The precautionary principle is usually associated with strident environmentalists who believe that those seeking to introduce a new technology or new chemical should be forced to show that it is safe before doing so. Corporate sponsors of those new technologies and chemicals almost always take the opposite view; until something is proven to be dangerous, it should be allowed. (There is, of course, never any discussion by these corporate sponsors of who should spend money to do the after-the-fact testing. The unspoken assumption is that the entire human population is to be engaged in an uncontrolled experiment to determine the dangers.)
So, it is noteworthy that oil giant Exxon Mobil--so often against any precautions at all when it comes to the oil business and its petrochemical offspring--should embrace its own version of the precautionary principle. (Of course, the company would never call it that.) CEO Rex Tillerson told an oil industry gathering that while global warming is a reality and needs to be addressed, regulation should not be implemented too hastily lest it unduly impinge on economic growth. Naturally, he wasn't concerned about oil company profits or CEO bonuses, but rather "our ability to progress [on] other global priorities such as economic development, poverty eradication and public health."
Tillerson's plea is one that is heard daily in industry circles when any kind of regulation is discussed, especially any that are labelled "environmental." The argument amounts to an economic precautionary principle. We are told that we must not allow any regulation to proceed if it could harm economic activity. After all, what will happen to the poor, corporate leaders say, if we cannot lift them up with economic growth? (There is, of course, no discussion about lifting them up through the redistribution of wealth, say, via public services; naturally, that kind of discussion is considered a breach of etiquette among the world's CEOs.)
But, we should question such arguments not because they come from corporate CEOs though that may give us cause for suspicion. A keen observer might suspect that the problem with the arguments is that apples are indeed being compared to oranges. These arguments assume that two things--the economy and the environment--are contained in some greater whole and that prefering one over the other is a zero-sum game. Only a little more thinking should yield the true situation, namely, that the economy is merely part of a whole called the environment. You might call this the fallacy of confusing the whole for a part. But simple observation will reveal to anyone that the economy is contained within the environment. Disrupting or destabilizing the environment risks crashing the economy altogether since the economy relies utterly on the natural world for its very functioning.
While the captains of industry will find this fact discomfitting, it may be even more perplexing to another group--those proposing that the right technology can give us a bright green future, one in which there is no need to change human behavior except in the direction of using green technology.
It is precisely because we have failed to see the consequences of our technology that we are now ensnared in a perilous ecological predicament. To assume that more technology will solve our problems is to live out Benjamin Franklin's well-known definition of insanity. Environmental education giant, David Orr, is fond of saying that as our knowledge grows, so does our ignorance. His favorite example is our relatively recent knowledge of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) which seemed so handy as refrigerants when they were discovered in the 1930s. Over time our ignorance of the effects of CFCs on the ozone layer expanded alongside increasing uses for the substances. The result was a hole in the ozone, a development which, had it not been addressed, would have imperilled all of human civilization and plant and animal life as well.
It should be obvious then that applying the precautionary principle to the economy misses the point. Environmental regulation may indeed retard economic activity. But that damage, if it occurs, is different in kind from the damage our technology and numbers inflict on the biosphere every day. One may lead to a transient loss of wealth; the other may lead to a colossal loss of human life and of the very civilization we have built.
This is not a story about tradeoffs. It is a (pre)cautionary tale about gruesome and unforgivable destruction which we may yet avoid. But a positive outcome depends on casting off the notion that our economy as it currently functions will provide "benefits" that are sustainable with only a few changes here and there. Nothing short of a complete reordering of our priorities will makes us friends with the biosphere again. That is the true meaning of the precautionary principle and the reason why so few have actually embraced it.
Monday, February 19, 2007
Sunday, February 11, 2007
Coin in the fuse box
It used to be that frustrated homeowners who were sick of frequently blown fuses would sometimes play tricks on their electrical system by shoving a coin into the socket where a fuse goes. Of course, pennies were actually made of copper back then; they conducted electricity just fine while not melting the way that pesky and fragile fuses were designed to.
By doing this coin trick these homeowners were, of course, obliterating a very important feedback mechanism that protected their houses. Feedback systems are found virtually everywhere in modern society and are designed to warn about dangers, help us steer a safer course, and to tell us when to call for help. The weather forecasting system is an obvious example. We can adjust our day or travel plans for safety reasons. The addition of a strong, foul-smelling substance to natural gas which would otherwise be colorless and odorless is another example. The odor allows us to detect a gas leak with nothing more than our noses. The feedback system of every personal computer tells us whether what we are doing is working or whether we have done something in error.
On a larger social scale the media provides a mechanism for people in open societies to judge the policies and practices of governments, corporations, nonprofits and other groups. But it is in the media especially that some special interest groups have succeeded at subverting this important feedback mechanism by putting a coin in the fuse box so to speak.
Perhaps the most famous of all subverters are the tobacco companies which withheld reports on the dangers of smoking and which planted false information in the media to confuse people about the link between smoking and illness. So effective was this campaign that it took decades before the tobacco companies were made to stop lying. In the end, they were even made to pay for some of the damage they caused to smokers as well as some of the expenses they foisted on government which had to pay for the medical treatment of many with smoking-related illnesses.
On the issue of global warming large sums have passed from fossil fuel giants such as Peabody Energy and ExxonMobil into the coffers of groups such as the Competitive Enterprise Institute which runs the so-called Cooler Heads Project, The National Center for Public Policy Research, the Greening Earth Society and the American Enterprise Institute. The purpose has been to finance a public relations campaign designed to make the public think that there is genuine scientific controversy about global warming.
A similar, but to date more feeble, coin-in-the-fuse-box campaign has begun with regard to world peak oil production. Cambridge Energy Research Associates which has many wealthy patrons in the oil business has launched a few broadsides against the peak oil movement including this recent, but rather weakly argued piece. Part of the reason for the lackluster campaign is the continuing low profile of the peak oil issue. Since peak oil is not yet much in the public mind, there is little need for the oil companies to spend much money or time rebutting it.
In addition, the fossil fuel industry is not unanimous in its views. Most notably Chevron with its Will you join us? campaign has broken with the oil industry to discuss the problem of future oil supplies. And, the coal companies are absolutely giddy about the prospect of taking a larger and larger share of the energy pie.
All of this means that policy makers and the public are not getting the feedback they need in order to make informed judgements about such issues as peak oil and global warming (though the global warming issue finally appears to be close to steamrolling the deniers because the scientific evidence is so ironclad.) The deniers' agenda isn't so much to convince people that their own views are correct; rather, they seek to confuse the public into inaction in the same way that a coin in the fuse box confuses an electrical system into continuing to run higher than advisable amperages.
The trouble is people who put coins in the fuse box tend to get a rather nasty side effect: Their houses eventually burn down. By subverting the feedback we need concerning global warming, peak oil and a host of other environmental problems, those engaged in this public relations game of confusion risk letting the equivalent of a house fire occur in the biosphere. But, unlike a burning house from which one can conceivably escape, there will be no escape from the biosphere if it becomes uninhabitable--not even for the clever people at public relations firms and think tanks who stalled any action until it was too late to prevent the worst.
By doing this coin trick these homeowners were, of course, obliterating a very important feedback mechanism that protected their houses. Feedback systems are found virtually everywhere in modern society and are designed to warn about dangers, help us steer a safer course, and to tell us when to call for help. The weather forecasting system is an obvious example. We can adjust our day or travel plans for safety reasons. The addition of a strong, foul-smelling substance to natural gas which would otherwise be colorless and odorless is another example. The odor allows us to detect a gas leak with nothing more than our noses. The feedback system of every personal computer tells us whether what we are doing is working or whether we have done something in error.
On a larger social scale the media provides a mechanism for people in open societies to judge the policies and practices of governments, corporations, nonprofits and other groups. But it is in the media especially that some special interest groups have succeeded at subverting this important feedback mechanism by putting a coin in the fuse box so to speak.
Perhaps the most famous of all subverters are the tobacco companies which withheld reports on the dangers of smoking and which planted false information in the media to confuse people about the link between smoking and illness. So effective was this campaign that it took decades before the tobacco companies were made to stop lying. In the end, they were even made to pay for some of the damage they caused to smokers as well as some of the expenses they foisted on government which had to pay for the medical treatment of many with smoking-related illnesses.
On the issue of global warming large sums have passed from fossil fuel giants such as Peabody Energy and ExxonMobil into the coffers of groups such as the Competitive Enterprise Institute which runs the so-called Cooler Heads Project, The National Center for Public Policy Research, the Greening Earth Society and the American Enterprise Institute. The purpose has been to finance a public relations campaign designed to make the public think that there is genuine scientific controversy about global warming.
