Earlier this week, the WSJ reported on the growing divide within the environmentalist community over various alternative energy sources, particularly wind power and ethanol. No energy source is safe, however, as even solar projects face local green opposition. As the major Washington-based groups push for a renewable portfolio mandate in federal energy legislation, local activists --even the local chapters of the same national groups that push for the mandate -- fight to block renewable energy projects.
Even as Americans become convinced they need to change the way they power their lives, the environmental community is splintering over how to do that. Does ethanol promote clean fuel or destroy the rural landscape? Is emission-free electricity worth turning mountains into wind farms? . . .
Dan Becker, a former top lobbyist at the Sierra Club, one of the leading U.S. environmental groups, concedes that local fights can undercut the group's national goals. "It doesn't help," he says. Mr. Becker says local activism is a source of the movement's strength. "I'd rather have the debate...than to have a Stalinist approach and say you cannot speak," he says.
These sorts of divisions within the environmentalist movement were inevitable. In environmental policy debates, environmentalist activists often refuse to acknowledge the ubiquity of trade-offs. That did not cause internal problems for environmentalist groups when the dominant and most conspicuous adverse consequences of their policies were economic (or at least non-environmental). In the energy context, however, there is no perfectly benign power source -- and certainly no way of powering modern civilization without significant environmental impacts of one sort or another. This requires sober consideration of the pros and cons of each energy option, recognizing that nothing approaches a true environmental ideal. There is no "perfect" environmental way to meet our energy needs -- no ecological Nirvana on the horizon. Instead, we need to focus on finding the set of energy and environmental policies that provide the greatest benefits (economic, environmental and otherwise) at an acceptable cost.
Hawke, you will know, was the Prime Minister of Australia until he lost the election about a month ago. Part of his campaign and his adminitration's viewpoint was that global climate change wasn't really true, and if true, it isn't manmade, and there is nothing we can do about it. In other words, your basic Bush &Co's position.
But that was last month. Now, he gave forceful speeches stating that climate change is real and has the potential to adversely affect the lives of millions of people, and that China will be particularly hard hit. He said that we have the ability to stop or reverse the damage thus far, but it will take a lot of political will, technology and can-do to make it happen. In other words, your basic Al Gore position.
Deniers just lost a major piller. They must now bill Hawke as a leftie looney, since they cannot admit that there is something to climate change.
I realize this is a bit off topic, but it's important to know that the deniers are losing support every day.
Politicians are hard to believe in any context, and I wouldn't put too much stock in politician's change of view when addressing different audiences.
Rather broad brush you are painting with, Professor Adler, no? Certainly there is a portion of environmental activists for whom this is true, but this seems to imply more than that. That's not to say that these issues aren't complicated and don't provoke debates, but I can't say as I care for the way that's presented here (or in WSJ).
Their examples don't do much for me, in particular. The wind farm debates are not exactly internal to environmentalism. There are certainly people with dual loyalties, but I don't think that their environmentalism is what makes them anti-wind farm.
The problems with ethanol are increasingly acknowledged at all levels of the environmental community. Many environmentalists never thought this was a great idea, and to me personally it seemed like corn ethanol was a cop-out to satisfy people who didn't understand the issue well while avoiding any sort of more substantive renewable requirements. EPA is currently working on modeling the impacts of meeting the higher corn ethanol targets on US agriculture, and it is my suspicion that the results won't be pretty.
Great, so what are you going to do about it?
I am now pretty throughly convinced that efforts to try and prevent climate change via legislative actions designed to reduce CO2 production are going to cause far more environmental destruction then simply doing nothing would.
First of all the entire process is being powered forward by popular support from well meaning, but technologically and politically ignorant, folks who are in the we must do something mode. Unfortunately, they are not paying attention to what policies are being pushed or evaluating what the results of these policies will be.
So they end up cheering on a process that is being driven and steered by rent seeking entities. These rent seeking entities are solely motivated by a desire to eneact policies that will maximize their ability to make money. Farmers and biofuel producers are a textbook case of this.
What have the policy results been so far?
