Over at the Jeff Street blog, one of our church's beloved children - Amos - says it all as he tells everyone what he would do with the signs he made to stop those guys who'd chop off our mountain tops. Amos had made some signs that said, simply, "Stop. Stop. Stop."
I will - I will get some nails to the hammer and then I would just get my signs and go up to the mountain and and - and then hammer, hammer the nails on to the trees so - so when those guys go to chop off the mountain - mountain top, they'll go, "what? what?" and they'll go away.
The Appalachian region has lost 7% (more than 470 mountains destroyed!) of our mountaintops to coal mining (which has been used up as rapidly as it's been acquired, so it's not like it's even solving our energy problems or anything!).
A more informative video can be found here or you can go to kftc.org or iLoveMountains.org
This must stop.
30 comments:
Can’t use gas
Can’t use coal
Nuclear is no good
So what are the alternatives?
I’m not trying to be a jerk I really want to know how we are supposed to produce power at even a fraction of the level and dependability that we have now.
How, indeed?
Within our means, says I.
If we are able to produce energy at X rate sustainably, then that's our alternative: To consume X.
Now, if we can consume energy at 10x right now and create a system that's dependent on 10x amount of energy, it doesn't mean it's wise to do so.
I have an acquaintance who was dirt poor - scrabbling to make rent each month. Then, they won a minor lottery ($10,000, say) and what did they do with it? Why, they went to Disney Land!
Was it a wise decision? They had the resources at the moment to do so, right? So how could it be wrong?
Because it was not sustainable in the long term.
Tell me this, Edwin: 100 years from now (or 25 or 250, if you prefer), and our oil and coal resources are consumed, how shall we fuel our economy then?
I wonder, Edwin, are you familiar with the Mountaintop Removal issue?
If so, I wonder if there is a limit to what you'd be willing to do. For instance, if we could secure enough coal to last us another 50 years and all we had to do was make Kentucky and West Virginia a part of the great plains - that is, if leveling KY/WV would gain us 50 years worth of coal - would that be worth it to you?
[and let's assume we could do that - level two states - WITHOUT all the environmental degradation and damage to the people living in the region that is part and parcel of MTR, would it be okay then? What if we include in the facts of all the damage done?]
So what are the alternatives, Dan? How should we generate electricity?
Once again I am not trying to be a jerk. I just want to know what your solution is to the problem discussed in you post.
Over at ilovemountains.org, you can get badges for your blog that let your readers tell whether their electricity provider is linked to mountain top removal.
http://www.ilovemountains.org/mc/take_action.php#badges
The URL I just provided was truncated. The part after
http://www.ilovemountains.org/mc
should read:
/take_action.php#badges
Thanks, Tim, I'll check it out.
The alternatives are, as I said, living within our means. We can use coal, but let's not wipe out mountains to get it. And let's make sure it's clean coal, which will increase the cost of such to a more realistic price.
Once we've done that, solar, hydro and wind power suddenly become more reasonable in pricing and, more importantly, we'll begin to use less, hopefully. Right now we are overconsuming. We're consuming at a rate that we can't maintain.
So I've answered your question, Edwin, how about answering mine? Is there any price too great to pay for energy for you? And what will we be using in 100-200 years, when the fossil fuels have become so dear as to be prohibitive?
The notion of trying to spend all our fossil fuel resources in one 200-year span and then having nothing does not seem reasonable to many people. What will we do when it's gone?
I personally don’t believe we are in danger of running out of fossil fuels within the next 100 years.
That gives us plenty of time to develop solutions that are not marred with baseless panic and political motives.
Let’s just look 50 years into the past. Do you think anyone who was concerned with forest preservation and producing less paper could have imagined the Internet and microcomputer networks eliminating the need for paper in the office. Now imagine if fifty years ago companies were over regulated (the price of paper being artificially inflated to force a solution) or laws made it unattractive to invest in the new and risky tech companies that would help eliminate the need for paper, even though they were not trying to eliminate the need for paper.
We have plenty of time to develop a solution to the power problem. We have made great strides without the help of government regulation and are right on schedule to be free of fossil fuels well before they run out, probably centuries ahead of time.
I personally don’t believe we are in danger of running out of fossil fuels within the next 100 years.
That gives us plenty of time to develop solutions...
So, you're saying that you have a hunch that we MAY not run out of fossil fuels for 100 years and that, given 100 years, we'll have time to find some replacement for the amount of energy that we are currently dependent upon for survival?