A similar, but to date more feeble, coin-in-the-fuse-box campaign has begun with regard to world peak oil production. Cambridge Energy Research Associates which has many wealthy patrons in the oil business has launched a few broadsides against the peak oil movement including this recent, but rather weakly argued piece. Part of the reason for the lackluster campaign is the continuing low profile of the peak oil issue. Since peak oil is not yet much in the public mind, there is little need for the oil companies to spend much money or time rebutting it.
In addition, the fossil fuel industry is not unanimous in its views. Most notably Chevron with its Will you join us? campaign has broken with the oil industry to discuss the problem of future oil supplies. And, the coal companies are absolutely giddy about the prospect of taking a larger and larger share of the energy pie.
All of this means that policy makers and the public are not getting the feedback they need in order to make informed judgements about such issues as peak oil and global warming (though the global warming issue finally appears to be close to steamrolling the deniers because the scientific evidence is so ironclad.) The deniers' agenda isn't so much to convince people that their own views are correct; rather, they seek to confuse the public into inaction in the same way that a coin in the fuse box confuses an electrical system into continuing to run higher than advisable amperages.
The trouble is people who put coins in the fuse box tend to get a rather nasty side effect: Their houses eventually burn down. By subverting the feedback we need concerning global warming, peak oil and a host of other environmental problems, those engaged in this public relations game of confusion risk letting the equivalent of a house fire occur in the biosphere. But, unlike a burning house from which one can conceivably escape, there will be no escape from the biosphere if it becomes uninhabitable--not even for the clever people at public relations firms and think tanks who stalled any action until it was too late to prevent the worst.
Wednesday, January 31, 2007
The best method of carbon sequestration
Now that the Bush administration has admitted something every thinking person already knows--that the world is warming--and now that the administration is fully behind the search for alternative fuels, we can expect more talk about the benefits of carbon sequestration.
For some people carbon sequestration offers the best of all possible futures. Presumably, we could continue to burn plentiful coal supplies long after oil and natural gas production declines. With the proper technology we could then capture the resulting carbon dioxide (the main greenhouse gas) before is it released into the atmosphere. This would supposedly give us the necessary breathing room to make a gradual transition to a renewable energy economy with a minimum of disruption.
The initial schemes for sequestering carbon such as placing it in caverns underground sound easy enough. But several concerns arise. Can leaks be avoided, not just immediately, but over a period that might last many thousands of years? Will the carbon dioxide react with the surfaces of the cavern opening up pathways to the air above? Such reactions have been noted, but whether they would ultimately result in substantial leaks remains unknown. Can all the existing drill holes into such a cavern be found, adequately sealed and monitored for an indefinite period of time? In other words, who will be babysitting these sites 100, 200, even 500 years from now?
One sequestration scheme already in use stores carbon dioxide in an aging oil field. The injected CO2 is used to force out the remaining hard-to-get oil. As clever as this seems, it's worth asking whether any net reduction in greenhouse gasses occurs since the recovered oil is ultimately burned.
Yet another land-based method involves injecting carbon dioxide into underground saline aquifers which will presumably never be used for human consumption. The supposed advantage of this method is that saline aquifers are widespread whereas suitable caverns and old oil fields are not nearly as widely or conveniently located. No one really knows whether this would result in permanent storage or whether the drill holes used to reach the aquifers or other holes intentionally or inadvertently drilled in the past or the future can be adequately monitored. Even the extent of an aquifer and its communication with other aquifers and with the surface are difficult to ascertain.
Another often touted method is to use the mineral serpentinite which will combine with CO2 from power plant flues to form a stable magnesium compound. Energy costs and storage problems could be substantial. And, while serpentinite is relatively abundant, it's not clear whether there would be enough of it with sufficient concentrations of magnesium to handle the projected need.
The open sea apparently offers even greater possibilities including pumping carbon dioxide to the bottom of the ocean. At great depths the pressure and low temperature would maintain the CO2 in liquid form which is heavier than water. Presumably the liquid carbon dioxide would simply hang out for millennia. The financial and energy costs of gathering and transporting the CO2, perhaps in liquid form using an elaborate pipeline system, seems to be the major hurdle. In addition, what we know about the bottom of the oceans is probably less than what we know about the nearest star. Can we really be sure that the CO2 will stay where we put it?
As I said above, all of this effort is focused on allowing us to use coal for the foreseeable future. The coal infrastructure is already in place, and it works to produce more than half the electricity in the United States. What is not considered is the use of coal to make liquid fuels which would replace those now provided by oil. Coal-to-liquids, as it is called, is a very carbon intensive process. Even if the carbon emitted from the coal-to-liquids refineries were captured and sequestered, there is currently no practical way to capture and sequester carbon from a moving vehicle. This is no small matter. In the United States vehicles create 27 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions.
Given the uncertainties, the costs and the alternatives available to us--conservation, efficiency, wind and solar--does it make sense to build a hugely expensive sequestration infrastructure that will essentially be a giant subsidy for the coal industry? Can we even be sure that exponentially increasing rates of coal production could be sustained? In other words, would we not be bringing forward a peak in coal production, perhaps by the middle of this century and then face all the same questions about a transition to a non-fossil fuel economy? Finally, given that we cannot guarantee the successful long-term sequestration of CO2, would it be moral to commit future generations to such a risky path?
When you think all this through, there is one method of carbon sequestration that stands head and shoulders above the rest. Leave the carbon in the ground to the greatest extent possible and get on with the project of creating a genuinely sustainable society.
For some people carbon sequestration offers the best of all possible futures. Presumably, we could continue to burn plentiful coal supplies long after oil and natural gas production declines. With the proper technology we could then capture the resulting carbon dioxide (the main greenhouse gas) before is it released into the atmosphere. This would supposedly give us the necessary breathing room to make a gradual transition to a renewable energy economy with a minimum of disruption.
The initial schemes for sequestering carbon such as placing it in caverns underground sound easy enough. But several concerns arise. Can leaks be avoided, not just immediately, but over a period that might last many thousands of years? Will the carbon dioxide react with the surfaces of the cavern opening up pathways to the air above? Such reactions have been noted, but whether they would ultimately result in substantial leaks remains unknown. Can all the existing drill holes into such a cavern be found, adequately sealed and monitored for an indefinite period of time? In other words, who will be babysitting these sites 100, 200, even 500 years from now?
One sequestration scheme already in use stores carbon dioxide in an aging oil field. The injected CO2 is used to force out the remaining hard-to-get oil. As clever as this seems, it's worth asking whether any net reduction in greenhouse gasses occurs since the recovered oil is ultimately burned.
Yet another land-based method involves injecting carbon dioxide into underground saline aquifers which will presumably never be used for human consumption. The supposed advantage of this method is that saline aquifers are widespread whereas suitable caverns and old oil fields are not nearly as widely or conveniently located. No one really knows whether this would result in permanent storage or whether the drill holes used to reach the aquifers or other holes intentionally or inadvertently drilled in the past or the future can be adequately monitored. Even the extent of an aquifer and its communication with other aquifers and with the surface are difficult to ascertain.
Another often touted method is to use the mineral serpentinite which will combine with CO2 from power plant flues to form a stable magnesium compound. Energy costs and storage problems could be substantial. And, while serpentinite is relatively abundant, it's not clear whether there would be enough of it with sufficient concentrations of magnesium to handle the projected need.
The open sea apparently offers even greater possibilities including pumping carbon dioxide to the bottom of the ocean. At great depths the pressure and low temperature would maintain the CO2 in liquid form which is heavier than water. Presumably the liquid carbon dioxide would simply hang out for millennia. The financial and energy costs of gathering and transporting the CO2, perhaps in liquid form using an elaborate pipeline system, seems to be the major hurdle. In addition, what we know about the bottom of the oceans is probably less than what we know about the nearest star. Can we really be sure that the CO2 will stay where we put it?
As I said above, all of this effort is focused on allowing us to use coal for the foreseeable future. The coal infrastructure is already in place, and it works to produce more than half the electricity in the United States. What is not considered is the use of coal to make liquid fuels which would replace those now provided by oil. Coal-to-liquids, as it is called, is a very carbon intensive process. Even if the carbon emitted from the coal-to-liquids refineries were captured and sequestered, there is currently no practical way to capture and sequester carbon from a moving vehicle. This is no small matter. In the United States vehicles create 27 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions.