IIRC I don't think many, if any signatories of Kyoto have been able to meet their emissions targets.
I don't think the European car makers have been able to meet the mileage requirements imposed on them and the European carbon offset market collapsed last year.
So there has been no success reducing carbon emissions via regulatory methods.
However, what the regulatory drive to reduce CO2 has produced is mandates for the usage of ever increasing amounts of biofuels. This years energy and farm program bills provide a good example of this.
This government mandated demand for biofuels, which has been driven by the desire to do something, has caused the destruction of large amounts of existing, natural carbon sinks in Brazil, Asia and other areas.
Rain forests and prairies are being destroyed in order to plant palm plantations and soybeans to supply feedstock to the mandated biofuel markets.
I suspect when the mass transfer calculations are done the loss of natural carbon sinks is going to swamp whatever small reductions in carbon emissions other regulatory efforts are able to provide. This is not even taking into account the knock on negative environmental impacts the habitat destruction is causing.
Randy R it would be nice if folks like you on the AGW band wagon made a token effort to ensure that the policies designed to respond to AGW don't cause more environmental destruction then they prevent.
Also, there's been quite an about-face on nuclear.
ALL energy is tainted, therefore, with original sin.
While the lack of methodology for evaluation of alternatives is indeed lacking, the real problem is the lack of will to allow any successful energy program.
A tax on oil companies is effectively a tax on oil. I don't apologize for the boneheaded way it is presented but the net effect is the same.
The worst offender, IMO, was the short-lived Accord Hybrid in which the net effect of the hybrid system was to increase performance. Gas mileage was identical to the non-hybrid version.
Do you think all that comes without a penalty - weight at the very least.
If you put a modern engine of equivalent horsepower (good luck finding one that small) stripped of all its environmental crap into a Model T frame, I'd be willing to bet the gas mileage would be incredible.
If you want a Model T instead of an Explorer (I like the DVD player for the kids), buy one.
1. It's an indirect way of reducing fuel consumption and therefore less efficient.
2. It forces automakers to manufacture vehicles that people really don't want. If gasoline cost $5-6 a gallon, people would voluntarily stop buying hummers.
3. Most importantly, it allows Congress to hide the cost of what it's doing. Tax gasoline to the tune of $3-4 per gallon and people know who is responsible. Put the cost into higher fuel economy and people will blame the sticker shock on the automakers .
Which reinforces my original retort: I don't believe that any significant fraction of the left believes in higher energy costs.
When you say that "most lefties would be fine with raising rates", you are wrong. You are correct when you say that higher gasoline/heating oil/electricity prices would force conservation, which is why almost all economists, liberal or conservative, support higher prices as the most effective solution. However, environmental organizations and liberal politicians want solutions that enable them to blame Exxon/Con Ed/General Motors for the resulting burdens.
How then would you deal with a problem where the costs are immediate and borne by the consumer(as in the case of the anti-smog electronics you mentioned), but the benefits (reduced air pollution in this case) are diffuse and long-term and probably of little immediate benefit?
All things that I wholeheartedly support. Driving a car without a catalytic converter is an act that carries negative externalities. As is driving a car that poses a danger to others on the road. Even the most libertarian economists will concede that the prevention of negative externalities is a legitimate government interest.
SenatorX - if you aren't a troll, that is, I can only say that such an extraordinary claim requires extraordinary evidence. Meanwhile, the objective evidence for global climate change piles higher and higher.
See, statements like that add little to the conversation. If you want to point out /why/ I'm wrong, go ahead.
I was trying to think if I have ever read any post by Mr. Adler that makes any sort of such broadsided criticism of corporate polluters, oil companies, mining companies, etc.
Did I just miss it?
What's wrong with forcing automakers to manufacture vehicles that people really don't want? As long as they're prohibited from manufacturing anything else, it shouldn't hurt sales: giving manufactures and consumers a Hobson's choice between "Vehicles with good gas mileage or no vehicles whatsoever" doesn't seem likely to drive up supply or demand for "no vehicle". Just change from Corporate Average FE to Minimum Vehicular FE, and problem solved. Right?
