A question for those who think man isn't causing climate chaos

Why, in the six-thousand years since God created the Earth, did he wait until man started driving up CO2 levels up, up, up to start erasing the poles and all the species therein? (Click on image to view fully.)

Extrapolating into the future

It's going to feel like Sisyphus around here so long as we think we can push that rock over the top if we'll just use more energy. Image by litmuse via Flickr

A look at what our future holds. In the meantime, shouldn't we be doing everything possible to reduce our dependence on distant supplies of everything?

Steiner's book agrees on the basic premise, that the end of oil is bound to come sooner rather than later (we can disagree on the exact date oil extraction peaked, but its arrival at some point is indisputable) and that we had better prepare for the day of reckoning.

Reading $20 Per Gallon makes us realize how contingent our way of life is, and how uncertain its future prospects are. Connecting each phase of the price increase with a particular form of reliance, Steiner tries to move us from denial to acceptance. We will not be able to live the way we have been for the last century, driven by the stored excess energy of oil, built up over millennia. No new form of energy currently on the horizon competes with oil for its cheapness, efficiency, ease of use, and broadness of applicability. At the same time, cheap oil has engendered a variety of grotesque behaviors, from the way we eat our food to how we move products around the world, that make no sense in the absence of underpriced oil.

Steiner wishes to posit a rational transition, driven by market signals, as consumers, businesses, and governments make appropriate choices. For Kunstler, social and political unrest of the highest magnitude is bound to come with the end of oil. The reader can decide, based on the following arenas of choice, which is more likely.

• At $4, we will begin to accept that there remains little easy-to-get oil.
  
  
• At $6, the SUV will be dead, America's motoring habits will change, and we will become healthier as we get around more on foot.
  
  
• At $8, the "skies will empty," as airline travel will again become a luxury, and the major American "dinosaur" airlines will go out of business: "Southwest and JetBlue will become the dominant domestic airlines in an age of $8 gasoline," thriving on their flexibility. Families will concentrate closer together, and Las Vegas as we know it will "go bust."
  
  
• At $10, after a period of experimentation with hybrid cars, the electric car, 100 years after it first came on the scene, will rule our thinning traffic. Electric cars still face a lot of technical problems, and Steiner discusses Israeli entrepreneur Shai Agassi's company Better Place, in the forefront of thinking about the infrastructure necessary to make electric cars a reality. At the $10 price signal, plastics made from organic sources--of the kind MIT's Dr. Oliver Peoples is pioneering--will start making sense.
  
  
• At $12, the suburbs will lose their charm, and cities will become magnets for fleeing householders. Urban density, such as New York's, will become the model for less dense cities around the country. South Korea's New Songdo City is an example of a sustainable dense urban conglomeration, likely to become a model around the world.
  
  
• At $14, Wal-Mart will end, Main Street in small towns will revive, and American manufacturing (defeated for so long by the ease of container trade) will return to prominence. We will use materials more sensibly; lacking asphalt, a byproduct of oil, which we use for rooftops and to pave our highways, we will turn to metal and concrete.
  
  
• At $16, the way we eat will fundamentally change. Farms will go local. Steiner points out that having long ago exhausted the natural fertility of our soil, what we essentially eat is oil, since fertilizer consists partly of the hydrogen molecule stripped from hydrocarbons.
  
  
• At $18, high-speed rail will connect America's cities, and the pernicious effects of policies biased in favor of the heavily subsidized auto industry will finally cease.
  
  
• At $20, the alternative energy choices will be stark and irrefutable--nuclear power will stand out as the most viable option. [Magical thinking warning here: the cost of nuclear power, like all technologies, sits atop the cost of the fossil fuels that make the other technologies possible. Uranium doesn't mine itself or enrich itself and nuclear plants take a tremendous amount of energy up front. Good analysts suggest that an all-out nuclear building binge is an elaborate way to run in place, with virtually all the energy from the first plants going to support construction of the later ones . . . no net energy increase made available to society at all, in fact, with almost the entire carbon emissions from the nuclear lifecycle crowded up near the beginning of the construction boom -- just when we can afford it least (i.e., before massive emissions reductions have occurred).]
  

