Rev. Sensing, in his post below, sets out the difficulty in replacing oil as a means of providing and distributing energy.
I’ll agree – that replacing oil in one swell foop is somewhere between unlikely and impossible.
But I don’t think that matters; I think he’s asking the wrong question. Let’s step back for a second and talk about what problem we’re really trying to solve.
Let me do a fast gloss on my position on global warming (something I haven’t blogged on before because it kept coming out as a PhD dissertation by someone who didn’t know the subject).
It’s happening.
It’s not clear how much is anthropogenic (although the answer is probably a lot), and it’s not clear what the impact on climate would be if we just stopped producing CO2 tomorrow.
It is clear that it doesn’t matter, because we’re not going to. Neither, to agree with Friedman here, are we going to take on the pain of cutting our carbon emissions enough or fast enough to impact climate in the next decade. And if we did, the ensuing economic collapse would probably kill more people than climate change will.
That may or may not matter so some deep greens; but since the odds of it happening are about where the odds of asteroid collision in the next decade are, I think we can shelve that concept.
The fact that we can’t do enough doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do something. Even if you’re a die-hard skeptic, wondering why there is global warming on Mars if there are no SUV’s (there is, by the way), it makes sense to look hard at our energy economy.
From my point of view, there are three reasons energy is worth some serious investment:
1. Slow the rate of carbon emissions, in the off chance that they will have an impact on global warming.
2. Slow the rate of investment in jihad by the oil-rich Arab states, who have been the principal financiers of the spread of the core religious ideology that – when combined with alienation and anomie – leads to recruits who blow themselves and others up.
3. Shelter our domestic energy infrastructure from disruption – whether through embargo, terrorism, or system disruption caused by error or chance.
The goal is to have cheap, low-impact, sustainable, and local supplies of energy. Cheap to maximize the benfit to our economy and the disruption to the Saudi economy; low-impact because if it involves massive changes in infrastructure or behavior it won;t happen; sustainable because we’re not looking for a one-time hit, but for an energy economy that can keep going indefinitely; and local because when all other things are equal, local energy supplies are more efficient (less transmission loss) and harder to disrupt.
The cheapest, lowest impact, most sustainable, and most local form of energy production is what the utilities call ‘negawatts’ – energy we are currently using that can readily be saved though investment or changes in behavior.
Before everyone starts painting pictures of unheated Stalinist apartment blocks, filled with people wearing dingy clothes (no hat water to wash in) walking down ten flights to catch the smoky diesel tram to work – or the positive vision of the same image, which is hemp-clad families hopping onto their bicycles to commute the five miles to their office above the day care center – feature this:
(I’ve told this story before, so forgive me) Six years ago, I needed a new car to replace the minivan I gave my ex- in the divorce. I had three sons, we camp and ski, and so the mandate was three rows of seats (so I don’t have to Tase them too often on long trips) with space in back to put the plastic Tupperware boxes of gear that we travel with.
There were only three cars (plus several 12-passenger vans) that fit the requirement. Ford Excursion, Chevy or GMC Suburban, and a Honda Odyssey minivan.
The Excursion was Right Out. It came down to the Suburban or the Odyssey.
I chose the Odyssey, and never looked back. It has been fun to drive, reliable as a brick, easy to park, and worked in every kind of environment I’ve tossed at it, from taking TG and me to the opera or taking three heavily armed men to the dire road leading to Gunsite for a class.
And – I saved about 42% of the gas I would have used. The Suburban, with the base engine, gets 14.7mpg EPA; over the 110,000 miles I’ve driven, I’d have used 7,483 gallons. In the Honda – using the EPA figure of 25mpg, I used 4,395. And I sacrificed – what, exactly? Self-image? Not terribly much.
It’s a small thing, but the error I think that Sensing (and others) are making is that they are looking for One Big solution when in reality there are a hundred small ones. This idea – substituting minivans for SUV’s is a small idea, but there are probably hundreds of them – ideas big enough to have an impact but small enough to be doable without changing the whole world.
So, over the last six years, we’ve sold about 40 million SUV’s (figure roughly 50% of new car sales of 14 million units/ year – not a figure I’ve checked, but it’s close to correct).
So 21 million SUV’s (half the number sold) times six years (duration) times 3,000 gallons – we would have saved 58 BILLION gallons of gasoline if everyone who had bought a SUV bought a minivan instead. Yes, the numbers are approximate and skewed because not all SUV’s are as thirsty as a Suburban…but not all minivans are as thirsty as an Odyssey.
To put that into some kind of reference, the annual gasoline consumption in the US for 2005 (US DOE Energy Information Agency) was about 3.33 billion barrels, or 140 billion gallons (42 ga to a barrel). We would have saved about 10 billion gallons/year (total savings/6) or 7% of our gasoline budget with that one change.
That’s about 3% of our national energy budget. Just from driving minivans.
Are there ten changes like that which we could make?
Here’s one more vehicle-related one.
Back when I was a young violator of the California Vehicle Code, I had a hopped-up BMW 2002. It was a quick car for the day, and it did 0-60 in about 10 seconds. A 1969 Porsche 911 did it in about 8.5 or 9.
My Odyssey does it in 10.3. A Subaru Legacy does it in about 7.5 seconds, and a Legacy GT does it in about 5.5.
We’re consuming all the great engineering that has been done in the last 30 years in a mix of higher performance, lower emissions and better fuel economy.
What would happen if we simply cranked the dial back to the performance levels of the 70’s or 80’s? How much better would the fuel economy of these modern engines be? Another 3%?
At what cost?
Look this is a long post, but it’s meant to do one thing – to cast some doubt on Rev. Sensing’s certainty.
I don’t think we need a Big Bang energy solution – yet.
I do think there are a lot of little ones we could do – while still leading our suburban lifestyles – that would get us a lot of the way there.
Where would you find 3% in our energy budget?
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