Well, after all, there's not going to be a next generation because Jesus is coming.
the economy. It's not the reverse. That was 100 years ago.
Even the far left embraces consumption, in fact pursues the support of those deprived of the pleasures of cars, trucks and houses, promising to make them more accessible, even take them away from those that have them to accomplish that end. In the process, of course, they must be made environmentally benign.
So the commenters above who gripe that some people are against everything EXCEPT conservation are talking about people I have not heard from.
Where are they? they are not politicians, that is certain.
1. Manmade global warming is real.
2. Europeans, in particular, are using it as an occasion to give the finger to the US on every possible level. Over and over, and long before Bush was in office. The way the Kyoto negotiations were done, the choice of baseline year, the general rhetoric... Just listening to them makes me want to leave the lights on, run the heater with the windows open, and buy a Hummer. I want to give them the finger right back.
3. Ditto Al Gore. And the sort of people who have NPR on the presets in their Priuses. (The hard right bugs me for other reasons, but environmental sanctimony is not among their vices.)
The only responsible way to reconcile #1 with #2 and #3 is to launch a program of innovation to reduce carbon emissions domestically WITHOUT latching onto these global command-and-control initiatives. Show the big talkers how things are done in a democratic, capitalist society that still cares about its own sovereignty, and then sell them the resulting technology.
The new Boeing 787 seems to be one example. If it really can fly passengers with 20% less fuel, then that's the sort of innovation I'm talking about. Cars, air conditioners, power plants, you name it... does anyone really think we have the best ones anyone could ever dream up? And then there are the technology changes that simply make old products obsolete. I've noticed lately how nobody puts any newspapers in the newspaper recycle bin -- we all read the news online.
Does anyone really want US industry to miss the next generation of innovation waves, the way US radio manufacturers failed to make the transition from tubes to transistors? I don't. Reducing carbon emissions will be one of the factors driving innovation in the near future, so we may as well take it seriously.
Ahem? and ahem again
So people on the left want to make technology accessible to the poor while mitigating the environmental damage. Stop the presses! This is NEWS!
What if I have NPR as the preset on my Impreza?
"of course they must be made environmentally benign" it's a sham. a campaign promise.
I plead sarcasm. "ahem" is sarcasm too, right?
SenatorX, the data show that the risk from global climate are not at all indeterminate but can be computed to some degree of accuracy. Insurers, group not known for wild flights of fancy or generally irrational thinking are starting to pay attention.
So-called renewable energy sources have been revealed to have Warts and lots of them. And despite enormous indefensible subsidy,they just don't scale and haven't been employed on a large scale anywhere in the World.
Nuclear energy as practiced at the time was rife with combined lax regulation and cheer leading; the construction standards were beyond sloppy; the designs were unproven, and worse untested. Three Mile Island along with our legal stalling, driving up costs, forced changes and all the problems have been addressed and since resolved.
I am now a champion of the now well regulated, LAST generation of fission Nukes, built of pre-approved standard designs of the GEN III+ technologies, much safer and provably so, over the commercial plants operating in the West today.
It is not widely known but there are already in a mere 2 years after first possible, 32 new Nuclear plants seeking Combined Construction and Operating licenses. Enough to double Nuclear generation from 19% to about 40% of US electrical generation. These reformed laws ensure that there will be guaranteed predictable costs, erection, and operation schedules. Our legal stalling tools have been removed, but they are no longer needed.
Finally, we have Nuclear done Right.
And ten thousand Cold War warheads exist, now dismantled, and awaiting incineration and transmutation into non fissile material, incapable of being reconstituted, by these new Nukes. Ten thousand nuclear bombs removed and gone forever. Truly beating swords into plowshares.
Those people responsible, should have won the Nobel Peace Prize.
