scientist:
Most of us accept the need for a more sustainable way to live, by reducing carbon emissions, developing renewable technology and increasing energy efficiency.
But are these efforts to save the planet doomed? A growing band of experts are looking at figures like these and arguing that personal carbon virtue and collective environmentalism are futile as long as our economic system is built on the assumption of growth. The science tells us that if we are serious about saving Earth, we must reshape our economy.
This, of course, is economic heresy. Growth to most economists is as essential as the air we breathe: it is, they claim, the only force capable of lifting the poor out of poverty, feeding the world’s growing population, meeting the costs of rising public spending and stimulating technological development – not to mention funding increasingly expensive lifestyles. They see no limits to that growth, ever.
While we want everything to be peaceful and pretty, sometimes deep change is just necessary. We want to keep eating our Cheetos, but there are almost 7 billion of us now. We have a big impact on our planet and need to start living as if it all matters. I am hoping that Obama has bigger plans for the future than he talks about now, even though I know there are many people who would not go willingly into a “sustainable” future.
Here are some resources for getting educated and imagining a new agenda:
Read the series of articles in the New Scientist on sustainable economy.
Watch the Story of Stuff and make sure to read this section on Another Way.
Check out BlindSpot.org for information on transformation from a linear economy to a circular economy.
Theories That Claim the Sky is Falling: Doom Science 101
Well, here’s some fun thinking!! It’s certainly new and sparkly, but not in the least bit cheerful. Welcome to the terrordome of environmental science. Today’s post discusses three well-researched and peer-reviewed theories that claim civil society as we know it is doomed to end: Peak Oil Theory, the Olduvai Theory, and a third theory that lacks an official name, but spells out environmental degradation as a mean culprit in the demise of humanity. Sure you’re ready for this? Quick! grab a beer! (Be sure to read my earlier post, Surviving the Economic Downturn, for tips!)
First, a brief summary. All of these theories present a less-than-pleasant view of a problem called “overshoot.” This term is defined by the difference between the population of the earth (our environment) and our environment’s “carrying capacity,” the ability to provide all of the resources that we require to survive.
Peak Oil
If you’re into Armageddon and that sort of thing, check out the website Life After the Oil Crash for a really good time. The intro to the site begins, “Civilization as we know it is coming to an end soon.” Righty-o!! The site goes on to explain their heavily researched prediction that our oil-dependent society will degrade into chaos with a decrease in oil production, worsening over time:
Oil is increasingly plentiful on the upslope of the bell curve, increasingly scarce and expensive on the down slope. The peak of the curve coincides with the point at which the endowment of oil has been 50 percent depleted. Once the peak is passed, oil production begins to go down while cost begins to go up.
In practical and considerably oversimplified terms, this means that if 2005 was the year of global Peak Oil, worldwide oil production in the year 2030 will be the same as it was in 1980. However, the world’s population in 2030 will be both much larger (approximately twice) and much more industrialized (oil-dependent) than it was in 1980. Consequently, worldwide demand for oil will outpace worldwide production of oil by a significant margin. As a result, the price will skyrocket, oil dependent economies will crumble, and resource wars will explode.
Peak Oil adherents do not see any new energy technologies on the horizon that could avert the oil shortage. In my *vast* internet research (cough, cough), I came across very few arguments against peak oil. I did find one:
…like believers undaunted by the failure of alien spaceships to take them to Mars on the date predicted, Peak enthusiasts keep moving the date of the oil apocalypse further into the future. In the new, revisionist models of Hubbert’s prediction, the high point in the curve of discoverable oil on our planet will come in a decade or so. Though we have a reprieve, goes the new theory, still, we’re running out of crude, dude! There’s only another twenty years left in proven reserves! Oh, my! “It’s true that there’s only twenty years’ supply left—and that’s been true for the last hundred years,” Lewis Lapham told me … Lapham of Harper’s magazine is the only editor in the hemisphere with hard knowledge of the petroleum market, insight he inherited legitimately: His family helped found Mobil Oil, the back half of what is now Exxon Mobil.
