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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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