Economist.com | Energy policy: "James Woolsey, a former director of the CIA, envisions a geo-green coalition of tree-huggers, do-gooders, sod busters and cheap hawks pushing for energy independence. The oddest couple of all Jerry Taylor of the libertarian Cato Institute and Dan Becker of the deeply verdant Sierra Club have just issued a joint call for a radically different energy policy: a market-based, zero subsidy energy bill. If such coalitions really spring forth, then American energy policy, and the Axis of Oil, would be turned on its ear."
This comes from the ending lines of an article in The Economist (free read this time). In an interesting turn of events, the magazine cites that conservative forces are finally opening their eyes to the energy issue. While the Right examines it through vastly different lenses than the Left--citing dependence and terrorism issues as of primacy rather than environmental concerns and dwindling reserves--hope is in the air. Scientists generally agree tha, even if we rip up virgin terrain like the Alaskan field and further disrupt the already bleeding environment, we can still only expect about half a centuries worth of oil remaining for our use. This *may* discount oil shale and other advanced methods to "distill" petrol from other fossil fuels, but either way we're digging ourselves into a deeper and deeper hole and prices and greenhouse gases will only keep going up. Think tanks--including conservative ones--are now advocating an aggressive energy plan set around safer, cleaner bio fuels, more fuel efficient cars--and closing the positively EVIL loophole that SUVs still escape through and get off with poor fuel economy standards.
But we're a wasteful, lazy nation, fat off the riches of the land. Are we going to change anytime soon? Probably not until we're in crisis.... consider, even as conservatives are coming to the green side, that Congress and the President are passing an energy bill bloated wtih billions of kickbacks for the traditional energy industry, and President Bush continues to woo Saudi Princes like a love sick Romeo.
When will we start using just our share of world energy reserves rather than hogging the lot? And how will we react to the emerging ravenous appetites of China and India?
EDIT: So The Economist's main "feature" is this very subject. In another article, they cited that my concerns for India and China are overblown. As these countries have built up their petrol infrastructure, they've needed to purchase huge one time reserves to fill tanks and pipelines. However, for cars and other fuel consuming elements of the infrastructure to catch up or surpass US levels will take several decades--at least according to Goldman Sachs, and they're in the business of speculating on these things...
Let's do a little math. Consider that Saudi Arabia is sitting on 260 billion barrels of oil--approximately 1/4 of the world's 1 trillion barrels of untapped reserves (this is an average figure and factors in undiscovered reservoirs). Meanwhile, average daily consumption figures worldwide have hovered around 80 million barrels per day, or about 29.2 billion barrels per year. So taking the trillion barrels of untapped supply and dividing by 29.2 billion (which assumes that demand and consumption won't increase, which is almost certainly false!), we receive a value of approximately 35. THIRTY FIVE years remaining on my humble calculations.... the number is very likely less. Time to get our acts together and stop living so much in the moment.
The US comprises 5% of the world population and 25% of it's petrol use.... I'm sorry, but there is no way we can justify this sort of excess. American's are not "better" than the rest of the world and we are in no way entitled to singlehandedly blow through world energy savings. I speak not just in terms of the present, but I say this more for the future. The more wasteful we are now, the more the future suffers. One can place hope in alternative sources, but then one should discover these alternatives NOW and start building the neccessary infrastructure for supply and delivery. We're living on borrowed time, borrowed fuel, borrowed credit... we live in a flimsy shack of cards, and at some point soon, America's debts will be called in and our self-delusions will collapse.
Furthermore, on a sidenote, consider that almost everything made of plastic (and many artificial fabrics like nylon) are also byproducts of the oil industry. If oil is devoured, whence goes all made of these materials?
1 year ago
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During the Educate Yourself series last fall, during the energy policy discussion this scientist from the geological survey (or something like it) said that oil won't be the big problem; he's more worried about water. Like, drinkable water.
He was a bit too conspiratorial (if that's a word) for me, he said that this all is the reason major corporations are investing in water purification/bottling businesses. Talk about a long term orientation.
Spencer, he's actually absolutely correct. I think I had a blog entry about this a week back, with my last spate of environmental pieces. If you can invest in water futures somewhere, do it, because you'll make a killing and will hopefully be somehow promoting a healthy planet. Water and oil together will cause a great strain on world relations--we'll almost certainly see a war over one of them (discounting Iraq) by centuries end. The problem affects Africa particularly bad, where half the continent is rapidly being affected by desertification. As the temperature warms, the fresh water ice caps are melting--into salt water. We need to harness economically viable means of desalinating and purifying ocean water if we hope to maintain our water supplies, because the subsurface aquifers are rapidly being cached. water may be a "renewable" resource, but only in a long term view. Once it's polluted, salinated, etc, it won't be usable by humanity for drinking or agriculture for some time. Worth revising habits--consider that a "low flow" shower head still uses 2.5 gallons per minute and a toilet almost always goes through AT LEAST a gallon per flush, often 1.5. So in getting ready in the morning, discounting shaving and tooth brushing water (turn it off when the razor and brush aren't in the sink!), a 5 minute shower and flush use 14 gallons of water--and that's just once a day.... so let's say the average person therefore uses about 18 gallons of water per day in the USA (probably WAY too low an estimate), not including dishes, laundry, car washes (hopefully done at a business where they recyle their water), etc. That's 6600 gallons of water per person DOWN THE DRAIN every year. Assuming 270 million Americans, some using more some less, that comes out to 1.7 TRILLION gallons down the drain per year...meanwhile African's in the sub Sahara have trouble getting ANY reliable source of water.... thankfully a decent amount of that 1.7 trillion gallons can PROBABLY be saved through filtration processes....but a lot of it needs MAJOR cleaning.
Update: check this link PERC Environmental Audit. It's about the excesses of Princeton University students--the average flow per shower head was 3.29 gallons per minute (since not all were "low flow"--just like Wash U). Meanwhile, the average shower length was a HORRENDOUS 12.5 minutes. Lather up, rinse, and get out of the shower kids! Running the calculations, that's 41.1 gallons per shower (students estimated that they felt they were using 26.4 gallons--STILL too much!). If we take the average Princeton student's habits as representative of the student norm (or not, just take it for Princeton...), university student gallons down the drain per year comes in at a whopping 16,000 gallons+ per year. We are a wasteful, overconsumptive group.
Remember that time you were standing naked in the bathroom? Yeah. No amount of water conservation can scrub that scarring image from my mind.
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