Given the uncertainties, the costs and the alternatives available to us--conservation, efficiency, wind and solar--does it make sense to build a hugely expensive sequestration infrastructure that will essentially be a giant subsidy for the coal industry? Can we even be sure that exponentially increasing rates of coal production could be sustained? In other words, would we not be bringing forward a peak in coal production, perhaps by the middle of this century and then face all the same questions about a transition to a non-fossil fuel economy? Finally, given that we cannot guarantee the successful long-term sequestration of CO2, would it be moral to commit future generations to such a risky path?
When you think all this through, there is one method of carbon sequestration that stands head and shoulders above the rest. Leave the carbon in the ground to the greatest extent possible and get on with the project of creating a genuinely sustainable society.
Sunday, January 21, 2007
The unknown unknowns
As we know, there are known knowns. There are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns. That is to say, we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns, the ones we don't know we don't know.
--Donald Rumsfeld
Former U. S. Secretary of Defense
It ain't what you don't know that gets you in trouble. It's what you know for sure that just ain't so.
--Mark Twain
We are frequently assailed with the notion that knowledge is doubling every n-years and that the interval between doublings is shrinking with each doubling. We are even told that knowledge will someday be increasing at a rate that is so fast it will represent a distinct break in human history. After this turning point, often referred to as the singularity, machines will be smarter than humans and launch human society into an unprecedented orgy of invention and progress.
An antidote to this kind of thinking is David Orr's, Ecological Literacy, a compilation of essays that remain as fresh and profound today as they were when they were published in 1992. While Orr would not deny the proliferation of knowledge, he posits an equal and opposite reaction. With each doubling of knowledge, we get a doubling of ignorance.
What does he mean? The example he cites is the discovery of CFCs (chlorofluorocarbons) in the 1930s. These substances turned out to be marvelous as refrigerants and spray-can propellants. They are nontoxic, noncorrosive, nonflammable and odorless. As we learned more about them, we found new uses in manufacturing and as cleaning solvents. Our knowledge was increasing. Also increasing was our ignorance of the consequences of using CFCs. Only in the early 1970s did researchers discover that CFCs, once discharged into the air, make their way into the upper atmosphere and destroy the ozone layer. In fact, a large hole opened in the ozone layer in the mid-1980s giving dramatic testimony to the effects of CFCs.
But the discovery of the mechanism behind the ozone hole might very well have come too late had it not been for a lone scientist who wondered what happened to CFCs after they entered the atmosphere. It is a only matter of great good fortune that F. Sherwood Rowland obtained a grant in 1973 to find the answer. There was, in fact, no systematic search underway into the side effects of CFCs, and those side effects could have easily eluded our notice. Our growing ignorance came very close to imperilling all plant and animal life on the planet.
Similarly, our ignorance about the dangers and intractable problems of nuclear waste grew up in tandem with our expanding knowledge and application of nuclear power. The problem of what to do with the waste remains unsolved.
Our understanding of species loss comes in at a trickle as species are annihilated by the thousands every year. In a conversation the other day with a friend who counts birds at our local nature center, he made a moral argument for biodiversity. Don't the other organisms on the Earth have a right to exist as much as we do?
Forget the moral argument, I responded. All you need to do is ask yourself (and others) whether it is wise to wipe out species at the current colossal rate when we haven't even discovered some of the species we are wiping out and when we don't know the effect of such a bloodbath on the future viability of the human race? What if, without knowing it, we are wiping out species that are essential to our very survival? Is it worth the risk to continue as we have?
Also discussed in Ecological Literacy is a rather revolting scheme proposed by researchers at the United States Department of Agriculture that would ostensibly increase the carrying capacity and sustainability of farmland through the use of perennials. Orr describes the plan as follows:
Farms would no longer grow wheat, tomatoes, or corn, but rather cellulose from perennials having the attributes of 'tulip poplar, kenaf and a nitrogen fixing symbiont.' Cellulose would then be converted into syrups and transported by tank car or slurry line to food factories near population centers where they would be reconstituted into steaks, french fries, and zucchini with 'aesthetically necessary secondary metabolites, e.g., flavor compounds and pigments' added. Yum.
Orr doubts that such a system could actually be sustainable. And if it did fail for technological, political or ecological reasons, who would be left who knows how to grow actual food? Our knowledge about food and farming would be declining as our knowledge about how to grow cellulosic substitutes expanded, all without any assurance that the new system could be maintained indefinitely.
For most of us it is an article of faith that knowledge is expanding very rapidly. And many of us know for sure that this is always and in every way a good thing. David Orr has his doubts:
The belief that we are currently undergoing an explosion of knowledge is a piece of highly misleading and self-serving hype. The fact is that some kinds of knowledge are growing while others are in decline. Among the losses are vast amounts of genetic information from the wanton destruction of biological diversity, due in no small part to knowledge put to destructive purposes. We are losing, as David Ehrenfeld has observed, whole sections of the university curriculum in areas such as taxonomy, systematics, and natural history. We are also losing the intimate and productive knowledge of our landscape....On balance, I think, we are becoming more ignorant because we are losing knowledge about how to inhabit our places on the planet sustainably....
Wisdom, Orr writes, is in part knowing the limits of our knowledge. Wisdom implies a level of humility which the human race has thus far failed to demonstrate. Wisdom means accepting that there will always be unknown unknowns and acting accordingly.
Sunday, January 14, 2007
Deluded
It's hard to imagine a week more filled with delusion about Iraq than the one just concluded. But, Iraq never ceases to surprise, so one must hold out the possibility that the delusion could grow even grander.
First, there was the notion that a soon-to-be-adopted Iraqi law designed to open the country's oilfields to foreign companies will somehow lead to a flood of foreign investment. A more measured evaluation of the prospects for such investment was published in The Independent. In fact, it's hard to see how anyone could currently operate an oil exploration program inside Iraq safely.
Even after the Iraq civil war ends--and it will end someday though that day is probably many years away--the government which controls Iraq may not be the one now in charge or may, in fact, turn out to be three governments controlling a partitioned Iraq. Even if a unified Iraq survives, what would prevent it from changing the laws governing oil production, revoking existing contracts or simply renationalizing the oil industry? An Iraq at peace may find itself capable of doing any of these with the broad support of its people. Certainly, some will say that a continued U. S. military presence in Iraq would cow the country into honoring any agreements made under the law. But who now believes, given emerging political and ongoing fiscal realities in the United States, that the U. S. military will remain in Iraq to the conclusion of the civil war and for many years after that?
To top it off there is the specious claim that Iraq has 115 billion barrels of oil waiting to be drained from the ground. Only a few people have bothered to look beneath the surface of this claim to find the reality. In the 1980s OPEC, of which Iraq was a member, was contemplating linking production quotas to reserves. Some OPEC members reported miraculous reserve increases without any equally miraculous exploration efforts. Between 1987 and 1988 Iraq's reserves jumped from 47 billion barrels to 100 billion barrels. Such reserves are now euphemistically referred to as "political reserves."
The second delusion of the week was that President Bush's plan to add 20,000 U. S. soldiers to forces already in Iraq would somehow bring stability to the country. Not many people were buying this delusion including many U. S. senators of both parties. When then army chief Gen. Eric Shinseki predicted before the war that several hundred thousand soldiers would be needed to pacify Iraq, he was pilloried by the Bush Administration. But, that number is probably closer to what it would take to do the job. Even if the American public and the Congress had the stomach for such a huge new deployment, as a practical matter it is impossible. The U. S. military is having trouble maintaining the force levels it has already deployed.
The third delusion of the week comes in the form of an article in the January 15 edition of The New Yorker about Democratic presidential candidates and their foreign policy positions. The word "oil" appears exactly once and that's inside a quote from the mouth of former North Carolina senator and presidential candidate John Edwards talking about our addiction to oil.
The varied views of Democratic frontrunners--Edwards, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama--on America's national security are detailed in the piece with discussion of Iraq and Iran featured prominently. But, the author, Jeffrey Goldberg, who seems to be an intelligent and well-connected reporter, never once mentions oil while analyzing the U. S. relationship with either country. Perhaps none of the people he interviewed except Edwards mentioned the issue. But, one would think that Goldberg would have asked about oil, especially if the candidates appeared to be avoiding the issue and especially since Iraq and Iran are such large oil exporters.
Understanding the delusions under which America's leaders and media suffer allows us to see why the most obvious solution to America's predicament in Iraq goes unmentioned, namely, a vast crash program to free America from fossil fuels, especially oil, in favor of renewable, low-carbon sources of energy. This should be combined with an emergency effort in energy conservation and efficiency.
As long as Americans and their leaders believe that there is plenty of oil to be had; that getting access to it is really only a matter of applying military force and market principles; and that national security isn't inextricably bound up with the way we think about and use energy, the country will fall further and further behind in making an energy transition that is being forced upon us by the limits of fossil fuels themselves.
