After the Three Mile Island of the Oil Industry, Time for a Solid Plan for Freedom From Oil

As I continue to watch BP and Halliburton's Gulf of Mexico oil disaster unfold, I am doing my best to focus constructively on the question of "What next?"

What I keep coming back to is the feeling that, as people like Jerome Ringo are saying, this catastrophe absolutely must serve as a catalyst that helps accelerate our transition to clean energy.  Coming from the Gulf Coast, himself, Ringo writes eloquently of the lesson before us, which can become a silver lining to the darkening cloud of oil spreading across the Gulf:

Now, as more than 200,000 gallons of crude oil pour into the Gulf of Mexico each day, I see the jobs that will be lost, the families and communities that will suffer and the impending devastation of our $2 billion seafood industry.

Think about the fishermen, the truck drivers, the restaurant owners and so many others who depend on this industry. Think also about the fish, birds, sea turtles and other marine life whose ecosystem has just been turned on its head.

There is a better way: clean energy.

While many countries have already embraced clean energy and adopted national policies to increase energy efficiency and the use of renewables, the United States continues to suffer from a reactive, outdated energy strategy. It’s been nearly a year since the U.S. House of Representatives passed its energy and climate bill (the American Clean Energy and Security Act), but the Senate has yet to begin serious debate on its own legislation.

Our policymakers are fiddling while Rome burns – or rather, while oil rigs burn and pollute our oceans and coasts.

Not only is America’s refusal to embrace clean energy endangering human health and wildlife, it is also costing us jobs, which are precious commodities in this time of economic hardship. Several energy companies, including GE and BP Solar, recently announced plans to invest millions of dollars to develop and expand clean energy facilities – not in the United States, where such investments and the jobs they bring are desperately needed – but in Europe and China. We need incentives for green energy jobs here at home.

Now is the time for the Senate to act. With photos of the oil spill on the front pages of newspapers across the country, Americans are starting to grasp the dangers of our country’s dependence on oil and other dirty sources of energy, and this awareness is being transformed into support for a new energy direction for our country.

While our unfortunate energy reality right now is that we need to continue to drill for oil, including to power our transition to renewable energy, we need to do so in a manner guided by a bold, long-term plan to achieve freedom from oil.

Between the high costs of our oil dependence (which we are reminded of daily by updates on the underwater oil volcano that BP and Halliburton have created) and the looming threat of Peak Oil, we must get a move on before we are forced to get a move on.

We have a choice.

Perhaps, it's the most urgent choice that humanity has ever faced, as the transport and food supplies of billions hang in the balance if we don't start acting with focused, inspired urgency to transition to clean energy and vehicles.

Climate Progress offered a good update on the Peak Oil situation this past weekend:

A storm is quickly approaching, and the world is not ready for it.

The permanent end of the era of cheap oil is coming as soon as next year, according to a raft of official reports that have made their way into energy media over the last few months.  Governments are now beginning to acknowledge the looming crisis. Yet, perhaps because they waited too long to prevent it, leaders are not yet alerting the public.

The entire world economy is built on cheap oil,  A permanent oil production shortage will thus lead to The End of The World (As We Know It).  What will come on the other side of this — will it be good or bad?

Public Unaware. Except for a few stories in financial pages such as London’s Financial Times, this earth-shaking news has yet to reach the Mainstream Media.  While “Peak Oil” researchers have long warned of approaching oil shortages, the difference now is these dire warnings are being validated by the highest government and oil company officials.  Yet, no political leader has had the courage to make a major announcement to prepare the public for what lies ahead.

This public blindness is tantamount to the isolationism that gripped the U.S. in the years preceding WWII.  While the highest government leaders did their best to prepare for inevitable war, they were hamstrung by the resistance of a public unable to accept what really lay ahead.  Similar to today, some politicians advanced their own careers by feeding on the public’s desire to believe no coming storm could ever reach them.  Yet, the storm came anyway.

The Limits of Oil. The looming crisis we now face is often referred to as “Peak Oil” — a status where global oil production will reach a plateau, then begin its irreversible decline.

We Can Do It. Though Americans resisted the recognition that WWII was coming, once it came they rose valiantly to the call to action. A similar can-do spirit is needed now for the transition to a post-oil world.

This crisis is coming soon.  It is too late to prevent it, so we simply need to get used to it.  Peak Oil is happening.

We will need to adapt – but we can do that.