Do you mind if I'd prefer something a bit more solid?
On "running out" (and I'm sure we've covered this before, but for clarity's sake), the problem is not so much running out but peaking on affordably accessible fossil fuels. Most reliable evidence shows that we are currently peaking or will peak in the next 10-20 years on petroleum.
As the supply begins to decrease and the demand remains the same (or increases, as it is currently), what will happen to the price of petroleum? It will double or triple (or increase exponentially?), as it has done in the last 3-4 years.
Now, we DO have enough coal to last (at current demand) for maybe a century or two, according to the USGS. But as our petroleum peaks, do you suppose it's reasonable that demand for coal energy will increase drastically? I think so.
Regardless, this post is not so much about the reality of finite supplies of fossil fuels as it is about Real Costs. I'm not so much opposed to coal as a fuel as I am about failing to take into account Real Costs.
Coal is a cheap fuel only because we are subsidizing it and pushing its costs off on the folk of Appalachia and our children and on the environment.
If I were building a new house next to you Edwin, I could do it much more cheaply if I could just dump all my wastes over in your yard. But would doing so be moral or legal?
Even though I think the free market has problems, I think if we were to start letting our fossil fuels reflect their real price, the price would skyrocket and the demand would decrease and we'd be forced to accept the reality of living within our means. That's what I'm advocating.
Greenmantim:"Over at ilovemountains.org, you can get badges for your blog that let your readers tell whether their electricity provider is linked to mountain top removal."
I would be intrigued as to how they determine this. Both coal and electric power go into a more or less common pool and are routed where they are needed. It's a little like issuing you a badge for having a municipal water source that does not take water from a polluted source. All the water on the Earth is a common source.
Coal, no matter its source, is routed and stored where is most expedient so the greenest of the greenest of the green power plant can't determine for sure that it did not get coal from mountain top removal. Likewise power companies must buy power on the fly from whatever source they can obtain it. They cannot determine nor ensure that the power only came from generators not using mountaintop coal.
Just like 'carbon offsets' there's every sort of trick and gimmick out there to make people think they are doing something about a problem when in fact they are not.
ED:"I personally don’t believe we are in danger of running out of fossil fuels within the next 100 years. "
Coal, probably not. The problem isn't running out of coal, but the temptation to get the coal artificially cheaply. The seams of coal that are being had by mountaintop removal can be mined in other ways, but the coal is much more expensive.
But as far as petroleum, 'believing' that we are not running out is not a substitute for "I've looked at the stats and figures and here's why I say we are not running out." In the face of sharply rising demand, the rate of extraction of petroleum has not gone up since December of 2005, most geologist and those in the petro industries say that's because it CAN't go up any more, we are extracting oil as fast as it can ever be extracted. That is, Peak Oil.
Most of us would be very interested in what constitutes believing that we have 100 years fossil fuels at our current (or increasing) rate of consumption. Alas, mostly it looks like whistling past the graveyard.
Dan my hunch is just as good as yours. The only difference is yours has ulterior motives that are political and not objective. You want more solid evidence then google it yourself. No matter how many links I paste up here you will just cry conspiracy and keep your pre-conceived notions that the sky is falling.
Just like 20 years ago, the enviro-nuts (A.K.A. Useful idiots) were wrong. We still have air, the rain forest is still there and a republican President is just finishing up his second term. Amazing how history repeats itself.
What is also amazing is how the environment was fine 8 years ago.
ED:"Let’s just look 50 years into the past. Do you think anyone who was concerned with forest preservation and producing less paper could have imagined the Internet and microcomputer networks eliminating the need for paper in the office."
Good point. But let's see how it relates to fuel consumption. Facing depleting forests (which unlike fossil fuels are renewable) and rising record keeping, we didn't come up with a way to make more and more paper, we came up with a way of not needing paper to begin with.
What we also did was eliminate the need for the physical records to exist at all. Of the bazillions of paper records that were kept by every business and individual, not one in 10,000 was ever actually read. A million records were kept in case someone needed to see one of them at some time.
Realizing this, we created an electronic system of "potential" records, not actual records. Most records that exist on computers are never seen and never printed out.
Expecting a solution to the energy problem like the solution to the paper problem would have meant that we found a way to make more and more and more paper (out of seaweed, corn stover, cobwebs, etc) and old musty records that no one ever saw would pile up higher and deeper.