First, there was the notion that a soon-to-be-adopted Iraqi law designed to open the country's oilfields to foreign companies will somehow lead to a flood of foreign investment. A more measured evaluation of the prospects for such investment was published in The Independent. In fact, it's hard to see how anyone could currently operate an oil exploration program inside Iraq safely.
Even after the Iraq civil war ends--and it will end someday though that day is probably many years away--the government which controls Iraq may not be the one now in charge or may, in fact, turn out to be three governments controlling a partitioned Iraq. Even if a unified Iraq survives, what would prevent it from changing the laws governing oil production, revoking existing contracts or simply renationalizing the oil industry? An Iraq at peace may find itself capable of doing any of these with the broad support of its people. Certainly, some will say that a continued U. S. military presence in Iraq would cow the country into honoring any agreements made under the law. But who now believes, given emerging political and ongoing fiscal realities in the United States, that the U. S. military will remain in Iraq to the conclusion of the civil war and for many years after that?
To top it off there is the specious claim that Iraq has 115 billion barrels of oil waiting to be drained from the ground. Only a few people have bothered to look beneath the surface of this claim to find the reality. In the 1980s OPEC, of which Iraq was a member, was contemplating linking production quotas to reserves. Some OPEC members reported miraculous reserve increases without any equally miraculous exploration efforts. Between 1987 and 1988 Iraq's reserves jumped from 47 billion barrels to 100 billion barrels. Such reserves are now euphemistically referred to as "political reserves."
The second delusion of the week was that President Bush's plan to add 20,000 U. S. soldiers to forces already in Iraq would somehow bring stability to the country. Not many people were buying this delusion including many U. S. senators of both parties. When then army chief Gen. Eric Shinseki predicted before the war that several hundred thousand soldiers would be needed to pacify Iraq, he was pilloried by the Bush Administration. But, that number is probably closer to what it would take to do the job. Even if the American public and the Congress had the stomach for such a huge new deployment, as a practical matter it is impossible. The U. S. military is having trouble maintaining the force levels it has already deployed.
The third delusion of the week comes in the form of an article in the January 15 edition of The New Yorker about Democratic presidential candidates and their foreign policy positions. The word "oil" appears exactly once and that's inside a quote from the mouth of former North Carolina senator and presidential candidate John Edwards talking about our addiction to oil.
The varied views of Democratic frontrunners--Edwards, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama--on America's national security are detailed in the piece with discussion of Iraq and Iran featured prominently. But, the author, Jeffrey Goldberg, who seems to be an intelligent and well-connected reporter, never once mentions oil while analyzing the U. S. relationship with either country. Perhaps none of the people he interviewed except Edwards mentioned the issue. But, one would think that Goldberg would have asked about oil, especially if the candidates appeared to be avoiding the issue and especially since Iraq and Iran are such large oil exporters.
Understanding the delusions under which America's leaders and media suffer allows us to see why the most obvious solution to America's predicament in Iraq goes unmentioned, namely, a vast crash program to free America from fossil fuels, especially oil, in favor of renewable, low-carbon sources of energy. This should be combined with an emergency effort in energy conservation and efficiency.
As long as Americans and their leaders believe that there is plenty of oil to be had; that getting access to it is really only a matter of applying military force and market principles; and that national security isn't inextricably bound up with the way we think about and use energy, the country will fall further and further behind in making an energy transition that is being forced upon us by the limits of fossil fuels themselves.
Monday, January 08, 2007
Yes, but...
Perhaps the most widely heard response to the peak oil argument is that the world has lots of oil left. To those who understand the peak oil problem, this is a non sequitur. The typical counterargument begins with "Yes, but..." followed by a lengthy disquisition on the difference between stocks and flows of a resource, the geology of oil wells, and the various types of oil.
Often what the listener thinks he or she hears is that the cornucopian thinkers are right. But, less often does the listener understand enough to take the problem seriously.
Herein lies a critical communications problem. Perhaps the most crucial argument to the peak oil debate--that there is a huge difference between how much of a resource is theoretically available on planet Earth and how rapidly we can extract it--is too difficult to explain the way we have been explaining it. Perhaps we need some new approaches for explaining this and other aspects of peak oil.
To start let's look at the obstacles we face. First, the public wants to believe that men (and it is mostly men) in nice suits with PhDs and expertise in the oil business know what they are talking about. And, it wants to believe that the government's experts wouldn't overlook something as important as oil supplies; and sure enough, those private and government experts predict that all will be well for at least three decades.
Second, most of the public believes that even if something is increasingly difficult to do--for instance, pull oil out of the Earth's crust--technology will find a way to overcome the difficulty.
Third, the public has been largely conditioned to believe that technology will find substitutes for oil, introduce them over time, and provide a more or less seamless transition to a new energy economy.
Fourth, most people want to believe all is well because that belief is the most convenient one for the lives they now lead. Most people do not regard change, especially radical change, as good.
Fifth, most people find that the vast majority of those around them seem unconcerned about peak oil. This is an extremely powerful influence. People will ask themselves, "If this is such a critical problem, why do so few people seem alarmed?" (What's missing in their thinking, of course, is that this lack of concern could be the result of so few people knowing anything about peak oil.)
Trying to make progress against these assumptions and the mindset that goes with them seems insuperable. But, those who grasp the peak oil problem usually feel that they must at least try.
Let's take each obstacle in turn. First, it's tempting to trash such "men in suits" as Daniel Yergin. I've done it myself. But turning what is arguably one the most critical issues we now face into a discussion of personalities and questionable motives may only confuse any newcomer to the issue. Peak oil and its ramifications are a highly complex story. It is difficult for most people to come to an informed opinion about that story quickly.
And, rather than attempt a comprehensive explanation of, say, stocks and flows as mentioned above, the aim I think at first should be to plant doubts about the "official story." Discuss a few key problems such as phantom, unverified reserves in the Middle East; rapid unforeseen declines in North Sea oil production; and falling new discoveries. This opens up avenues of inquiry for listeners. What those listeners subsequently discover on their own has much more impact than anything they are force-fed. Pressing the peak oil issue too hard will inevitably create resistance.
Second, it's hard to refute the notion that technology will solve our energy problems. Those who lived through the previous oil crises learned that oil crises pass and oil prices fall. New efficiencies supposedly solved those crises, and they will solve the next one. That bit of learning will someday turn out to be a poor guide. But most people tend to extrapolate the recent past into the future. Trying to make complex arguments about energy technologies that have failed to advance as predicted--fusion energy comes to mind--will probably only confuse a newcomer.
Third, the notion that the marketplace will allow substitutes for oil to emerge and provide a seamless transition to a new energy economy seems to be already validating itself in the form of ethanol and biodiesel production. Talk of hydrogen and liquid fuel from coal is everywhere in the news. I can find no shortcut to respond to the misleading media coverage surrounding these developments. Responding implies the enormous task of creating energy literacy among the public. Such concepts as net energy are as critical to public understanding as they are alien to the public mind. Explaining the implications of exponential growth is a must. Perhaps to start we can reduce these ideas to a couple of sentences: 1) It takes energy to get energy and 2) the economy cannot grow larger than the Earth. But we are still obliged to elaborate. When it comes to energy literacy, slogans, in my view, simply won't get it.
Fourth, the fact that people want to believe things that will allow them to continue living as they now live is perhaps the most difficult obstacle to overcome. This behavior is not based on evidence and can run completely contrary to the evidence. Besides this, catastrophic, world-changing discontinuities don't come along very often, at least not for everyone at once. My first suggestion is to be careful about definitive and exacting predictions. No one knows the future. To say this is to say also that the so-called experts, the "men in suits," don't know it either.
Here the opportunity is to talk about risks. We routinely insure against risks of all kinds, even ones that are very rare such as house fires. We do this because of the severity rather than the frequency of such events. Peak oil falls into this category because its consequences could be very severe. We don't know how severe and we don't know exactly when it will come. But, wouldn't it be a good idea to take out some insurance, just to be safe? This is a line of argument that can help people relate to something they already know and can help them see a response in the context of how they address risk in their everyday lives.
Fifth, the fact that few people are concerned about something doesn't mean it's not important. Critical issues are not the same as fashionable issues. Big problems almost always start out small or at least start out poorly understood. AIDS, when it first appeared in the United States, seemed like a problem largely confined to a small segment of the gay population. Before Rachel Carson wrote Silent Spring, the issue of toxic substances in the environment was almost completely absent from public discussion.