The good news, which I emphasize on this blog time and again, is that the solutions to Peak Oil and climate change overlap in many ways, and both overlap with the solutions to our economic crisis, jobs crisis, and crisis of skyrocketing health care costs.

It is time for us to rise up as citizens and inspire Congress and the President to take bold action by passing an American Power Act that incorporates the lessons we are learning each and every day as we watch this Gulf of Mexico oil disaster unfold.  Click here for a fun way to write to your Senators, President Obama, and even your local newspaper.

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Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill Catastrophe: This Doesn't Happen With Clean Energy

As I've watched the Gulf of Mexico oil spill unfold over the last few days, a few thought have come to mind.

First, a note to God-fearing opponents of the bold climate change and clean energy legislation that will also help us deal with the looming Peak Oil crisis: watching the recent deadly coal mine disaster, quickly followed by this catastrophically costly, headline-grabbing (likely for weeks to come) offshore oil drilling disaster, does it seem kinda like The Lord is pissed about our dirty energy use?

It hasn't been a very good month for those raping Mother Earth for the dirty energy sources that are destabilizing the global climate system, threatening humanity's food and water supplies.

Second, how ironic that this oil spill catastrophe is going to hit the hardest economically in the deep southern U.S., the heart of political support for "Drill Baby Drill!"

The good news, especially given that the Senate is about to start debate on Climate Change and Clean Energy legislation: this type of disaster just doesn't happen with solar or wind power.

Sure, it's going to take a LOT of work and energy (and even fossil fuel use) to transition to clean energy.  But we CAN have energy without these deadly, catastrophically costly, economically destabilizing and toxic risks posed by fossil fuels.

Best of all, the building, installation, sales, administration, transport, you name it of all this clean energy infrastructure is going to create the millions of new jobs our economy badly needs.  They are good jobs that will make people proud -- coming with the badge of honor that they have joined the clean energy revolution that is freeing America from our addiction to dirty oil and other fossil fuels.

Now it's up to Congress to make it happen and unleash the tsunami of clean energy technology investment that's been waiting on the sidelines for the rules of the game to be established.

Let's play ball, and play to win.
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U.S. Military Warns Oil Output May Dip, Causing Massive Shortages By 2015

We officially now have the U.S. Military issuing dire warnings about the imminent dangers of Peak Oil, reports The Guardian (where oh where are U.S. newspapers on this critical economic and national security issue?!)

The US military has warned that surplus oil production capacity could disappear within two years and there could be serious shortages by 2015 with a significant economic and political impact.

"By 2012, surplus oil production capacity could entirely disappear, and as early as 2015, the shortfall in output could reach nearly 10 million barrels per day," says the report, which has a foreword by a senior commander, General James N Mattis.

It adds: "While it is difficult to predict precisely what economic, political, and strategic effects such a shortfall might produce, it surely would reduce the prospects for growth in both the developing and developed worlds. Such an economic slowdown would exacerbate other unresolved tensions, push fragile and failing states further down the path toward collapse, and perhaps have serious economic impact on both China and India."

The US military says its views cannot be taken as US government policy but admits they are meant to provide the Joint Forces with "an intellectual foundation upon which we will construct the concept to guide out future force developments."

This report adds a whole new angle of urgency to the need for the U.S. Senate to pass bold climate change and clean energy legislation, and for The House to support a far bolder bill than the one it passed last summer.  Whether you accept the facts on climate change or not, America needs to get our butts in gear in weaning ourselves from oil, or we'll be forced to do it the hard (and very painful and scary) way...

The good news -- the solutions to the Peak Oil crisis are also the solutions to our economic, jobs, energy, and climate crises all packaged into one.  Let's do this, people -- let me know how I can be of assistance.

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Get Those Plug-In Hybrids Ready: New Study Predicts Peak Oil In 2014

For those of you interested in Peak Oil -- the other big reason in addition to climate change that we need to wean ourselves from our oil addiction ASAP -- here's a new scientific study on the matter.  It was conducted by Kuwaiti mathematical modelers, and they predict Peak Oil by 2014:

Even though forecasting should be handled with extreme caution, it is always desirable to look ahead as far as possible to make an intellectual judgment on the future supplies of crude oil. Over the years, accurate prediction of oil production was confronted by fluctuating ecological, economical, and political factors, which imposed many restrictions on its exploration, transportation, and supply and demand. The objective of this study is to develop a forecasting model to predict world crude oil supply with better accuracy than the existing models. Even though our approach originates from Hubbert model, it overcomes the limitations and restrictions associated with the original Hubbert model. As opposed to Hubbert single-cycle model, our model has more than one cycle depending on the historical oil production trend and known oil reserves. The presented method is a viable tool to predict the peak oil production rate and time. The model is simple, accurate, and totally data driven, which allows a continuous updating once new data are available. The analysis of 47 major oil producing countries estimates the world’s ultimate crude oil reserve by 2140 BSTB and the remaining recoverable oil by 1161 BSTB. The world production is estimated to peak in 2014 at a rate of 79 MMSTB/D.

I can't wait to get me a plug-in hybrid or electric vehicle, and to be able to charge it off my home solar system.  But that's just my preparedness.  We're going to need lots and lots of them -- and lots and lots of rail to transport goods affordably -- ready as close to 2014 as possible if we're to avoid a highly undesirable energy crisis...  Let's get a move on, U.S. government!

Thanks to Chris Nelder for the Tweet...

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Soccer and Energy Policy: We Need to Approach Energy Like a Well-Coached Team, Not Little Leaguers

Our current lack of a coherent strategic energy policy looks pathetically akin to the chaos of a pee-wee league soccer game, says Chris Nelder over at GetRealList.

What we really need is to approach energy more like the way a winning professional sports team approaches a playoff game:

A Playbook for Team America

It’s time for us to grow up and learn to play this game for real.

We need to gather in the locker room to watch some films of older, more mature players and try to copy their moves.

We’d take note of China’s long-term rail construction plan, instead of arguing that an abortion like Amtrak doesn’t pay for itself right this minute.

We’d plan to manage our resources for the long term health of our society, like Norway and Saudi Arabia do.

We might form an Industry Taskforce on Peak Oil and Energy Security like the UK has, to advise and prepare industry and policymakers for the decline of oil, instead of writing sunny official reports that completely fail to recognize reality.

We’d copy the proven successes of long-lived, stable feed-in tariffs in Germany and Japan instead of inventing complex, corruptible mechanisms like cap and trade.

We’d formulate and then execute 20- and 30-year plans to reduce our need for fossil fuels, instead of watching incentives come and go with every turnover of a Congressional seat.

Our playbook would begin with some rough milestones:

• Oil has peaked. Supply will be flattish for the next 2-4 years, then begin a long decline.
• We will lose 25% of our oil supply in 25 years, 50% in 50 years, and 100% in 100 years.
• To compensate for the decline of oil with renewables, the world would need to build the equivalent of all the world’s existing renewable energy capacity, every year.
• Since that is impossible, efficiency and energy transition must make up the shortfall.
• We will also see the peaks of natural gas and coal in the next 20 years. Hydropower and nuclear will do little more than hold their current market share.
• The days of economic growth may be gone forever for import-dependent developed countries like the U.S.
• The least painful path is to downsize, economize, and relocalize.
• By the end of the century, nearly everything will have to be powered by renewably-generated electricity, not liquids or gases.

Then we might draw up some plays, and practice them.

Well done -- a fun, yet jarringly effective analogy.  Getting our acts together on climate and energy policy is the most important bold step that America can take right now to address so many of our other societal problems -- from the economy to health care to terrorism and global warming.

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Apocalypse or Not: 5 Tips for Preparing for Peak Oil

Planet Green reminds us that preparing for the next oil crisis, which could be a doozie, is simply a matter of common sense.

What are 5 often money-saving ways that you can prepare?  Says Planet Green:

1. Start a Garden: From learning about permaculture to planting fruit and nut trees to starting a no-dig garden, learning to grow your own food, and making sure the infrastructure is in place to do so, can be a great way to insulate yourself from future shocks—be they environmental or economic. If you are seriously worried about coming instability, it makes sense to concentrate on fruit trees and perennials first—once you've dug an asparagus bed or planted a pear tree, you'll be enjoying harvests for years to come.

2. Green Your Home: From insulating your roof to installing low energy light bulbs, everything you do to green your home will also put you in better stead if and when energy prices rise dramatically. And if you're a believer in more profound shocks from peak oil, why not look at generating some of your own power by installing solar panels?