It isn't that efforts to improve the environment aren't useful, it's that they always seem to find a way to impose on human freedoms for what is, believe it or not, based on things that are nowhere near scientific consensus. I also find it funny that most "environmentalists" find a way to oppose every green alternative out there:
1. Nuclear - who cares if it cuts carbon emissions? It creates waste.
2. Can't use wind farms - they destroy bird migrating patterns and certain bug species.
3. Hydroelectric messes with fish.
4. Solar? Great...for about 20% of the nation's population.
I think that most activists would not be happy unless we were to revert to stone age technology. Except for them, of course - someone needs to fly private planes to conferences.
I'll start believing it's a crisis when those who tell me it's a crisis start acting like it themselves.
Waiting . . .
2. Can't use wind farms - they destroy bird migrating patterns and certain bug species.
3. Hydroelectric messes with fish."
Nuclear, maybe for some environmentalists, probably even a majority, particularly the older ones, although certainly not me. Those other two examples though are FAR from mainstream views, even in the environmental community.
Still waiting...
It's humorous that since the signing of the Kyoto Treaty - you know, the thing that would end global warming if only the US would get on board, the emissions of those who have signed the treaty have gone up by about 20%, but those of the US have gone up by less than 7%.
And the main point, which you have not addressed, is that the so-called "leaders" give the big middle finger to us poor unedjumacated masses by saying we should all cut back, but are not willing to do so themselves. They still fly private planes all around the world(like Bali, for, hysterically, an environmental conference), have homes that use more energy than 10 folks combined(like Al Gore's place in TN), and expect us to do things they won't(Barbara Streisand said on her website that she expects people to air dry their laundry, but acted shocked when people asked if she did the same, and she said no).
Again, I'll start believing it's a crisis when those telling me it's a crisis start acting like it themselves.
China shocks the world by revealing the first completely pollution free coal fired power plants are supplying energy to the Olympics. Every gram of carbon the plants produced is trapped and recycled.
In further news it is announced that you may save the environment by getting drunk. Distilled spirits manufacturers finally realized that they could trap and recycle CO2 produced by sour mash fermentation by just a little extra plumbing.
And finally, one of the largest sources of waste paper was eliminated as phone books the world over went on an "opt in" system. After it was realized that many people who communicate via cell phone and internet never even open a phone book, it was easy to cut the number of phone books produced in the world by 90%.
Jesus (Y'shua) is not coming, the Rebbe King Moshiach Shlit"a is ... and boy is he p*ss*d! Keep watching 770!
I agree. Ronald Reagan should have won a Nobel Peace Prize, not a ridiculous fraud like Al Gore.
In any case energy independence will require more diversity of sources than we currently rely on.
I also object to those who conflate some environmentalists' inability to tolerate tradeoffs with some sort of imaginary liberal inability to do so. Rather, a classic big government liberal is very willing to make tradeoffs-- in the form of higher taxes.
Hydrogen production uses lots of energy. For example, you burn coal to produce electricity to convert water to hydrogen and oxygen. This process has energy losses at each stage of the process.
Then you have to use and transport the highly explosive hydrogen in a safe manner.
It would be more environmentally friendly and energy efficient just to use the electricity produced by the coal without making hydrogen.
Now nuclear energy may provide a workaround for some of the energy problems with hydrogen. However, it still leaves the transport, storage and usage of hydrogen which are not trivial.
Second of all even if it was not being used for other things there is not enough used cooking oil to replace a fraction of the petroleum we use.
The predictable end result is likely to be the use of the tax revenue to create and fund more ineffective, extremely ecologically destructive, boondoggles like biofuels.
Also, hydrogen is not explosive, it's flammable (just like gasoline).
Oren, that's a surprise. Where can I confirm that?
Hydrogen Gas Explosion
Thank you for providing a textbook example of the problem I discussed in my 12.15.2007 12:30pm comment on this thread. Oren you are good at pitching out slogans like But you further illustrates your ignorance by apparently not considering:
1. The Ford explorer could tow the Model T faster then the model T ever ran.
2. The explorer could do this while carrying twice as many passengers as the model T could.
The environmental, technical and political ignorance of folks like Oren reduces them to gullible, slogan spouting, ignorant, tools for rent seeking groups.