In essence, Steiner is talking about piece-by-piece rebuilding of existing infrastructure in every realm of activity, to smoothly incorporate new non-fossil-fuel-based technologies. It perhaps stretches faith in our capabilities to allow for such a rational transition. The shift Steiner is discussing is akin to Kunstler's small-scale, local, manual economy, even if Steiner doesn't want to let go of the idea of cars and planes and international trade and differentiated cuisine.

It is revealing that Steiner stops at $20. If the end of oil becomes discernible to everyone, most likely the shift up in prices will not be incremental, but abrupt and exponential. And it doesn't have to stop at $20. Oil is the most precious commodity we possess, if we are bent on maintaining our current form of life. Even at $20 it would be close to free, based on its actual value. What happens when oil is at $50 or $100 or $1,000 a gallon? Obviously, rationality is out the door then, and a more gruesome survivalism sets in, the kind Steiner stops short of discussing.

We can't lose our oil and yet benefit from its applications, in a more beautiful version of what we have now, only somewhat modified. Kunstler went at the problem bluntly, presenting a scenario so horrific (and so inevitable-seeming) that the mind still has difficulty grappling with it. It takes fossil fuels to power newer technologies; Kunstler addresses this problem head-on, and finds no solution within our existing scientific capabilities. Most of the alternatives bandied about, as both Kunstler and Steiner agree, are not realistic, or can only meet a small proportion of our energy needs, even at a drastically reduced level of consumption. For Steiner, nuclear energy will be the savior; it's a huge bet to place, on a technology with its own well-known problems.

Steiner hopes that policy choices will mitigate the inevitable crash. His timely warning is all the more poignant for the degree of human wisdom it seems to call upon.

Yo, it's not about the price of eggs

Just one of the phactory pharms where disease-ridden birds are loaded up with antibiotics and hormones in the name of better profits. Image via Wikipedia

The Wall St Journal piece on the chicken flap here in Salem requires a response:

• You don't have to keep hens if you don't want to. The hen police won't be coming around to inspect your birds to make sure you haven't gone below the minimum number. You can continue to pretend that food just magically appears in stores as long as you like. Other people want to be able to make a different choice.
  
  
• If you think that people should just buy the cheap industrial concentration-camp eggs in the stores, then aren't you kind of crossing a boundary there having to do with "different strokes for different folks?"
  
  Again -- don't keep hens if you don't want to. Those of us who might prefer some eggs produced without the horrific cruelty and disease habits characteristic of the industrial phood empire will not require you to eat anything you don't want to.
  
  
• Anyone who argues that the economics of raising hens don't pencil out because it can cost a lot of money for coops, feed, etc. has totally missed some key points, such as
  
  (a) if you don't think it pencils out for you, don't do it (bears repeating);
  
  (b) if one wants to be prepared for the future, it requires preparing before the future arrives. The time to learn how to keep hens properly is when it's not vital. If we wait until food prices are soaring and hunger is even more prevalent then we're going to be just that much further behind and less able to cope. You don't suddenly know how to keep hens; it's not hard, but there's some learning to be done and some habits to build up.
  
  (c) People who spend astounding sums of money for nonsense like cable TV and industrial phood are in no position to make spending decisions for their neighbors; and
  
  (d) There is a large number of people around ready, willing, able, and eager to help other people build a proper coop and learn to keep hens successfully.
  
  
• Finally, for the "if you want to keep hens, move to the country" set, let's recall that Salem permitted hens for 70% of the 20th Century without a problem. The more appropriate thought is that, if you want to live in a place where hens aren't permitted, you need to move to a place with restrictive covenants that forbid hens. That way, you can all be together happily.
  

A prescient warning ignored

USS Jimmy Carter. Image by MATEUS_27:24&25 via Flickr

Today is the 30-year anniversary of the speech where a US president did what so many claim to want politicians to do: Tell the honest truth without sugarcoating and spin.