3. Live Within Your Means: Learning to limit your spending is not always thought of as a green activity, but it is definitely wise if you want to become more resilient to economic or social disturbance. And buying less stuff means producing less pollution too, so it's a win-win for the planet and your finances, whether peak oil is around the corner or not.You may also want to look at cutting debt, or paying off that mortgage—recent events show just how fragile our economic system can be. You could even try living mortgage-free!

4. De-oil Your Transport: Along with food and housing, transportation is one of the most energy intensive activities in the average person's life, and unlike energy used in our homes, transportation energy is almost completely reliant on oil. So look at ways you can cut back on oil use— and try to think beyond the obvious. From biking to work to carpooling to taking mass transit, cutting your transportation footprint often saves you money too. And if you want to get really serious, you can work from home. Even driving more carefully will save you money on gas.

5. Campaign for Action: Cutting your personal oil consumption is commendable, but peak oil is a societal problem. So do what you can to educate your friends, to mobilize your community, and to call for action on a political level. Whether you are calling for stricter fuel economy standards or starting a community garden, collective action makes us all more resilient to coming challenges. Take a look at our guide on How to Green Your Community for more ideas.

Frankly, stuff like gardening, bicycling, or being active in the community is also FUN, not to mention rewarding.

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What Peak Oil Can Do For Climate Change

Getting real today with a series of outstanding posts from Chris Nelder of GetRealist.

In this installment of facing up to the hard data on energy and climate, he talks about how the urgency of addressing the Peak Oil crisis looming on the horizon can help address the climate crisis that is really starting to bubble up to the surface, even if much of the public continues to act like the proverbial frog in a slowly warming pot of water on a stove...

Says Nelder about what climate change can do for Peak Oil:

With all eyes focused on the Copenhagen climate summit in less than three weeks, perhaps its time for the peakists to find a new purpose.

The reason is simple. Money isn’t interested in problems; it’s only interested in solutions. And wherever capital goes is where the changes will be made.

The public also has little appetite for unpleasant stories, even true ones. The message is: Don’t tell us what we can’t consume — tell us what we can consume. Tell us our grid power costs are going to go up because of climate change and we’ll fight it. But help us buy efficiency improvements and renewables that will pay for themselves in fuel savings, and we’ll support it all the way.

A new Pew study on “apocalypse fatigue” highlights the problem nicely. The public’s confidence in the global warming problem has fallen sharply this year, even as momentum built toward Copenhagen.

Guilt and deprivation simply don’t sell like opportunity does.

That’s why trillions of dollars are pouring into cleantech annually, while the peak oil community continues to go begging for a few dollars to staff a small office and keep a web server running, all while battling a constant onslaught of misinformation placed in the top mainstream media by very deep-pocketed vested interests.

That’s why I said last week that the IEA was shrewd to turn its annual World Energy Outlook into a stalking horse, masquerading its alarm about peak oil as an earnest appeal to address climate change.

What do climate activists need to realize about the threats posed by Peak Oil -- even to renewable energy itself?

First, solving the energy crisis isn’t an either Green or Brown proposition, but all of the above. There is a dangerous paradox here that the peakists can help the world avoid.

Climate activists need to realize that the renewable energy revolution can only be built on the back of fossil fuels. It will take vast amounts of oil, gas, and coal to mine raw ores, crush them, transport them, smelt them down and turn them into stock, transport them again, and turn them into end-products, then transport them again. We have no idea how to do all that without petroleum fuels, gas, and coking coal.

Therefore, in order to build a vast new infrastructure of solar and wind generation, ubiquitous rail transport, plug-in and natural gas vehicles, the next-generation grid, and so on, and do it at a reasonable price, we’ll have to ensure that fossil fuels receive vigorous and sustained investment.

Here’s a rough, rule-of-thumb way of expressing the supply dilemma: We have to fill a 25% gap in 25 years, a 50% gap in 50 years, and we need to be off fossil fuels completely by the end of the century.

Here’s another rule of thumb: Starting two to four years from now, the world will need to build the equivalent of all the world’s existing renewable energy capacity every year just to compensate for the decline of oil.

Meeting that challenge with renewables and efficiency would solve the emissions problem as a side effect, only it would do so by harnessing the profit motive — not by penalizing production. That’s how capitalism works best.

If we allow climate policy to pour cold water on the fire of fossil fuels, we would extinguish the growth in renewables too. Failing to maintain a steady supply of fossil fuels, even as they peak and decline, their prices rise, and their availability shrinks, would subject the cleantech industry to devastating boom and bust cycles.