Obviously, as the peak oil issue makes more headway in the mainstream media, the feeling that it can't really be important will start to fade. But, for now you might invite people into awareness of peak oil by admitting that very few people understand it. I'm sorry to say that people like to believe they are joining an exclusive club, and right now, those who understand the implications of peak oil constitute a club that remains far too exclusive.
None of this is meant to be the final word on what to say after you say, "Yes, but..." Rather, it is merely an attempt to suggest some possible approaches and to elicit comments on how to spread the word about peak oil effectively.
I eagerly await your feedback.
Often what the listener thinks he or she hears is that the cornucopian thinkers are right. But, less often does the listener understand enough to take the problem seriously.
Herein lies a critical communications problem. Perhaps the most crucial argument to the peak oil debate--that there is a huge difference between how much of a resource is theoretically available on planet Earth and how rapidly we can extract it--is too difficult to explain the way we have been explaining it. Perhaps we need some new approaches for explaining this and other aspects of peak oil.
To start let's look at the obstacles we face. First, the public wants to believe that men (and it is mostly men) in nice suits with PhDs and expertise in the oil business know what they are talking about. And, it wants to believe that the government's experts wouldn't overlook something as important as oil supplies; and sure enough, those private and government experts predict that all will be well for at least three decades.
Second, most of the public believes that even if something is increasingly difficult to do--for instance, pull oil out of the Earth's crust--technology will find a way to overcome the difficulty.
Third, the public has been largely conditioned to believe that technology will find substitutes for oil, introduce them over time, and provide a more or less seamless transition to a new energy economy.
Fourth, most people want to believe all is well because that belief is the most convenient one for the lives they now lead. Most people do not regard change, especially radical change, as good.
Fifth, most people find that the vast majority of those around them seem unconcerned about peak oil. This is an extremely powerful influence. People will ask themselves, "If this is such a critical problem, why do so few people seem alarmed?" (What's missing in their thinking, of course, is that this lack of concern could be the result of so few people knowing anything about peak oil.)
Trying to make progress against these assumptions and the mindset that goes with them seems insuperable. But, those who grasp the peak oil problem usually feel that they must at least try.
Let's take each obstacle in turn. First, it's tempting to trash such "men in suits" as Daniel Yergin. I've done it myself. But turning what is arguably one the most critical issues we now face into a discussion of personalities and questionable motives may only confuse any newcomer to the issue. Peak oil and its ramifications are a highly complex story. It is difficult for most people to come to an informed opinion about that story quickly.
And, rather than attempt a comprehensive explanation of, say, stocks and flows as mentioned above, the aim I think at first should be to plant doubts about the "official story." Discuss a few key problems such as phantom, unverified reserves in the Middle East; rapid unforeseen declines in North Sea oil production; and falling new discoveries. This opens up avenues of inquiry for listeners. What those listeners subsequently discover on their own has much more impact than anything they are force-fed. Pressing the peak oil issue too hard will inevitably create resistance.
Second, it's hard to refute the notion that technology will solve our energy problems. Those who lived through the previous oil crises learned that oil crises pass and oil prices fall. New efficiencies supposedly solved those crises, and they will solve the next one. That bit of learning will someday turn out to be a poor guide. But most people tend to extrapolate the recent past into the future. Trying to make complex arguments about energy technologies that have failed to advance as predicted--fusion energy comes to mind--will probably only confuse a newcomer.
Third, the notion that the marketplace will allow substitutes for oil to emerge and provide a seamless transition to a new energy economy seems to be already validating itself in the form of ethanol and biodiesel production. Talk of hydrogen and liquid fuel from coal is everywhere in the news. I can find no shortcut to respond to the misleading media coverage surrounding these developments. Responding implies the enormous task of creating energy literacy among the public. Such concepts as net energy are as critical to public understanding as they are alien to the public mind. Explaining the implications of exponential growth is a must. Perhaps to start we can reduce these ideas to a couple of sentences: 1) It takes energy to get energy and 2) the economy cannot grow larger than the Earth. But we are still obliged to elaborate. When it comes to energy literacy, slogans, in my view, simply won't get it.
Fourth, the fact that people want to believe things that will allow them to continue living as they now live is perhaps the most difficult obstacle to overcome. This behavior is not based on evidence and can run completely contrary to the evidence. Besides this, catastrophic, world-changing discontinuities don't come along very often, at least not for everyone at once. My first suggestion is to be careful about definitive and exacting predictions. No one knows the future. To say this is to say also that the so-called experts, the "men in suits," don't know it either.
Here the opportunity is to talk about risks. We routinely insure against risks of all kinds, even ones that are very rare such as house fires. We do this because of the severity rather than the frequency of such events. Peak oil falls into this category because its consequences could be very severe. We don't know how severe and we don't know exactly when it will come. But, wouldn't it be a good idea to take out some insurance, just to be safe? This is a line of argument that can help people relate to something they already know and can help them see a response in the context of how they address risk in their everyday lives.
Fifth, the fact that few people are concerned about something doesn't mean it's not important. Critical issues are not the same as fashionable issues. Big problems almost always start out small or at least start out poorly understood. AIDS, when it first appeared in the United States, seemed like a problem largely confined to a small segment of the gay population. Before Rachel Carson wrote Silent Spring, the issue of toxic substances in the environment was almost completely absent from public discussion.
Obviously, as the peak oil issue makes more headway in the mainstream media, the feeling that it can't really be important will start to fade. But, for now you might invite people into awareness of peak oil by admitting that very few people understand it. I'm sorry to say that people like to believe they are joining an exclusive club, and right now, those who understand the implications of peak oil constitute a club that remains far too exclusive.
None of this is meant to be the final word on what to say after you say, "Yes, but..." Rather, it is merely an attempt to suggest some possible approaches and to elicit comments on how to spread the word about peak oil effectively.
I eagerly await your feedback.
Friday, December 22, 2006
Happy Holidays--On Vacation
I will be on vacation until early January and expect to post again on January 7. Meanwhile, I hope you will visit these excellent sites:
Energy Bulletin
Global Public Media
Peak Oil News & Message Boards
The Oil Drum
RealClimate
Peak Energy (Australia)
Life After the Oil Crash News
PowerSwitch
For French language versions of selected articles from Resource Insights and other sites, try the newly established French peak oil site, Test.
Energy Bulletin
Global Public Media
Peak Oil News & Message Boards
The Oil Drum
RealClimate
Peak Energy (Australia)
Life After the Oil Crash News
PowerSwitch
For French language versions of selected articles from Resource Insights and other sites, try the newly established French peak oil site, Test.
Sunday, December 17, 2006
Cuba's Strange Path
Cuba has become the poster child for a transition away from an agricultural economy based on fossil fuel inputs and for a society focused on self-sufficiency. Strangely, it may owe much of its success in this regard to its relative backwardness and its isolation from the world community. The implications for so-called modern industrial countries in a world approaching peak oil couldn't be more striking. To understand this, it is worth briefly tracing Cuba's path since the Cuban revolution.
After the 1959 revolution Cuba increasingly embraced industrial farming techniques that were already widespread in other countries. It was the modern thing to do. Rationalize farming along industrial lines so that the country could grow more crops for export. Inputs such as diesel fuel, fertilizer and pesticides were cheap. Cuba had become an ally of the Soviet Union which supported the country with subsidized oil and agricultural chemicals drawn from the Soviets' vast hydrocarbon reserves. Cuban plans to create a more diversified agriculture were abandoned.
There was one small exception. The military believed that Cuba could at any time suffer a naval blockade. Cuban military leaders realized that one of the key threats of such a blockade would be the loss of access to pharmaceuticals, almost all of which were imported. So the military set up a special laboratory devoted to herbal medicine which among other things gathered information about the already widespread use of herbal medicine within Cuba. This narrow effort would prove prescient.
After the Soviet block began to collapse in 1989, Cuba suddenly found itself denied the subsidized fuel and fertilizer it had been used to. By 1993 economic activity had plunged by almost half, a drop far worse that what the United States experienced during The Great Depression. Cuba's guaranteed markets and preferential pricing for its sugar (pricing that was on average 5.4 times the world price) had vanished and with them the money to import many of its necessities including fuel.
The country struggled to feed itself as its export-oriented agriculture based on fossil fuels had to be transformed into one that could feed the Cuban people with few fossil fuel inputs. Some visionary members of the country's Ministry of Agriculture suggested that the low-input, organic methods they had been experimenting with for years be introduced on a broad scale and that agricultural output be directed toward local consumption. This tumultuous time became known as the Special Period in Peacetime. Few countries came to Cuba's aid and the United States even tightened its embargo.