"TJIT - (Fossil Fuel --> Electricity --> Hydrolysis --> Hydrogen --> Your Car) is quite a bit more efficient than burning the fossil fuel in your car"
quote below is from a Toyota website (sorry I don't have the skills to
put a link in here):
"In a well-to-wheel comparison, a gasoline-powered Prius is actually more efficient than a typical hydrogen-powered FCV. Toyota estimates that Prius has a well-to-wheel efficiency of 29% versus 22% for a typical FCV. How can this be? The answer lies in the expenditure of energy involved in producing and transporting hydrogen.
Hydrogen is a manufactured fuel. As such, its production requires electric power, which is generated in fossil fuel-powered plants. More energy is expended in producing and distributing hydrogen than is released when it is consumed in a fuel cell."
Granted, the Prius is different from the norm but several small 1.1 to 1.5 litre gas engine cars get similar mileage and note that the Prius is over 30% more efficient than the FC "well to wheel" as they put it. I would have guess an even greater advantage for the Prius.
TJT: what is your point?
Enacting policies that sound good while ignoring engineering fundamentals and environmental impacts is going to increase environmental destruction.
That is my point.
Actually it was a typical misguided rent-seeking solution to a problem that could have been better handled.
Fact: Catalytic Converters were picked as “The Solution” based upon massive lobbying by the affected parties (Platinum Mining association won, because their spending on Congress more accurately reflected that of a drunken sailor)
Fact: With a government approved solution, no one will develop, and possibly be liable for , another solution. You must think that the ‘70s were the apex of chemical technology.
Fact: Several studies suggest that platinum compounds, now found along all major roadways, have a lot to do with the uptake in asthma during the last 30 years.
So, apparently, you like locking I onto old technology and giving folks asthma, one a predictable, another an unforeseen externality.
Now if government had dictated a long asymptotic curve for smog producing chemicals produced, rather than means, I would be with you….
Amen
The US is not the only country in the world. There are several others, and many of them are working on technologies that are far more advanced than ours. Germany, in particular, is way ahead on the alternative energy front. Regardless of any US federally approved solutions, someone elsewhere will be developing another solution. Most other countries are receiving federal support as well. However, it's better that there is research and development supported by gov'ts than to have no research at all.
Mea culpa: I was wrong about Bob Hawke. He was not the immediate past PM of Australia.
1. Advocate for solutions that do not involve changing our lifestyles one bit. Afterall, I like my car and my house, and I will NOT alter any of it just for the sake of saving the world. Therefore, any solution that asks the slightest change, such as driving less, buying smaller cars, turning off lights, and so on, are unnacceptable.
2. Advocate for solutions that WILL involve changing our lifestyles, because unless they suggest that radical change in our lifestyles, they simply are not serious about saving the world.
3. All public officials advocating the saving of the environment must engage in every aspect of self sacrifice possible.
4. All private people who advocate saving the environment who do engage in many aspects of self sacrifice or life altering changes, by living in straw bale houses, live off the grid, and so on, simply do not count and must be ignored.
5. All environmentalists must agree on one form of energy. If they don't, then we can all safely ignore everything that they say, regardless of its import.
6. All environmentalists are presumed to hate America unless proven otherwise. Extra points if you can determine their 'real' motive, which always has nothing to do with any supposed concern for polar bears.
7. Lobbyists for the oil industry or other anti-environmentalists are not subject to any of these rules.
No need to keep waiting for that. With respect to ships, the answer is a traditional one: wind power ...
E.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flettner_ship
or http://www.skysails.info/index.php?L=1
Way to make a whole lot of different arguments look silly by selective rounding-up. Taking your points one by one, here are my answers:
1. Fossil fuels and electricity have given an unprecedented level of freedom to people who would have spent their lives in drudgery in previous generations. Working people, women... non-human, non-animal power sources have made their lives immeasurably better. Just think of the employment options, not to mention cultural and recreational possibilities, that now exist because people can move around and are not locked into spending all their time and physical energy on survival. Rolling back this progress in any substantial way should be unacceptable, and we really should be looking for ways to provide these benefits to more people here and around the world. Turning off the lights is fine if it's sunny, or if you want to sleep, but people shouldn't be asked to live in darkness all the time.