He asked, “Why in the world would oil companies, or any company, announce that there’s lots of its product out there? You’d bust your own market. It’s better to say the cupboard’s bare.” As Lapham noted, we have been “running out of oil” since the days we drained it from whales. OPEC’s big headache before the war shut down Iraq’s fields was that there was way too much oil. We were swimming in it and oil prices stayed low.”
The Olduvai Theory
The Olduvai theory is slightly more broad-reaching than Peak Oil. Its author, Richard C. Duncan, another serious lover of bell curves explains it thus:
The Olduvai theory is defined by the ratio of world energy production and population. It states that the life expectancy of Industrial Civilization is less than or equal to 100 years: 1930-2030. After more than a century of strong growth — energy production per capita peaked in 1979. The Olduvai theory explains the 1979 peak and the subsequent decline. Moreover, it says that energy production per capita will fall to its 1930 value by 2030, thus giving Industrial Civilization a lifetime of less than or equal to 100 years. This analysis predicts that the collapse will be strongly correlated with an “epidemic” of permanent blackouts of high-voltage electric power networks — worldwide.
This, as you would guess, leads to ever increasing shortages of all other goods and services and the subsequent decline of civil society, yada, yada, anarchy, the end. For a detailed look at the stages of collapse, one can read the imminently practical paper called the Five Stages of Collapse written by a Russian named Dmitri Orlov who watched the Soviet Union collapse and draws parallels between the USSR of the 80s and the US today. He says:
The US is an oil importer, burning up 25% of the world’s production, and importing over two-thirds of that. Back in mid-90s, when I first started trying to guess the timing of the US collapse, the arrival of the global peak in oil production was scheduled for around the turn of the century. It turned out that the estimate was off by almost a decade, but that is actually fairly accurate as far as such big predictions go. So here it is the high price of oil that is putting the brakes on further debt expansion. As higher oil prices trigger a recession, the economy starts shrinking, and a shrinking economy cannot sustain an ever-expanding level of debt. At some point the ability to finance oil imports will be lost, and that will be the tipping point, after which nothing will ever be the same.
According to Orlov, we’ve already reached the first of the five stages: financial collapse. Yikes, hard to argue with that one.
Environmental Degradation
Moving on to our third theory, the widely espoused argument that environmental degradation in general will be our downfall. From yet another happy place to visit, dieoff.org:
Today, many people who are concerned about overpopulation and environmental degradation believe that human actions can avert catastrophe. The prevailing view holds that a stable population that does not tax the environment’s “carrying capacity” would be sustainable indefinitely, and that this state of equilibrium can be achieved through a combination of birth control, conservation, and reliance on “renewable” resources. Unfortunately, worldwide implementation of a rigorous program of birth control is politically impossible. Conservation is futile as long as population continues to rise.
So, these theories are pretty extreme. Are they TRUE?? Well, that remains to be seen, but they are instructive. They remind us to be humble, to understand that life is fragile, and to tread lightly on the earth. Environmental activism has taken hold for a reason. We do understand that our consumption mentality cannot be sustained, and we do know that energy independence and sustainability are urgent and required for many reasons. Duh pookie is big on population control, here in the US and overseas. I might even go so far as to say that religion is the root problem today, not for its best contributions (love, humility, charity), but for its worst: regionalism, sectarianism, closed-minded thinking, persecution of those who differ in belief, and an adherence to archaic rules, like no birth control, that are impractical and unwise in our present-day civilization.
It seems pretty clear to me: less people, more stuff to share, less strife.
The next installment in the series explores alternative energy approaches and the realities facing the Obama administration.
Peak Oil and the Grid
The next few posts will be a series exploring the concepts of Peak Oil, Smart Grids, Obama’s infrastructure plans, and the possible future(s) of energy and power use.
If you’ve never come across the concept of Peak Oil, now’s your chance to read up. Peak Oil theory is built upon the simple and obvious fact that petroleum resources are finite. Here are a few statistics:
- Oil currently accounts for about 43% of the world’s total fuel consumption [PDF], and 95% of global energy used for transportation.
- For every one joule of food consumed in the United States, around 10 joules of fossil fuel energy have been used to produce it.
