To
EJ Hawkins On My 2020 Vision
By
Jeff Berg
10 December,
2007
Countercurrents.org
Dear
Erich,
The idea
of creating a bandwagon for a campaign where one of the central planks
is hurting the "greedy oil companies" seems to me fuzzy thinking
mon frere. Something that I am very much unused to seeing where you
are concerned. The price of oil, the price of all fossil fuels, must
go up and significantly if we are to have any chance of surviving, in
any form that we would call recognizable, what we are doing to the planet.
Yes, of course, there should be "windfall" taxes on the oil,
gas, coal and uranium majors as the price of these inputs wing their
way past the price of renewable energy capture, and upward to where
they need to be to reflect the fact that sustainability is best defined
as systems that are able to provide human services with 95% renewable
energy capture, and 5% non-renewable energy inputs.
This factor
20 saving should be the paradigm that we look to for all human systems
this century, and energy analysis must be our litmus test for success
for any proposed solutions. Many Greens worldwide were recently caught
out twice, greenwashing
proposed
"solutions" to our ecological and energy problems for the
simple reason that they did not do the energy analysis. The hydrogen
economy is in the words of James Howard Kuntsler "a cruel delusion",
and in my words there is "No economy to be had with hydrogen".
Yes it can have some, very, limited utility. What we are saying is that
it would be a colossal blunder to try and make it a major component
of our economy. The second failure on the part of many greens was their
backing of biofuels as a way out of the ecological box canyon we have
engineered for ourselves. I think that Castro best described what they
are in fact instead with a pithy little essay recently where he summed
up the increasingly globalized food to fuel industry as the "Internationalization
of Genocide."
That it will
take all of this century, at least, to achieve the universal transition
to a fully post carbon world is a high probability projection. However,
given that we here in Canada are the most profligate of all energy hogs,
while at the same time being so abundantly blessed with renewable energy
opportunities, I am calling for all of us to advocate a Factor 20 saving
by 2020 by all of Canadian society.
Yes of course
this is politically impossible because we have left it so late, and
by politically impossible I do of course mean economically impossible.
And by economically impossible I do of course mean that most of the
monied elite will fight such a vision with all of their usual vigour,
and the inexpertise of their bought and paid for Ph.D's. This latter
group, and their ilk in the media, having on their conscience the denial
of the link between tobacco smoke and cancer, fossil fuels and climate
change, and geology and peak energy. Because of the fact that their
denial is courting our annihilation, and is therefore the very definition
of nihilistic, I here today coin the following term for them all: 'The
Denihilists' (Jeff Berg TM ;-)
That "Politics
is the shadow cast over society by big business" is not to be doubted.
(John Dewey) To this I add the more hopeful words of wind energy expert
Paul Gipe, "No country with the possible exception of New Zealand
is more able to move towards 100% renewables than Canada." Given
that Mr. Gipe was the principal architect of the standard offer contract
here in Ontario he knows whereof he speaks. I.e. That we Canadians are
by pure geographical luck one of the most blessed of all nations. We
would do well to remember that all such blessings come attached with
no small amount of obligations. http://canadiandimension.com/articles/2007/03/01/945/
Still, despite
the truth of Mr. Gipe's words, it is very likely politically impossible
for us to achieve such savings in such a time frame. It is however,
increasingly looking like exactly what is scientifically necessary.
And when it comes to a tug of war between what is Politically Possible
and what is Scientifically Necessary I pull for the latter every time
no matter how difficult it may seem to be on the surface. I call it
a superficial difficulty because as intractable as political and economic
difficulties may seem to be they are as nothing when compared to trying
to overcome the laws of physics, chemistry and biology with increasing
technological sophistication. Jevon's Paradox shows such visions to
be chimerical and evidence that there is no small amount of magical
thinking going on at all levels of our society still.
In addition
by invoking such a vision as Factor 20 by 2020, would allow us to turn
in reality, and in the eyes of the world, our increasingly uncivil society
back towards the "Shining City on the Hill" status that it
enjoyed coming out of the Second World War. Also enabling us this time
to earn the right to a position of moral, technical and implementation
leadership in a world that very much requires a whole lot of all three.
This would also give we Canadians the best possible chance of being
the minnow that swallowed the whale in the sense of giving us the strongest
possible arguments, and abilities, for swaying the Americans to our
sustainable path instead of we following the vice of their versa.
There are
some that believe that it is too late for North America to redeem itself
and that we are quite simply too flat out evil to deserve redemption
in any case. I on other hand believe that just as America was largely
forgiven by most of the world for the unforgivable horror that it wantonly
wreaked on Indochina, so too could we here in Canada gain forgiveness
for the degree to which we have enabled empire and all of its horrors.
Though it will take something as signal and significant as contributing
to the end of the martial component of Amerika's empire and economy.
At the same
time such an achievement would provide the world with an absolutely
essential concrete example of just how much is possible if we apply
our non-renewable energy to the task of creating the infrastructure
necessary for renewable human service delivery systems. Given all of
the advantages advanced by presenting this vision we can turn the questions
very quickly from "How can we afford to?" into "How can
we afford not to?"