Today, the agricultural economy has recovered becoming largely organic and focused on satisfying local needs. This has made Cuba self-sufficient in almost all foodstuffs. It has significantly reduced the country's need for fuel and fertilizers. The plant-based medicines which the military had carefully studied for years in its special laboratory have become a mainstay of Cuban medicine.
While the number of private automobiles has diminished, a new public transportation system thrives. Many people have returned to the land and are making reasonably good livelihoods as farmers. The city of Havana has become one big urban food garden.
The oft-cited scientific prowess of Cuban society certainly had something to do with the remarkable and rapid transformation in Cuban agriculture. Cuba is said to have only 2 percent of Latin America's population, but 11 percent of its scientists. But to whom did those scientists turn for many of their clues about how to effect such a grand transformation? They turned to the country's many campesinos. These small farmers had continued to farm using animal power and without fossil fuel-based fertilizers and pesticides. In effect, they had informally preserved a vast bank of knowledge about how to conduct organic, nonmotorized farming on the island of Cuba. They became important partners in teaching others how to make the transition to low-input agriculture.
Other characteristics of Cuban society also seemed to have eased the transition to a low-energy economy. While health and education standards consistently improved during the rule of Fidel Castro, the country never attained a modern consumer culture, a development that was certainly stymied by America's embargo and Cuba's resulting isolation from normal world trade flows. In transportation, many of the cars which remain on the road today--and there are far fewer than before the crisis--date from before 1959. Modern car culture never became widespread either.
Hugo Chavez's subsidized oil exports to Cuba may tempt the country to return to a petroleum-based path. But for now it has enabled the Cubans to forego the need for large additional foreign investment, investment that would link it ever more tightly with a global trade system that destroys self-sufficiency and sustainability. (What ought to be of great concern is the island's increasing dependence on foreign tourism which is itself a product of the continuing availability of cheap oil and the cheap transportation it fuels. The government inexplicably maintains a focus on investment in this area as if future oil availability were merely a local rather than a worldwide issue.)
The more modern parts of Cuban society, its health system and its education system, were also key to the transition. Free and universal health care provided to the Cuban population helped to avert what could have been a public health disaster during the Special Period. It is claimed that the the average Cuban lost 20 pounds during this time. And, yet no widespread health disaster took place. A free education system has enabled Cuba to train more scientists and doctors than it can itself use. Many doctors, for example, work abroad. But the surfeit of scientists has allowed Cuba to do practical research that has been exceptionally useful in the transition to more sustainable agriculture.
There are echoes of the Cuban situation in the simultaneous decline of its old patron, the Soviet Union. Dmitry Orlov recently posted a slide presentation that makes the case that the people of the former Soviet states were actually better able to withstand the economic implosion which followed the collapse of the Soviet Union in part because of their relatively less developed economy. Please understand that what passes for development these days are the following: high private ownership of housing; private transportation, especially private automobiles; suburban sprawl; shrinking and deteriorating public transportation systems; just-in-time inventory systems; outsourcing of critical manufacturing and food production; and a ruthless focus on individual financial achievement to the detriment of solid human relations and community responsibility.
All of this, of course, has important implications for countries that meet the definition of modern industrial societies, but especially for the United States in the event of a peak oil induced decline. In Cuba every vocational student now learns to grow food organically. In the United States very few people know anything about how to grow food of any type; and, Americans have become ever more dependent on fast food restaurants and food processors to do food preparation for them. The number of those with knowledge of organic techniques is increasing, but information on animal power in agriculture is now the province of a tiny cadre of animal power enthusiasts.
Health care (except for the elderly and the poor, but not the working poor) remains a largely private affair. More than 40 million Americans have no health insurance. The health care industry is just that, an industry now largely bound by the same profit incentives that govern any privately owned corporation. The hospital as a public utility, for example, has been almost completely lost. It is hard to see how an equitable system of treatment could be worked out under extreme conditions when it cannot be worked out under conditions of great affluence.
The American transportation system, of course, relies very heavily on private automobiles. As Orlov points out in his presentation, most Russians live in compact cities with public transportation. The collapse of the Soviet system forced no changes in this pattern. It is difficult to see how the American system of sprawl could endure a prolonged decline in oil supplies.
In places such as Cuba and Russia education remains free. The response to rising costs in education and declining public support for it in the United States has been to transfer costs to students and their families. In the resource-challenged era to come, will Americans have the vision to invest more in their education system in order to maintain the levels of competence needed to run society? There is the separate question of reforming that preparation for the kinds of challenges we will actually face. At this point it is hard to imagine both a push for more money in education and a revamping of the curriculum to include, for example, organic gardening.
I could go on. But all of this is said to point out that the supposedly advanced systems of modern industrial civilization float on a sea of cheap hydrocarbons. Once that sea begins to recede, these systems fall into immediate peril. Those whose systems have relatively less need for such hydrocarbons will by definition be less vulnerable. It is for that reason that Cuba's strange path may have much to teach us.
_____________________________________
The book, Sustainable Agriculture and Resistance: Transforming Food Production in Cuba, and the film documentary, The Power of Community: How Cuba Survived Peak Oil, were invaluable resources for understanding Cuba's response to declining oil availability.
After the 1959 revolution Cuba increasingly embraced industrial farming techniques that were already widespread in other countries. It was the modern thing to do. Rationalize farming along industrial lines so that the country could grow more crops for export. Inputs such as diesel fuel, fertilizer and pesticides were cheap. Cuba had become an ally of the Soviet Union which supported the country with subsidized oil and agricultural chemicals drawn from the Soviets' vast hydrocarbon reserves. Cuban plans to create a more diversified agriculture were abandoned.
There was one small exception. The military believed that Cuba could at any time suffer a naval blockade. Cuban military leaders realized that one of the key threats of such a blockade would be the loss of access to pharmaceuticals, almost all of which were imported. So the military set up a special laboratory devoted to herbal medicine which among other things gathered information about the already widespread use of herbal medicine within Cuba. This narrow effort would prove prescient.
After the Soviet block began to collapse in 1989, Cuba suddenly found itself denied the subsidized fuel and fertilizer it had been used to. By 1993 economic activity had plunged by almost half, a drop far worse that what the United States experienced during The Great Depression. Cuba's guaranteed markets and preferential pricing for its sugar (pricing that was on average 5.4 times the world price) had vanished and with them the money to import many of its necessities including fuel.
The country struggled to feed itself as its export-oriented agriculture based on fossil fuels had to be transformed into one that could feed the Cuban people with few fossil fuel inputs. Some visionary members of the country's Ministry of Agriculture suggested that the low-input, organic methods they had been experimenting with for years be introduced on a broad scale and that agricultural output be directed toward local consumption. This tumultuous time became known as the Special Period in Peacetime. Few countries came to Cuba's aid and the United States even tightened its embargo.
Today, the agricultural economy has recovered becoming largely organic and focused on satisfying local needs. This has made Cuba self-sufficient in almost all foodstuffs. It has significantly reduced the country's need for fuel and fertilizers. The plant-based medicines which the military had carefully studied for years in its special laboratory have become a mainstay of Cuban medicine.
While the number of private automobiles has diminished, a new public transportation system thrives. Many people have returned to the land and are making reasonably good livelihoods as farmers. The city of Havana has become one big urban food garden.
The oft-cited scientific prowess of Cuban society certainly had something to do with the remarkable and rapid transformation in Cuban agriculture. Cuba is said to have only 2 percent of Latin America's population, but 11 percent of its scientists. But to whom did those scientists turn for many of their clues about how to effect such a grand transformation? They turned to the country's many campesinos. These small farmers had continued to farm using animal power and without fossil fuel-based fertilizers and pesticides. In effect, they had informally preserved a vast bank of knowledge about how to conduct organic, nonmotorized farming on the island of Cuba. They became important partners in teaching others how to make the transition to low-input agriculture.
Other characteristics of Cuban society also seemed to have eased the transition to a low-energy economy. While health and education standards consistently improved during the rule of Fidel Castro, the country never attained a modern consumer culture, a development that was certainly stymied by America's embargo and Cuba's resulting isolation from normal world trade flows. In transportation, many of the cars which remain on the road today--and there are far fewer than before the crisis--date from before 1959. Modern car culture never became widespread either.
Hugo Chavez's subsidized oil exports to Cuba may tempt the country to return to a petroleum-based path. But for now it has enabled the Cubans to forego the need for large additional foreign investment, investment that would link it ever more tightly with a global trade system that destroys self-sufficiency and sustainability. (What ought to be of great concern is the island's increasing dependence on foreign tourism which is itself a product of the continuing availability of cheap oil and the cheap transportation it fuels. The government inexplicably maintains a focus on investment in this area as if future oil availability were merely a local rather than a worldwide issue.)