Would that we listened. Instead America chose to replace that president with a clown of many promises at the next opportunity, warning politicians for generations that honesty, while perhaps a the best policy, is one best left to your opponents.

Salem & Hens in Wall St Journal

Image via Wikipedia

The Wall St. Journal has a piece on the debate about re-allowing hens in Salem residential zones.

A blog post from North Carolina shows that Salem doesn't have the market cornered on baseless fears and hysteria over hens.

A comment at "The Oil Drum" on this WSJ story:

No need to wait for peak oil, climate change, economic depression, etc., to play out and see which communities will be winners and which will be losers. You can put places like Salem, Ore. in the "losers" column right now.

Any place that can't even see fit to allow its residents to keep a few chickens is already so far behind where they need to be that it is highly unlikely that they'll ever turn around in time.

Remind me again? Why do we have to build more stuff for cars?

Amen, amen, amen: Cities must focus on resiliency

Can't add anything to this:

Cities Must Become More Resilient to Survive

by Sarah Goodyear on July 14, 2009

The idea that cities are greener than suburbs has gotten a lot of attention lately. But a recently published book argues that in a future of diminishing resources, cities themselves are going to have to become much more efficient and inventive if they are to be sustainable -- indeed, if they are to survive at all.

The book is "Resilient Cities," by Peter Newman -- the man who coined the term "automobile dependence" -- Timothy Beatley and Heather Boyer. As Streetsblog Network member The Dirt (the blog of the American Society of Landscape Architects) writes, Newman and his colleagues say that some radical changes will be necessary if the world's cities are to avoid the worst-case scenarios of division or collapse:

Solar Settlement, in Freiburg, Germany. Photo via Young Germany.

"Resilient Cities"... presents a range of options to help adapt cities to lessen a dependence on petroleum, and create more resilient urban areas. The authors argue that the urban centers that may best survive a climate and energy crisis are those that engage in long-term planning and design for resiliency, and create sustainable, inter-connected modes of transportation; invest in renewable energy technology and smart grids; support walkable, high-density living; and provide for self-sufficient food production and protection of urban biodiversity... "It is clear that the changes needed for a resilient city are not just technology substitutions, they are in the business paradigms, the culture of the utilities, and the organization that can enable new ways of managing our cities; every household needs to be a part of it."

According to Newman and his co-authors, "cities throughout history have competed by examining innovations in other cities and building upon them. This [...] is the basis of wealth creation. We see the the response to climate change and peak oil as the impetus for the next burst of innovation." “Resilient Cities” also outlines a set of specific recommendations for making existing cities more adaptable to changes in climate and energy usage.

The authors write about many concrete models of cities such as Freiburg, Germany, that are implementing the types of initiatives they deem necessary. But will the world's cities be able to act decisively in time to save themselves? In the US, at least, they face some formidable obstacles. Let us know what you think in the comments.. . .

This Saturday: Passive Solar Workshop (Portland)

Half-buried ultra-efficient, low-tech passive solar home. Image by Dominic's pics via Flickr

Passive Solar Building Design - 7/18/09 - Portland - Tickets still available

Increase Energy Efficiency and Comfort in your Home

A well designed Passive Solar Home uses up to 80% less energy for heating & lighting than a conventional home! Your home's windows, walls, and floors can be designed to collect, store, and distribute solar energy in the form of heat in the winter and reject solar heat in the summer. This is called passive solar design because, unlike active solar heating systems, it doesn't involve the use of mechanical and electrical devices, such as pumps, fans, or electrical controls to move the solar heat.

To understand the techniques involved and how passive solar design works attend our upcoming workshop! >>Click Here for more details

A practical "how to" workshop for builders, designers and individuals who are planning to design or build a passive solar home.

You gain an understanding about the natural processes that underlie passive solar design and how building orientation, architecture and construction materials take advantage of these natural processes to provide a significant portion of a home's space heating, cooling and daylighting. You will also learn to calculate how much glazing and thermal storage you will need and how to meet the requirements for the $1500 Oregon State Residential Energy Tax Credit.