Affecting a solution to the energy problem as we actually DID solve the paper problem would be to come up with a scenario where we don't need so much energy, much as we came up with a way to not need so much paper.
For example, when I was entering the work force nearly 40 years ago, if someone took a job 20 miles away, the next question would have been "When are you moving?" The idea of driving 20 miles one way to work was not to be considered. Ridiculous. If you took a job more than a few miles from where you lived, you move there. Now of days a 70 mile commute is common.
Houses were much smaller, passenger trains (not AmTrak) were still running, few things were disposable, etc.
A solution similar to the paper solution would find us looking for ways to live contentedly on a lot less energy, not a mad and fruitless dash to find more energy.
ED:"Dan my hunch is just as good as yours."
Sorry, Edwin, but it isn't for the simple fact that mine isn't a hunch.
Dan has asked this question many times and gotten no answer (because there isn't one). Given the known sources of energy and the potential for such as wind and solar, where is the energy for the future going to come from? That's not a hunch, it's a fair question.
It's not a hunch that oil production (mining) reached a peak amount in December of 2005 and slightly declined from that amount since then.
It is not a hunch that the major oil fields (Cantarell, Ghawar, North Sea, Prudoe Bay, etc) are ALL declining in production.
It is not a hunch that no new major oil fields have been discovered since the mid 1960's.
It's not a matter of me sitting around saying "There's not much oil left" and you sitting around and saying "Oh, yes there is!" It's a matter of here are the stats. To continue oil use as we are now, we have to find 40% more oil in the next ten years.
Where is it? The optimists and cornucopians much as yourself all have the same answer, "Oh, we'll find it, just you wait and see."
Now as to foiled predictions, I will remind you that seven or eight years ago when gasoline was $1 a gallon, the cornucopians said crude oil about now would be trading for $20 a barrel and gasoline would be 75 cents a gallon. It's now now, and crude oil is over $90 a barrel and gasoline is around $3 a gallon.
Those who back then predicted that petroleum energy would be sharply more expensive in the near future were right. And they are right now as well.
Eleutheros has answered all Edwin's points quite well, much better than I could (thanks, E), but I do have a question remaining.
Edwin said:
Dan my hunch is just as good as yours. The only difference is yours has ulterior motives that are political and not objective.
I'm wondering what exactly are my ulterior motives and how exactly you have managed to discern them?
As far as I'm aware, my only ulterior motive is to live responsibly, sustainably. I want to pay real costs for products, not prices that are artificially low and that are artificially low because we've pushed the costs off on others.
But so far, Edwin, I don't believe (perhaps I'm wrong) that you have answered a single question I've asked of you. Can you help us out a bit here? Conversations are difficult to have when only one person is answering questions.
Well said Eleutheros, and I am ashamed to say you have been more statesman like than myself. I concede that we as a nation do drive more and live in bigger houses than we did back in the 50s. We can do so thanks to improvements in technology. Sure not all areas have improved at the same rate but there is no reason to think that we will not be able to heat and cool larger homes more cheaply in the future, just as we can drive cars farther with much less gas than we could have. What I am suggesting is we develop much more efficient energy solutions if we keep government regulation out of the picture.
Dan:"Once we've done that, solar, hydro and wind power suddenly become more reasonable in pricing and, more importantly, we'll begin to use less, hopefully."
Ah, Dan, alas that would only be true if the cost (in real terms) of coal went up and the cost of solar and wind stay the same. But you are chasing a moving target!
The cost of producing and delivering solar and wind are directly linked to the cost of fossil fuels, as the cost of coal goes up, the cost of solar and wind go up too.
For example, as things stand now, a wind generator over its expected life cannot produce enough electricity to make another wind generator. We are depending on oil and coal to make them, make the delivery systems, and maintain them.
For the record, unanswered/unaddressed questions:
1. 100 years from now (or 25 or 250, if you prefer), and our oil and coal resources are consumed, how shall we fuel our economy then?
2. Are you familiar with the Mountaintop Removal issue?
3. If leveling KY/WV would gain us 50 years worth of coal - would that be worth it to you?
4. If I were building a new house next to you Edwin, I could do it much more cheaply if I could just dump all my wastes over in your yard. But would doing so be moral or legal?
For starters. Eleutheros offered up some even more important questions that perhaps you haven't had a chance to ponder.