The more modern parts of Cuban society, its health system and its education system, were also key to the transition. Free and universal health care provided to the Cuban population helped to avert what could have been a public health disaster during the Special Period. It is claimed that the the average Cuban lost 20 pounds during this time. And, yet no widespread health disaster took place. A free education system has enabled Cuba to train more scientists and doctors than it can itself use. Many doctors, for example, work abroad. But the surfeit of scientists has allowed Cuba to do practical research that has been exceptionally useful in the transition to more sustainable agriculture.
There are echoes of the Cuban situation in the simultaneous decline of its old patron, the Soviet Union. Dmitry Orlov recently posted a slide presentation that makes the case that the people of the former Soviet states were actually better able to withstand the economic implosion which followed the collapse of the Soviet Union in part because of their relatively less developed economy. Please understand that what passes for development these days are the following: high private ownership of housing; private transportation, especially private automobiles; suburban sprawl; shrinking and deteriorating public transportation systems; just-in-time inventory systems; outsourcing of critical manufacturing and food production; and a ruthless focus on individual financial achievement to the detriment of solid human relations and community responsibility.
All of this, of course, has important implications for countries that meet the definition of modern industrial societies, but especially for the United States in the event of a peak oil induced decline. In Cuba every vocational student now learns to grow food organically. In the United States very few people know anything about how to grow food of any type; and, Americans have become ever more dependent on fast food restaurants and food processors to do food preparation for them. The number of those with knowledge of organic techniques is increasing, but information on animal power in agriculture is now the province of a tiny cadre of animal power enthusiasts.
Health care (except for the elderly and the poor, but not the working poor) remains a largely private affair. More than 40 million Americans have no health insurance. The health care industry is just that, an industry now largely bound by the same profit incentives that govern any privately owned corporation. The hospital as a public utility, for example, has been almost completely lost. It is hard to see how an equitable system of treatment could be worked out under extreme conditions when it cannot be worked out under conditions of great affluence.
The American transportation system, of course, relies very heavily on private automobiles. As Orlov points out in his presentation, most Russians live in compact cities with public transportation. The collapse of the Soviet system forced no changes in this pattern. It is difficult to see how the American system of sprawl could endure a prolonged decline in oil supplies.
In places such as Cuba and Russia education remains free. The response to rising costs in education and declining public support for it in the United States has been to transfer costs to students and their families. In the resource-challenged era to come, will Americans have the vision to invest more in their education system in order to maintain the levels of competence needed to run society? There is the separate question of reforming that preparation for the kinds of challenges we will actually face. At this point it is hard to imagine both a push for more money in education and a revamping of the curriculum to include, for example, organic gardening.
I could go on. But all of this is said to point out that the supposedly advanced systems of modern industrial civilization float on a sea of cheap hydrocarbons. Once that sea begins to recede, these systems fall into immediate peril. Those whose systems have relatively less need for such hydrocarbons will by definition be less vulnerable. It is for that reason that Cuba's strange path may have much to teach us.
_____________________________________
The book, Sustainable Agriculture and Resistance: Transforming Food Production in Cuba, and the film documentary, The Power of Community: How Cuba Survived Peak Oil, were invaluable resources for understanding Cuba's response to declining oil availability.
Sunday, December 10, 2006
Mavens, mavens everywhere...
As the long somnolent American public began to wake up in large numbers to the dangers of global warming in the past year, those in the peak oil movement looked on in amazement. The first reaction for many might have been, "It's about time!" The second reaction might have been, "What are we doing wrong? Peak oil should be right up there with global warming in the list of dangers that humanity faces."
Global warming has reached the so-called tipping point. That doesn't mean it's clear sailing from here. The next step--what to do about it--is sure to include one bruising battle after another. But peak oil remains unknown to the vast majority of the public. For why this is so, Malcolm Gladwell's bestselling book, The Tipping Point, may offer some insight.
For those who haven't read the book, Gladwell is studying the anatomy of the "social epidemic." How do ideas, fashions, new modes of behavior, and other social changes spread in society? He uses the medical epidemiological model as a starting point. Ideas and fashions spread like communicable diseases from one person to another. In short, he analyzes how word-of-mouth can create social change.
Gladwell puts the main movers in this process into three categories: connectors, mavens and salesmen. Connectors are people with large Rolodexes, but who also have worked or volunteered in many different settings. They often bring people together at parties from various walks of life and are constantly referring people to one another. Not surprisingly, they tend to be extroverts.
Mavens are experts. But, their recognized expertise doesn't necessarily stem from their formal training. Simply stated, they are people found in every community that others look to for advice on a particular topic. Gladwell profiles a Texas business school professor whose maven status comes not from his job, but from his intense interest in anything one might buy. As Gladwell points out, if the professor were a plumber instead, he could acquire the same expertise. This professor knows, for example, how to get the best deals for hotels; why a certain American car provides the same ride and features for far less than a German one; exactly what time of the month to go to the car dealer to buy that car; and what kind of TV to buy and why based on an exhaustive review before buying his own.
One critical trait for mavens, Gladwell says, is that they have an intense desire to be of service to others. This is what makes them important players in spreading new ideas and fashions. But, the mavens are not persuaders. That job falls to the final category, salesmen.
What salesmen (and saleswomen) do, of course, is self-explanatory. Why some are far better at it than others remains something of a mystery. Gladwell discusses research suggesting that so-called cultural microrhythms--the small movements and gestures we make when we encounter and talk with other people--are extremely important. Great salespeople apparently have very compelling microrhythms.
What is obvious from this classification system is that the peak oil movement lacks enough connectors and salespeople. Many of those concerned about peak oil come from technical backgrounds: physics, geology, engineering and computer science. Others may not have formal training in these areas, but have proved adept at assimilating technical information and communicating it. In other words, the peak oil movement has an embarrassment of mavens. This is a great plus, but not enough.
In order for peak oil understanding to reach the tipping point, the world's connectors need to bring people from the movement into contact with people outside of it and in walks of life far afield from those I've already mentioned. More lawyers; more doctors; more school administrators and teachers; more airline pilots and bus drivers; more ministers and therapists; more theater professors and piano teachers; and more shoe salesmen, hairdressers and dentists need to understand the basics of peak oil.
Of course, every movement needs its salespeople, and it isn't hard to identify great salespeople in any community. Some of them have probably sold you something. But, many of them are not actually in the sales profession. What distinguishes them is that they are very good at persuading their fellow citizens to act.
There are other hurdles which Gladwell points to such as making one's message "sticky." And, there are challenges with the peak oil message itself; that message implies a considerable amount of change, change that may not seem positive to many people. But any reframing of the peak oil message will matter only if the right kind of people can be recruited into the service of the peak oil movement in the first place. Finding more connectors and salespeople in our communities and helping them understand what is at stake seems like an important first step.
Global warming has reached the so-called tipping point. That doesn't mean it's clear sailing from here. The next step--what to do about it--is sure to include one bruising battle after another. But peak oil remains unknown to the vast majority of the public. For why this is so, Malcolm Gladwell's bestselling book, The Tipping Point, may offer some insight.
For those who haven't read the book, Gladwell is studying the anatomy of the "social epidemic." How do ideas, fashions, new modes of behavior, and other social changes spread in society? He uses the medical epidemiological model as a starting point. Ideas and fashions spread like communicable diseases from one person to another. In short, he analyzes how word-of-mouth can create social change.
Gladwell puts the main movers in this process into three categories: connectors, mavens and salesmen. Connectors are people with large Rolodexes, but who also have worked or volunteered in many different settings. They often bring people together at parties from various walks of life and are constantly referring people to one another. Not surprisingly, they tend to be extroverts.
Mavens are experts. But, their recognized expertise doesn't necessarily stem from their formal training. Simply stated, they are people found in every community that others look to for advice on a particular topic. Gladwell profiles a Texas business school professor whose maven status comes not from his job, but from his intense interest in anything one might buy. As Gladwell points out, if the professor were a plumber instead, he could acquire the same expertise. This professor knows, for example, how to get the best deals for hotels; why a certain American car provides the same ride and features for far less than a German one; exactly what time of the month to go to the car dealer to buy that car; and what kind of TV to buy and why based on an exhaustive review before buying his own.
One critical trait for mavens, Gladwell says, is that they have an intense desire to be of service to others. This is what makes them important players in spreading new ideas and fashions. But, the mavens are not persuaders. That job falls to the final category, salesmen.