$10 for Solar Oregon members; $20 for Non-members

We're killing each other with cars

InvestigateWest has a concise piece that sums it up:

We’re killing our neighbors with our cars

We are literally killing people with air pollution.

It’s a simple fact that tends to get forgotten in the everyday bustle of our lives. And it’s that bustle itself – specifically, zipping to and fro courtesy the internal-combustion engine – that is proving most difficult for air-pollution regulators to fight.

Photo/Flickr and icewaterdog

These points are brought out nicely in a story by Keith Matheny that ran Sunday in The Desert Sun, the newspaper in Palm Springs, Calif. Thousands of people die from air pollution each year there in the Coachella Valley alone.

Now, it’s true that Palm Springs is cursed with unfortunate geography of being just over a low pass from Los Angeles, and located in a bowl of a valley. So the gunk in the air from LA and western Riverside County becomes a problem for Palm Springs.

But it’s also true that you could find many places in this country where air pollution peaks to levels considered too high for breathing. Matheny explains:

It’s the mobile pollution sources — diesel trucks, construction equipment, cars, trains and planes — that pose the biggest air quality challenges.

He goes on to point out, though, that the California Air Resources Board has just 50 inspectors to target a state’s worth of vehicles. . . .

Another reminder that we've got to get Oregon-ized to put the needs of people ahead of cars. It's a matter of life and death.

McNary Field: Home of the Salem Cargo Cult

a working aircraft at McNary Field -- the kind that could continue with the field under private ownership (Image via Wikipedia)

If Salem needs cash so desperately, the place to find it is the airport, as in selling it to private investors for them to operate or put to other use, as conditions dicate.

The airport is currently a tax drain on the city and occupies good, centrally located and well drained land that gets plenty of sun (and, yes, rain) -- perfect for a group of investors to take over, continue to run as an private, civil aviation airport if desired and, more importantly, to start using all that safety-buffer space as farmland as well.

Because the airline industry is cratering. The sooner Salem admits that there will never be scheduled commercial service to Salem again, the sooner the airport can be privatized and put on the tax rolls to become a tax generator instead of a tax drain.

Between the price of jet fuel (kerosene, from oil) and the onset of prices on carbon emissions, the bottom line is that that air travel --- one of the most energy intensive human activities --- is going to be less and less a part of our lives in the years to come and it will certainly never be a mass activity for the middle class, as it was for a while.

Salem's leadership seems to be either unaware or in denial about all of this, but the physical facts on the ground will trump any amount of psychological denial. The only question is how many planes will we attempt to build out of cedar planks before we give up our denial and admit that those years are over:

The most widely known period of cargo cult activity, however, was in the years during and after World War II. First, the Japanese arrived with a great deal of unknown equipment, and later, Allied forces also used the islands in the same way. The vast amounts of war materiel that were airdropped onto these islands during the Pacific campaign between the Allies and the Empire of Japan necessarily meant drastic changes to the lifestyle of the islanders, many of whom had never seen Westerners or Easterners before. Manufactured clothing, medicine, canned food, tents, weapons, and other useful goods arrived in vast quantities to equip soldiers. Some of it was shared with the islanders who were their guides and hosts. With the end of the war, the airbases were abandoned, and cargo was no longer dropped.

In attempts to get cargo to fall by parachute or land in planes or ships again, islanders imitated the same practices they had seen the soldiers, sailors, and airmen use. They carved headphones from wood and wore them while sitting in fabricated control towers. They waved the landing signals while standing on the runways. They lit signal fires and torches to light up runways and lighthouses. The cult members thought that the foreigners had some special connection to the deities and ancestors of the natives, who were the only beings powerful enough to produce such riches.

In a form of sympathetic magic, many built life-size replicas of airplanes out of straw and created new military-style landing strips, hoping to attract more airplanes. Ultimately, although these practices did not bring about the return of the airplanes that brought such marvelous cargo during the war, they did have the effect of eradicating most of the religious practices that had existed prior to the war.