Also, I'll add one more: Who said that our environment was fine eight years ago, as you claimed? It would seem that you are trying to imply that when Clinton was in office, that there weren't voices being raised saying we've got to do something about living sustainably. You seem to imply a political motive in that.
However, eight years ago, there were MANY concerns being raised. The Clinton administration was no friend to living responsibly as it relates to energy or otherwise. So, it would seem your premise ("no one complained when a Dem was in office") AND conclusion ("therefore, you have an agenda") are incorrect.
ED:"We can do so thanks to improvements in technology."
No, we do so by using far, far more energy than we did then. In these discussions "improved technology" often gets used synonymously with "use more energy".
I don't have link for it handy but it's the Jeavons Paradox. An improvement in efficiency invariably leads to MORE consumption, never less. Sure, cars get better gas mileage now than 50 years ago, but as a result we use MORE gas per person, not less. Sure, heating houses is more efficient now than 50 years ago, but as a result we use MORE fuel, keep our houses hotter, build bigger houses, with the result that we use far more energy per person than we did.
In real terms, all we mean by improvements in technology is more energy use per capita.
COULD we drive less, live in smaller houses that we don't maintain at 64 in the summer and 78 in the winter? Etc. Yes, but almost no one is doing it.
A lot of people have a lot of faith in technology and finding techo-solutions. But take away fossil fuels from out of the equation and all the technology crumbles to the ground.
As has been pointed out, it's like confusing a recipe for food. If you have no food, all the new and innovative recipes in the world doesn't feed you. All the technology in the world is useless without the energy to power that technology.
Eleutheros, I agree with most of your last comment, and concede the point that we use less energy today than we did decades ago (well played old man).
I will adjust my point to say we CAN do the same thing today as we did yesterday and use less energy. Since we do not it is by personal choice, therefore it is by choice we destroy the mountain tops. If we utilized new technology without changing habits then energy consumption would go down.
Problem is now that I have thought about that I really don’t believe it is possible for a free society to cut energy usage, and still be a free society.
My final point is: do I like the mountain tops? Sure. Would I give up my freedom to consume per my ability to save them, nope. I feel that way because I believe scientist who say we have allot of non-renewable energy left, enough to get us to the next stage of energy production.
Outstanding debate, but now I leave this circle in search other endeavors (like my job) leaving only the promise to antagonize again.
You are welcome to come back, Edwin, but really, if you only want to complain and not address questions, then it is not a conversation, but a rant. You can do that sort of stuff at your own blog.
And for the record - Questions asked:
About six.
Questions addressed:
About zero.
My final point is: do I like the mountain tops? Sure. Would I give up my freedom to consume per my ability to save them, nope.
So then, you're okay with me moving in next door to you, building a new home and dumping my waste in your yard because you're an advocate of Freedom over responsibility, is that a correct distillation of your point?
Questions asked, seven.
I was more interested in the point-counterpoint. No offence but your comments are more like a cross examination from a prosecutor.
But it is your blog and I respect that so I apologize for ignoring you Dan.
Offering points and counterpoints is fine but not if we're talking past each other, which is why I like to ask questions. I am striving to see if we are understanding one another before moving on.
If I say "A" and by "A," you think I mean, "B" and then you argue against "B," then we're not really having a conversation nor a debate. Just offering rants.
We have enough rants in our world, I'm looking for understanding and common ground, even on those occasions when we ultimately disagree.
"Would I give up my freedom to consume per my ability to save them, nope."
Well, there ya go. Eye'm predicting a very flat Kentucky in the future.
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Dan wrote, "And let's make sure it's clean coal,"
You're not really buying that clean coal crap, are you Dan?
Second point. The problem everyone worries about is, "When are we going to run out of oil & coal?" That is certainly a concern, but not the most immediate one. The most immediate problem is that demand will outstrip supply LONG before we actually run out completely. The effects, however, are basically the same.
True dat. Good point, Alan.
And what I was trying to indicate with my "clean coal" comment was that we ought to make sure it is as clean as possible, as responsibility demands. Which might mean putting more scrubbers, etc on coal burning plants, which CAN be done, but it just starts getting more expensive.
Which is one of my points, that coal as we're using it is artificially cheap.
"And what I was trying to indicate with my "clean coal" comment was that we ought to make sure it is as clean as possible, as responsibility demands."
Agreed. But the term "clean coal" is silly, and has a bunch of politics behind it. Maybe "less dirty, filthy, deadly & polluting" coal would be a better term. ;)
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