Our population will continue to grow. It will demand more energy. As we become more high tech, our existing population will demand more energy. The status quo wants to meet that demand by building coal, nuclear, and natural gas plants, all of which require the same inputs in terms of construction. We will have to build more transmission anyway, as we have sorely neglected upgrading our power grid for the last three decades.

The resources may or may not be abundant, but one way or the other they will get used. They can either be used to build a coal plant (boooo!!!!!) or used in creating renewable energy. We face a crisis of enormous proportions. When FDR faced the Great Depression, he said “One thing is sure. We have to do something. We have to do the best we know how at the moment… If it doesn’t turn out right, we can modify it as we go along. It is common sense to take a method and try it. If it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something.”

Google does. And when you compare it to things like Pickens Plan, this is, well…the difference between Google and Overture. “What’s Overture” you say? Exactly.

Now, Ross Gelbspan is right. I’ve tried to make this point before. An effort that will not avoid tipping points is an effort not worth pursuing. We would better spend our money trying to adopt. Tipping points are the things we want to try to stay away from. If scientists are telling us that to stay away from them we need to bring emissions to zero globally, then Gelbspan’s plan is the way to do that. It not only addresses targets; it also addresses equity, which is key to bringing in China and India into the gameplan. If something like this is not ratified in 2009, I will oppose it because of the simple fact that it’s an all or nothing deal with global warming.

The plan (cited below) is a way to bring the world together behind a global public works program to rewire the world with clean energy. It would create millions of jobs, especially in developing countries. It would bring the countries together around a common global project. It would jump the renewable energy industry into being a central, driving engine of growth for the global economy. And it would yield a far more secure, prosperous and stable world.

Toward A Real Kyoto Protocol
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The Plan involves three interacting strategies which include:

• In industrial countries, the withdrawal of subsidies from fossil fuels and the establishment of equivalent subsidies for clean energy sources;

• The creation of a large fund — perhaps through a small tax on global finance — to transfer clean energy technologies to developing countries; and,

• The incorporation within the Kyoto framework of a progressively more stringent Fossil Fuel Efficiency Standard that rises by 5 percent per year.

Details at:
http://www.heatisonline.org/contentserver/objecthandlers/index.cfm?id=6320&method=full

Thanks for your enthusiasm and initiative.

— Ross Gelbspan

Consider what few consider, the upfront energy investment in manufacturing windmills, solar panels, and transmission lines is significant. Ore has to be mined (with diesel powered equipment) and refined in some far off place before being assembled in yet another place (with the aid of dirty energy) before being transported again and installed. All of this transportation (which runs in the thousands of miles for massive tonnage) requires large amounts diesel fuel.

By the time a solar panel ends up on site, how much energy has already gone into it? By the time a windmill goes up, how much energy has already gone into it?

This is not to mention that all major plans like this require vast infrastructural upheavals. Google said it: 32,000 km of new transmission lines. Wow! That’s enough to cross the country from NY to LA 8 times! That in itself takes a significant investment of fossil fuel energy — energy that is soon to enter decline.

World oil production has plateaued since 2005. It will soon begin descending. With the decline, there simply won’t be the upfront energy available to carry out a plan of this magnitude. Again, on paper you could do the calculations and perhaps argue that there are theoretically enough barrels of oil out there to carry this out. But it’s not a matter of whether they exist somewhere, but whether they are available where they are in demand. As the gas shortages in the southeast are showing, shakeups in the supply chain can have reverberating effects. Now imagine when this isn’t a temporary slowdown but a long-term reality… A clean energy revolution cannot be had without a consistent flow of diesel.

I guess my point, throughout this, is that I know that activists tend to put on a smiley face to the public with proposals that will keep american lifestyles intact, but I hope y’all do some homework on this “clean energy revolution” and realize that proposals like these are pie-in-the-sky number crunching without real world considerations of finite resources (I didn’t even get into the finitude of many of these metals required for the manufacture of windmills, solar panels, and transmission lines). Even if we’re not willing to be honest with the public, I’d at least like to think we can be honest with ourselves.

kodama