On the hike I’m about to take, I’ll be contemplating the future of renewable energy while walking up the north-facing slope of the Santa Ynez mountains. At the top is a clearing providing this view of the Pacific.
There are a lot worse ways to spend a few hours.
I’m working on another in our series of renewable energy infographics, to present the basic concepts in a way that’s immediately understandable for newcomers to the subject. My current project is writing up “The Pros and Cons of Renewables.” The main point: all forms of energy, clean or dirty, come with a certain financial and ecological cost.
One of the main challenges associated with the migration to “new energy” is infrastructure, as unfortunately, renewable resources tend to exist far from our population centers, which requires an expensive build-out of our electrical grid. This article on Hydrokinetics in Alaska is a case in point. They have 350,000 miles of roaring rivers and tides that are incredible. Southern California, whose population is 40 times that of Alaska, is as hungry for those resources as a bear, fresh out of hibernation, fishing for a salmon.
I’m working on another in our series of renewable energy infographics, illuminating the basic concepts in a way that’s immediately understandable for people who may be new to the subject. The piece I’m writing now on “The Pros and Cons of Renewables,” points out that, while there is a lot to like about clean energy, there is no “free lunch” here; everything comes with a certain financial and ecological cost.
A point some people miss is that certain forms of renewable energy are limited in their availability. For example, where there is, for all intents and purposes, an infinite amount of solar energy, other forms, e.g., run-of river-hydro, exist only in limited supply.
30,000 people in Ecuador are one step closer to achieving justice in their case against Chevron. On Wednesday, an appellate court upheld the $9.5 billion judgement that would force the oil giant to pay for the clean up of a huge tract of land, damaged by Texaco, before its acquisition by Chevron. If you have a strong stomach, the talking points of the Chevron C-suite and PR team are at ChevronThinksWe’reStupid.org. And here’s a video made by Amazon Watch, a small but fierce non-profit that’s been working hard to focus world attention — and bring justice — to this horrific matter.
But how close are we to a resolution? Don’t hold your breath. As I’ve mentioned, Chevron’s team of attorneys is among the largest and most talented bunch of people on Earth. They’re playing for blood, and they’re licking their chops over the success that ExxonMobil enjoyed in dragging out its payment on the Valdez oil spill in Alaska for more than 25 years before agreeing to pay a small portion — over a quarter of a century later. No fewer than 8000 beneficiaries of the ExxonMobil restitution died while they were waiting for their money to come in.
This looks like a long, hard slog.
Someone once asked novelist E. L. Doctorow about his routine as a writer, to which he replied: “Here’s how it goes: I’m up at the stroke of 10 or 10:30. I have breakfast and read the papers, and then it’s lunchtime. Then maybe a little nap after lunch and out to the gym, and before I know it, it’s time to have a drink.”
Speaking for most of us mortals who try to crank out a book every year, it doesn’t work exactly like that.
A number of folks commenting on my piece The New Living Large Is Living Small noted that perhaps we need a precipitating event to pull the world together, and teach us once again how to live with one another. But how realistic is this? While I believe that there is a huge probability that we’ll have even greater calamities in the next decade, wouldn’t the events of the last few years have precipitated such an Age of Aquarius if it were even a remote possibility? I would have hoped that things like the BP oil spill, Fukushima, the criminality that led to (and continues on past) the 2008 financial collapse, or the skyrocketing number of extreme weather events of the last few years could have done the trick.
Others commented that we should expect a leader to rise up and do the right thing. Sorry for the cynicism, I don’t see that either. (more…)
Here’s environmentalist Bill McKibben at his best, pointing out that we should shelve the resentment and cynicism that we feel for corruption in Congress, and start to show how we truly feel: ANGRY. He writes, “We’ve reached the point where we’re unfazed by things that should shake us to the core.”
According to James Hansen, the government’s premier climate scientist, tapping Canada’s tar sands for the Keystone pipeline would, in the end, essentially mean “game over for the climate.” So how could Speaker of the House John Boehner insist that the Keystone approval decision be speeded up? Well, he’s gotten $1,111,080 from the fossil-fuel industry during his tenure. His Senate counterpart Mitch McConnell, who shepherded the bill through his chamber, has raked in $1,277,208 in the course of his tenure in Washington.
McKibben refers to cynicism as “a sucker’s game.” Until we demonstrate how truly outraged we are, we’ll get exactly the degree of change we deserve: none. As Frederick Douglass reminds us, “Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have the exact measure of the injustice and wrong which will be imposed on them.”
I hope you’ll be able to join us for our monthly webinar, in which 2GreenEnergy business manager George Alger interviews me on my new book:
Is Renewable Really Doable? Exploring Clean Energy’s Opportunities and Tough Realities
The traditional energy industry is hell-bent on preserving the status quo as long as possible – and who could possibly wonder why? These are the wealthiest people on Earth. Are we to expect that they miraculously want to cease sitting on top of the world?
But our skies and oceans are filling up with the effluent of their outmoded, damaging practices, and the warming of our planet threatens the health and safety of every living thing on the planet. At the same time, a large and growing number of us non-billionaires are crying foul, and committing ourselves to do something about it. Who will win? (more…)
Earlier today I watched this wonderful documentary, “Patent for a Pig,” outlining Monsanto Corporation’s plans to genetically modify each of the major food items, and patent the modification, enabling them to control essentially all the food on the planet, “from seed, to field, to fork” — a line from the film. (If that sounds far-fetched, you may want to check it out.)
While I watched, thinking: man, this is really well done, I realized that I’d love to do something of this quality in the field of clean energy.
But there’s a minor problem: talent. While I know a fair bit about the energy situation facing us here, I know absolutely nothing about filmmaking, and I don’t have the capital sitting around to hire a team to outsource all this.
Are there any volunteers out there who might want to partner with me on the development of such a film? There have, of course, been some very visible pieces that have touched on important aspects of the subject: Who Killed the Electric Car?, An Inconvenient Truth, Fuel, Crude, etc. But it seems that no one’s made a solid, definitive treatment of the technology, the economics, and the politics of energy.
If you have a little bit of Steven Spielberg, Ken Burns (or, dare I say, Michael Moore) in you, and a bit of time on your hands, please let me know.
Here’s a good article on the nuclear industry, suggesting that 2012 should be the year that we finally “bury it.”
Though I love the guy’s writing, I’m not sure we need the dramatics here. Nuclear is fantastically expensive – more so all the time – and thus I believe it’s buried itself. By the time a nuclear plant could be planned, permitted, built, and put online, a minimum of 8 – 10 years, the costs will be even higher than they are today, and the price of competitive solutions, i.e., renewables, will have fallen. Never mind the danger and the public outcry; no one, not even the fabulously moneyed and powerful nuclear industry, can sell a solution that is fantastically expensive.
So long.