2. That means that most lifestyle changes, short-term, won't make that big a difference. Any lifestyle changes that will make a big difference are more likely to involve swapping out technologies and altering land use patterns... major changes, in short. Rather than trying to convince people not to wash their clothes, it makes a lot more sense to convince them that a better washer would save money and energy in the long term. Multiply by all the technologies we use for maximum effect.
3. #1 and #2 apply to "regular folks" only. Rich people consume a lot more than everyone else. They can cut a lot more than everyone else before they get anywhere near the darkness/drudgery level, and they should be encouraged to do so. In particular, they should be the "early adopters" of new technology, so that inventors/investors can recover their costs in that part of the market and eventually lower their prices for everyone else.
4. Most of us can't live that way, at least not if we want to keep our jobs. We have to figure out how to power cities and major industries as well as rural retreats.
5. We do need several different sources of energy, but mostly we need to replace coal. And oil at some point, but coal is the bigger deal.
6. Environmentalists who are into statist solutions often seem to have their roots in a particular set of political beliefs. These beliefs have been known to travel together with anti-Americanism and anti-capitalism, which are often synonyms. Maybe they don't in every case, but we have all observed the phenomenon. Since capitalism is likely to be the source of most innovation in the long term, we probably don't want to wreck it in the interest of clamping down on carbon emissions in the short term.
7. Of course they are. Who said otherwise?
1. "people shouldn't be asked to live in darkness all the time." Of course not. And please name one environmentalist who has suggested that. You have set up a straw man by arguing that enviros want to 'roll back progress.' Sorry, but you are wrong. In fact, enviros want MORE research into developing alternative forms of energy, higher fuel efficiency, pollution reduction and so on. And in fact, rolling backwards is rolling backwards -- gas and electric stoves are much better than wood or coal fires in the kitchen for many reasons.
2. "Rather than trying to convince people not to wash their clothes." Ditto above. But also, small changes do in fact lead to tremendous changes. If everyone changed one regular light bulb to energy savings one, the effect would be huge.
3. "Rich people consume a lot more than everyone else." But my point was that well known environmentalists, such as Al Gore, are seen as hypocrites unless they adopt every single possible energy savings there is. If they don't, they are considered hypocrites, and can be ignored. Yet rich people, such as Dick Cheney, who presumably doesn't do any conservation, as given a complete free pass. Why?
4. True, most can't. But again, my point was to refute the notion that was stated earlier that "when enviromenalitst start living they same way they preach, then I'll convert." There ARE people who live as they preach, but everyone ignores them.
5. True again. But yet again, you missed my point. Many of the postings here complain that enviros can't agree on a form of energy that would be safe for the planet. So they are ridiculed as idiots, or hypocrites, and then laughed at and ignored.
6. So instead of saying that all enviros hate America, you are merely saying that most do. Yet you ignore the fact that people such as Al Gore has repeatedly expressed his faith in innovation and technology as ways to help us with the environment, AND help our economy and fiscal future. You also ignore the fact that many enviros want to glean us from oil so that we are no longer dependent upon foreign countries for our energy needs.
7. When I see conservatives take on the oil and coal companies with the fervor they take on the enviros, I'll eat my words.
Their reasons are that environmentalism is anti-American, and a big hoax, and so they will not recycle or engage in any form of environmentally good practices (such as using energy savings light bulbs, driving cars with better gas mileage, etc.) simply to protest what they see as an assault upon their freedom. Conservatives have made environmentalism such a political issue that doing anything for the planet is now considered 'liberal', and that is the greatest evil.
I have a friend who once went to a Chinese restaurant with Robert Bork's daughter. When my friend suggested a dish with tofu, the daughter replied, in a rather disgusted voice, " I'm not into that liberal lifestyle"
So yes, tofu is now an official liberal ideology and must be resisted. This is crazy world we now live in.