Head spinning yet?  Here's the real eye-opening claim in Nelder's analysis:

Count on Less Fuel. . . and Less CO2

It’s fairly astonishing, but none of the climate change models take the peaking of any fossil fuels into account. They all project — over a period of 30 years or more! — fairly simple growth curves for population and the global economy, assuming that sufficient oil, gas and coal will be available to satisfy demand at historically normal prices.

As the peakists know, nothing could be further from the truth.

If my current understanding of the situation is even close to correct — peak oil circa 2005-2012; peak gas 2015-2020 and peak coal 2025-2030 — then the climate models are not accurately modeling 78% of the global energy supply over the next 30 years.

Accordingly, the CO2 projections must be wrong. Ultimately, the population-based forecasts must also be wrong. The peak oil study can help correct these glaring flaws by offering better data to the CO2 emissions models.

Easier to Switch than Fight

In resisting the policy focus on climate change and resisting the truth about peak oil, the fossil fuel industry has become its own worst enemy.

By perceiving these issues as threats, the Browns have created a vicious cycle. Fighting the renewable energy revolution sows public opposition, adds cost, and delays the deployment of renewables, which makes the CO2 problem worse. The worse the CO2 problem gets, the more it costs them.

If instead the Browns acknowledged that the future of fossil fuels will be increasingly difficult and expensive, and that CO2 is a problem they need to own, it would feed a virtuous cycle.

Peak-adjusted fuel models would lower the projected CO2 emissions, reducing the cost of mitigation and buying a bit more time for the transition to renewables. It would give the energy industry a clear mandate to invest more in renewables, and do so in a measured, less disruptive way. In turn, the accelerated adoption of renewables would reduce CO2 projections and feed further investment, reducing CO2 even more.

Hopefully, the peakists can help the fossil fuel industry come to terms with a decarbonized future, and in so doing, ensure its long term survival.

Wow -- that scenario is quite entirely different than what most of humanity believes.  If Nelder is right (and I've found that he usually is, even if I don't want to hear it), then what's the solution?

Incentivize, Don’t Penalize

Perhaps the most important way that the peakists can help the climate change cause is by changing the focus to what goes into the engine, instead of what comes out of the tailpipe.

As I have argued, incentivizing renewable energy solutions would be far more effective than penalizing fossil fuel producers.

Emphasizing CO2 emissions in policy...has several undesirable outcomes: It doesn’t address coal plants satisfactorily; it raises costs substantially; it reduces overall power output; and it engenders resistance from the energy industry.

By contrast, focusing on the renewable generation side — what goes into the engine — results in increasing amounts of power that was clean to begin with, at ever-declining costs, and could create a long-term growth opportunity for the energy industry.

This is along the lines of the Nordhaus and Shellenberger's argument that instead of solving climate change by making fossil fuels more expenses, climate policy should focus on making renewable energy cheap -- something that I agree with not yet in terms of supply and demand (I am not familiar enough with the data), but in terms of the types of positive-visioned policies that I think are most likely to inspire the support of citizens and decision-makes. Joe Romm of Climate Progress, however, strongly disagrees -- you can hear him out here. (I've really enjoyed following this fascinating debate)

Read Nelder's full post>>
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Notes From the 2009 ASPO Peak Oil Conference

Of course, the opposite side of the climate change coin is Peak Oil: another powerful reason to transition to much more efficient and clean energy and transport systems.

Chris Nelder of GetRealList provides us with his notes from the anual ASPO Peak Oil Conference, which included presentations from many of the world's top energy experts.

I know I can't wait to dig into these...
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Systemic Barriers to Progress on Climate and Energy: The U.S. Senate

With the entire planet waiting for the U.S. to step up and lead on climate change solutions, why couldn't America get our act together in time for Copenhagen?

One key problem, argues David Roberts of Grist, is the institutional roadblocks put up by the U.S. Senate.

In an infuriating post, Roberts points out how just 7.4% of Americans can block humanity's efforts to save itself:

Senate ratification of an international treaty requires not just 60 but 67 votes. Say 34 senators rally to block such a treaty—senators from, oh, Wyoming, Vermont, North Dakota, Alaska, South Dakota, Delaware, Montana, Rhode Island, Hawaii, New Hampshire, Maine, Idaho, Nebraska, West Virginia, New Mexico, Nevada, and Utah. Thus can representatives for 22,540,352 people—7.4% of the population—block the will of the other 281,519,372. Indeed, senators representing 7.4% of Americans can thwart the entire world’s efforts to address the climate crisis.