It cannot
be doubted that it is going to take a whole heck of lot of fossil fuel
to get us off of fossil fuels. The oil companies are not the problem.
Oil and gas molecules are incredibly wonderful and beautiful gifts from
mother nature and extracting them is becoming an increasingly difficult
technical challenge. We will need those molecules and our oil and gas
companies for a good long time, certainly for the rest of this century,
if we are to maintain the level of information sophistication that you
and I so very much enjoy that it is one of our principle pleasures.
I do not see coal and uranium in the same vein but they are topics for
another time.
Oil and gas
molecules are naught but solar energy capture lovingly bundled and stored
over millions of years and the problem is not with them but with how
we are using them. Without them for example I would not now be talking
to you. Without them there would not today be an information age. And
as times get very-very-very much tougher it will become increasingly
clear that it is only a few steps politically speaking, to go from demonizing
the oil companies to enlisting as allies those who would, if given the
chance, seize power by resorting to a Jacobin, theocratic, and annihilistic
revolution. Like the Taliban, and Al Qaeda, turning their backs on modernity
and empiricism if only as a way to consolidate their power. Could there
be a more quintessential example of the damage that can be wrought when
one throws out the baby with the bathwater? Oil and water may not mix
but if kept separate these molecules can be Promethean in their service
to our good.
There is
the even more important fact that politically speaking if one does not
put energy at the very center of whatever program one has for social
change then one is economically and therefore politically dead from
the get go. People love energy for a very good reason. It provides them
with life and comfort. Yes too much of a good thing, even energy, is
bad, no doubt. However, it is quite simply impossible to believe that
the Greens will ever have any legitimate chance to be leaders of the
political process if they do not fully address all the good things that
fossil fuel energy does for us as thoroughly as they address all the
bad things that the abuse of them has so clearly brought.
Furthermore,
without the incredible energy density and molecular malleability of
hydrocarbons it is extremely unlikely that we would today have at our
disposal the incredible and unprecedented asset that I describe in what
I call my "Absolute Number Theory'. (A work in progress)
ABSOLUTE
NUMBER ASSET: We today have very many more literate, and numerically
proficient, people alive on the planet than at any other time in our
history. In addition, thanks to the magical properties the modern age
has bequeathed to us for annihilating time and space, we also have never
before had so many brilliant minds able to exchange information and
ideas in real time. It is not to be doubted that this is a huge asset
and possibly the single greatest reason for hope as we look forward
into an increasingly uncertain yet knowable future. Not least because
of what the information age has done for reducing the cost and humanpower
required to mobilize huge numbers of dedicated people. For example an
information warrior like Richard Heinberg has been able to become as
a result in many real ways a fully mobilized and quite potent one man
advocacy army. http://www.richardheinberg.com/
I am also
working on a series of articles, centered on a concept I've coined 'Molecular
Patrimony', that seek to address Jevon's Paradox, the problems of Net
Present Value and Future Discounting, and how to address the social
justice and development inequities created by globalization. They do
so, if I do say so myself :-), quite elegantly, providing in addition
all of the attractions and political and marketing benefits of one stop
shopping.
In short,
they illustrate how Energy Matters, and why Energy is the key that unlocks
all of the solution doors that are available to us. Or at least all
of the doors that are available until we become the better people that
we are very much in need of becoming. Though that is a project that
makes the century or two long one that I am proposing seem like a power
breakfast by comparison I'm afraid.
When my papers
start appearing on the list I hope that you will add your usually powerful
critique to my analysis so that we can further the goals that we both
know to be so existentially critical at this time. I am aiming to start
releasing these papers fairly shortly, time permitting.
If you so
desire you can today see many of the seeds that I have been germinating
in the following essay.
http://www.countercurrents.org/berg301107.htm
Please don't
allow the fact that I couched it in the form of a "tiff" with
Alexander Cockburn, the justly famed, editor of Counterpunch. It is
a time honoured pamphleteers technique to engage in public rows with
as famous an intellectual as you can rile in order to attract attention
to the most pressing issues of the day. The more public and flamboyantly
acid the row the better really.
I did not
go for this latter part of this "dog and pony show" technique,
for one because I really do respect Cockburn's long history of extraordinary
work, and for two because I knew that he would not "come out and
play" on the subject of his denial of the seriousness of climate
change and the peak energy thesis. He is quite simply too experienced,
and too savvy, to engage in a fight on ground where he is so unsure
of his footing. Ah well.
As it was
with my recent very stern dressing down of Globe and Mail ROB reporter
Neil Reynolds's outrageously cornucopian misstatements on energy , carried
on Gaianicity, or the deconstruction of Diane Yedlin's take on our natural
gas situation that I worked up for the Parkland and Post Carbon Institutes,
or my exposé carried by Canadian Dimension of Diane Francis's
ridiculous take on Canadian GHG emissions. It will also be with my soon
to be released much softer corrections of the energy misstatements by
the otherwise extremely able and useful Mike Whitney and Kelpie Wilson.
I.e. They are all meant to serve a positive purpose, however tiny their
effect. In other words my friend, you are in good company :-)
In the fullness
of hope, your hopefully useful idiot and confrere,
www.postcarbontoronto.org
www.pledgeTOgreen.ca
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