- Of the 65 largest oil producing countries in the world, up to 54 have passed their peak of production and are now in decline, including the USA in 1970/1, Indonesia in 1997, Australia in 2000, the North Sea in 2001, and Mexico in 2004.
- Global oil output could peak by 2020 – much earlier than expected – amid a collapse in investment due to the financial crisis, the International Energy Agency’s (IEA) chief economist Fatih Birol claimed.
So that’s your two minute Peak Oil Primer. There is no universal consensus about when oil production will peak. There does seem to be fairly universal agreement that it eventually will. Combine this fact with Global Warming theory, and your looking at a recipe for catastrophic failure if we don’t seek solutions — soon.
So, energy independence and alternative energy sources are getting lots of focus these days. When looking for solutions to the Peak Oil/Global Warming problem, logic dictates that we develop a range of alternative sources such as wind, solar, and geothermal.
But here’s where we hit a wall: our decrepit electrical grid. According to a blogger at MSN Money referring to a US Department of Energy report:
America’s total annual electricity bill is $250 billion. That’s about half what it spends on oil. There are more than 3100 electric utilities in the U.S. — 200 of them publicly traded, 2000 state run and 900 cooperative. The current electricity grid is frequently compared to a Ford Model T: While China and Europe have modernized their entire infrastructure in recent years, the US continues to do emergency repairs on a spluttering side-valve, 20-horsepower engine that breaks down with startling regularity…
The embarrassing fact about electricity is that 60% of it comes from coal — which is dirtier than oil. Some analysts claim that electric cars will actually increase global warming. But the reason we’re so dependent on coal is because of the inflexibility of our electricity grid.”
Our grid system is antiquated, fragile, inefficient, and worst of all, uni-directional, i.e. it cannot handle the intake or upload of generated electricity from outside sources.
Enter Obama. According to SmartGridNews:
We expect the Obama Administration to announce two things that will converge to give this already growing sector an additional boost. The first is a Clean Energy program to stimulate five million new jobs. The second is a “New Deal” stimulus package based on rejuvenating essential infrastructure.
In both case, the Smart Grid will be a centerpiece. We cannot achieve clean energy without a Smart Grid to transport it where needed. And we are increasingly reliant on the electric power system as the critical infrastructure that makes our way of life—and our global competitiveness—possible.
So we just might be in luck if Obama really can rally a New Deal effort to restructure the grid
using Smart Grid technology. Proponents like T. Boone Pickens and, of course, Al Gore are pushing to elevate the discussion. The nonprofit organization Repower America has committed to developing a plan for renewable energy production within 10 years. They’re looking for new members if you’re interested.
Next installment: The theories that claim it’s too late, we’re already past the point of no return…
Post-Pope: He Came, He Went, He Didn’t Mention Condoms
Like most areligious people, I find the institution of the pope both fascinating and somehow repulsive. That freaky thing: if one dies they just create a new one. Like vampires or something. The actual pope, His Popeness, is generally a nice guy (at least in recent history, not so for some of those medieval guys!).
But the institution of the pope is steeped in overtly history-shaping doctrine that, in my humble opinion, has lead directly to planetary overpopulation. NOT a good thing. Here we are, reaching out from the 21st century, only to find that we’ve polluted the planet, we’re still fighting god-knows how many wars, and now food shortages and possibly, reaching peak oil. All directly relate to overpopulation and/or scarcity of resources.
There are some aspects of the Catholic faith which my Catholic friends have taken great advantage of, namely, you can sin and then — poof! — you can also be forgiven! Yay! Catholics know how to party. And apparently, also know how to have a lot of sex. Thus, there are many many Catholics, especially in third world countries. More every day. No problem, except for the destitute underfed children searching in dumps for dinner scraps. The pope still refuses to acknowledge that disallowing birth control is bad for his followers. Has he never seen those poor little kids in Mexico City? Or those ragged-clothed twenty-seven year old women in Guatemala with six children? Ugh. I think his pope hat’s too heavy. It’s pressing down on the reasoning portion of his brain.
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