With climate disruption accelerating faster than expected, and our next major oil crisis no doubt not far away, something's got to give here.  With the world waiting, the Senate's Majority leader, Harry Reid, needs to show much bolder leadership than he has to date.  Most importantly, Reid needs to find a way to stop allowing the opposition Republicans, who are clearly both behind and out of step with the public majority on climate and energy, to use the filibuster to thwart progress.  I have no doubt that if the tables were turned, Republicans would absolutely not be allowing Democrats to so abuse the filibuster.

CVI is a non-partisan organization, and so rather than speaking out on a partisan basis, we speak out in support of policies that reflect the best recommendations of top experts, and offer the greatest prospects for success. 

Clearly, what the top experts are saying we need is for you to be creatively bold, Senator Reid, and do what Americans elected your party to the majority to do: pass bold legislation that moves American and the world forward on solving our crises in climate disruption and fossil fuel dependence (and in doing so helps address the problem of our skyrocketing health insurance costs, many of which are related to pollution caused by fossil fuel burning).

To Republicans, we'd love nothing more than for you to rediscover the spirits of Abraham Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt and get with the program here.  It's one thing to offer a different set of smart, practical approaches than Democrats. But to deny and ignore the consensus of the world's top scientists, scream "Drill Baby Drill" when our own Energy Department says that's not a viable policy solution, and liken President Obama's policies to those of Hitler makes your party's ideas on these issues irrelevant.

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The Vulnerabilities of Complex Systems

One of the things we are seeing with climate disruption is that its impacts, such as the disappearance of polar ice caps, are happening much faster than predicted.

Phenomena like this serve as a reminder that we humans are just, as EO Wilson points out, a tribal and aggressively territorial species of primate, and as we impact the earth's systems, we really have no idea, ultimately, what we are messing with.  As Jared Diamond details in Collapse, all we need to do is look to the history books to know what's happened to past civilizations that have failed to live sustainably.

Providing further food for thought about the darker path that humanity faces if we don't get our acts together on climate disruption and other challenges to our well being, is Chris Nelder's latest GetRealList post.  Nelder reports on insights about complex systems presented at the 2009 ASPO-USA Peak Oil Conference, including the interdependencies of energy, food, and water.

Of the security of our current food system, Nelder reports that:

Dr. Jason Bradford, the biology brains behind Farmland LP (more on that here), ticked off a few of the key vulnerabilities of the U.S. food system in his presentation on sustainable agriculture:

• Commercial agriculture consumes 10.3 quads (quadrillion BTUs) of primary energy in order to produce 1.4 quads of food energy. The inputs are mainly fossil fuels used in running tractors, producing artificial fertilizers, producing seeds, trucking, refrigeration, processing, freezing and cooking.
• Commercial agriculture not only depletes non-renewable resources and degrades soil, air, and water, but it also releases 5 billion pounds of harmful chemicals and massive amounts of greenhouse gas emissions into the environment per year.
• Animal waste provides critically important fertilizer to small distributed farms, but in the modern massive feedlots of concentrated animal populations it becomes an environmental hazard. All the feed transported to the feedlots uses petroleum fuels, and the hay is grown using ancient “fossil water” pumped from deep, essentially non-renewable aquifers.
• Over the last four decades or so, runoff from commercial agriculture has resulted in massive “dead zones” near our shorelines caused by algae blooms that suck the oxygen out of the water and create anoxic environments where nothing can live. (The dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico has grown to an estimated 8,500 square miles.)
•  Just three crops comprise 71% of U.S. crop acres: corn, soybean, and wheat.
• Monsanto, Pioneer, and Syngenta — all basically chemical companies — dominate the seed industry with patented GMO seeds. Those seeds are finely tuned to the temperature, rainfall, and so on of the recent past, making climate change a major threat to the whole food regime (more on that here).
• Likewise, a handful of giant companies now control the vast majority of the food supply system — a stark contrast to the millions of small family farmers who dominated it prior to the 1960s.
• Nearly all of the food delivery system uses just-in-time inventory methods, so there is only one to three days’ supply at any point in the distribution chain.

In short, Bradford explained, we have built a complex food supply system with very low diversity and strong connectivity. Yet in nature, those characteristics lead to instability. Stable systems are highly diverse with weak connectivity. The very complexity and interconnectedness of our food web is, in itself, a dangerous vulnerability.