What salesmen (and saleswomen) do, of course, is self-explanatory. Why some are far better at it than others remains something of a mystery. Gladwell discusses research suggesting that so-called cultural microrhythms--the small movements and gestures we make when we encounter and talk with other people--are extremely important. Great salespeople apparently have very compelling microrhythms.
What is obvious from this classification system is that the peak oil movement lacks enough connectors and salespeople. Many of those concerned about peak oil come from technical backgrounds: physics, geology, engineering and computer science. Others may not have formal training in these areas, but have proved adept at assimilating technical information and communicating it. In other words, the peak oil movement has an embarrassment of mavens. This is a great plus, but not enough.
In order for peak oil understanding to reach the tipping point, the world's connectors need to bring people from the movement into contact with people outside of it and in walks of life far afield from those I've already mentioned. More lawyers; more doctors; more school administrators and teachers; more airline pilots and bus drivers; more ministers and therapists; more theater professors and piano teachers; and more shoe salesmen, hairdressers and dentists need to understand the basics of peak oil.
Of course, every movement needs its salespeople, and it isn't hard to identify great salespeople in any community. Some of them have probably sold you something. But, many of them are not actually in the sales profession. What distinguishes them is that they are very good at persuading their fellow citizens to act.
There are other hurdles which Gladwell points to such as making one's message "sticky." And, there are challenges with the peak oil message itself; that message implies a considerable amount of change, change that may not seem positive to many people. But any reframing of the peak oil message will matter only if the right kind of people can be recruited into the service of the peak oil movement in the first place. Finding more connectors and salespeople in our communities and helping them understand what is at stake seems like an important first step.
Sunday, December 03, 2006
Copernicus, Darwin and the cure for autistic economics
Autistic children can spend much of their time in a world of elaborate fantasy, emotionally detached from real people and objects. Unfortunately, it is not much of a leap to substitute the words "most economists" for "autistic children" in the previous sentence. So apparent has this become that there is a burgeoning movement to establish what is now called a "post-autistic economics" to meet the challenges of describing the real social and physical world we live in.
This wouldn't matter much were it not for the inordinate say that economists have in shaping public policy of all kinds and at all levels. Those of the post-autistic persuasion say that establishment economists have become a priestly class of sorts that enforces its neoclassical view on any and all who would dissent. It does this by keeping them off college faculties and out of key policy positions.
But as the biosphere presses its limits upon us in the areas of energy, climate, water, soil and pollution, the neoclassical economic view that human ingenuity will allow the species to ignore every other species on the planet and grow the world economy indefinitely has become life threatening, even civilization threatening.
The cure for this view was suggested by a dear friend. It is a surprisingly simple move, and one with an impressive pedigree. The Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus was the first to work out how the Earth revolved around the Sun. He thus began a journey for humankind that removed it from the center of the universe and placed it, to borrow the words of environmental education giant David Orr, "on a small planet attached to an insignificant star in a backwater galaxy."
What Copernicus had done for astronomy, Charles Darwin did for biology. After Darwin humans would no longer be set apart from the animal kingdom. Henceforth, they would be only one of its many inhabitants, buffeted by the same laws of mutation and natural selection as the ape and every other living creature. Anthropocentrism in biology was finished.
It is now time--long past time--for a Copernican/Darwinian revolution in economics in which humans cease to be seen as the privileged species, homo economicus--at the center of everything and exempt from the limits of the biosphere. Instead, humans need to be placed within the same systems that nourish every plant and animal on Earth. In this case, however, there is a twist. Far from having to realize how insignificant and unexceptional we are, we must come to understand that we have evolved into a different species which William Catton Jr. has dubbed "homo colossus," a man-tool hybrid capable of destroying the very habitat that sustains us and so many other creatures.
The simple fact is that the economy cannot become bigger than the biosphere. (There are, of course, some believers in Star Trek-style fantasies who envision us exploiting and living on other planets. To such people may I suggest that they get started on this project right away since we are running out of time to turn things around here on Earth.) Humans already consume at least 40 percent of the photosynthetic product of the Earth each year and, that's an estimate from 1986 when the population was 5.5 billion. Now it is 6.5 billion. And it's projected to be close to 9 billion by 2050. Could we increase our share of the world's photosynthetic product to 60 percent as the 2050 projection implies and still survive? Would we wipe out species upon whom we depend, but of which we currently know nothing? Even if we could transition away from finite fossil fuels, would finding a theoretical, but as yet unknown, unlimited and pollutionless energy source really solve our problems? Or would it simply cause us to bump up against other limits?
When you undergo the Copernican/Darwinian revolution in economics, you cannot avoid such questions. The physical world and its limits must be accounted for. To that end some researchers are proposing a comprehensive biophysical economics. One outline of an approach to such a problem can be found in an article entitled "The Need to Reintegrate the Natural Sciences with Economics."
The field of study now known as ecological economics has been working on the problem in a piecemeal fashion for a long time. But even though a comprehensive biophysical economics may never be possible--since it would require understanding everything about the natural world--we must attempt the feat for two reasons: 1) to expose the dire peril in which neoclassical economics has placed us and 2) to suggest ways to build an economy that can operate indefinitely on the Earth and not one that only functions until it destroys the Earth's capacity to sustain us.
The French writer François-René de Chateaubriand is reputed to have said, "Forests precede civilizations and deserts follow them." It is to this problem that economists must now turn themselves.
This wouldn't matter much were it not for the inordinate say that economists have in shaping public policy of all kinds and at all levels. Those of the post-autistic persuasion say that establishment economists have become a priestly class of sorts that enforces its neoclassical view on any and all who would dissent. It does this by keeping them off college faculties and out of key policy positions.
But as the biosphere presses its limits upon us in the areas of energy, climate, water, soil and pollution, the neoclassical economic view that human ingenuity will allow the species to ignore every other species on the planet and grow the world economy indefinitely has become life threatening, even civilization threatening.
The cure for this view was suggested by a dear friend. It is a surprisingly simple move, and one with an impressive pedigree. The Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus was the first to work out how the Earth revolved around the Sun. He thus began a journey for humankind that removed it from the center of the universe and placed it, to borrow the words of environmental education giant David Orr, "on a small planet attached to an insignificant star in a backwater galaxy."
What Copernicus had done for astronomy, Charles Darwin did for biology. After Darwin humans would no longer be set apart from the animal kingdom. Henceforth, they would be only one of its many inhabitants, buffeted by the same laws of mutation and natural selection as the ape and every other living creature. Anthropocentrism in biology was finished.
It is now time--long past time--for a Copernican/Darwinian revolution in economics in which humans cease to be seen as the privileged species, homo economicus--at the center of everything and exempt from the limits of the biosphere. Instead, humans need to be placed within the same systems that nourish every plant and animal on Earth. In this case, however, there is a twist. Far from having to realize how insignificant and unexceptional we are, we must come to understand that we have evolved into a different species which William Catton Jr. has dubbed "homo colossus," a man-tool hybrid capable of destroying the very habitat that sustains us and so many other creatures.
The simple fact is that the economy cannot become bigger than the biosphere. (There are, of course, some believers in Star Trek-style fantasies who envision us exploiting and living on other planets. To such people may I suggest that they get started on this project right away since we are running out of time to turn things around here on Earth.) Humans already consume at least 40 percent of the photosynthetic product of the Earth each year and, that's an estimate from 1986 when the population was 5.5 billion. Now it is 6.5 billion. And it's projected to be close to 9 billion by 2050. Could we increase our share of the world's photosynthetic product to 60 percent as the 2050 projection implies and still survive? Would we wipe out species upon whom we depend, but of which we currently know nothing? Even if we could transition away from finite fossil fuels, would finding a theoretical, but as yet unknown, unlimited and pollutionless energy source really solve our problems? Or would it simply cause us to bump up against other limits?
When you undergo the Copernican/Darwinian revolution in economics, you cannot avoid such questions. The physical world and its limits must be accounted for. To that end some researchers are proposing a comprehensive biophysical economics. One outline of an approach to such a problem can be found in an article entitled "The Need to Reintegrate the Natural Sciences with Economics."
The field of study now known as ecological economics has been working on the problem in a piecemeal fashion for a long time. But even though a comprehensive biophysical economics may never be possible--since it would require understanding everything about the natural world--we must attempt the feat for two reasons: 1) to expose the dire peril in which neoclassical economics has placed us and 2) to suggest ways to build an economy that can operate indefinitely on the Earth and not one that only functions until it destroys the Earth's capacity to sustain us.
The French writer François-René de Chateaubriand is reputed to have said, "Forests precede civilizations and deserts follow them." It is to this problem that economists must now turn themselves.
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