Bradford aptly compared our blithe faith in the food supply system to “the hubris of Wile E. Coyote” just before he realizes he’s about to plunge into the canyon.

The rest of the piece looks at the energy-water nexus (complications that could arise from the fact that we use water for energy, and energy for water), and the relationship between Peak Credit and Peak Oil.

What's the take home, in terms of how to navigate and solve the challenges we face?  Says Nelder:

My guiding lights here include the likes of E. F. Schumacher, Paul Erlich, Paul Hawken, and Thomas Malthus — they were right, if a little (or a lot) early. And of course Henry David Thoreau, who exhorted us to simplify.

They would tell us to focus on simplicity in our investing strategies: Think locally, not globally. Small and distributed is more resilient (and more beautiful) than big and centralized. Using less energy to accomplish the same thing will succeed over trying to produce more energy. Imitating nature’s low-energy, low-impact, non-toxic methods in our industrial activities — a study now known as biomimicry — will succeed over inventing wacky new chemicals that nature has never seen before.

From now on, we should let the K.I.S.S. principle be our guide: Keep It Simple, Stupid.

It's worth your read.  If you approach it with a solution-oriented mindset and get some good ideas in response, I'd love to see 'em in the comments below.

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'We Have Already Entered Peak Oil', IEA Source Reportedly Claims

Holy Peak Oil, Batman!  If we needed any more impetus to get sweeping clean energy and transport legislation passed through Congress ASAP -- and solve climate change disruption in the process -- here it is:

Two International Energy Agency whistleblowers have come forward with startling claims about the world's supply of crude oil, according to a report published Tuesday.

"We have [already] entered the 'peak oil' zone," an unnamed former IEA official told British newspaper The Guardian. "I think that the situation is really bad."

A second whistleblower reportedly claimed that the IEA's current figures are inflated due to pressure from the United States and a pervasive fear that the announcement of falling oil output in the future could cause markets to respond with panic.

The claims come on the same day the IEA plans to publish its annual "World Energy Outlook" report for 2009.

It's getting to the point where Congress either has to show some serious 'balls' or be ready to be held big-time accountable if we fail to prepare ourselves for the coming Peak Oil crisis -- which will not be pretty.

The good news, which we repeat time and again here at CV Notes, is that the clean tech revolution-rooted solutions to Peak Oil, like the solutions to climate disruption, are exactly what the doctor ordered for our economy, our security, our public health, and overall quality of life.

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The Energy Winner Is: Doing More With Less - Efficiency Is the Answer

In this week's column, GetRealList energy guru, Chris Nelder, asks the question, "Can renewables replace fossil fuels?"  Not just in general -- but at a fast enough rate to offset predicted declines oil supplies over the coming decade.

Leading us through a fascinating analysis, Nelder concludes:

All of these factors–the declining supply, the pressures of the developing world on demand, the renewables gap, and the theorem of renewables substitution–underscore how crucial efficiency is to addressing the energy crisis.

It also underscores how profitable the entire energy sector will be for many, many years to come.

With supply maxed out, and demand at the mercy of a developing world, the name of the game now is doing more with less. More efficient vehicles and appliances, building insulation, co-generation…and all the other ways to eliminate waste.

I know it doesn’t have the sex appeal of, oh, say space based solar power, but it’s where the real gains will be made.

Read the full piece>>
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The Narrow Ledge of Oil Prices

Fascinating analysis on the future of oil prices by Chris Nelder at GetRealList:

If these analyses are correct, then we are on what Kopits called “a narrow ledge”: Houston needs $75 oil to keep drilling, but the economy goes into recession with oil at $80.

Two editors of The Oil Drum generally concurred. Nate Hagens put the boundaries a bit wider at $60 to keep drilling and $80-$100 as the economic pain tolerance point, and Gail Tverberg observed that oil at $75-$80 seems to kick off a recession.

If the stability of oil production relies on oil spending staying within roughly 4% and 5% of GDP, it’s going to be dicey. But if the oil price ledge is only $5 wide, then it’s not clear to me whether the global GDP can manage to stay on it.

In short, the world may not be able to continue executing the expensive oil projects of the future at all. The tension between the price of new production and the pain tolerance of the global economy may be resolved not by stable prices, but by a failure to bring new supply online.
This is indeed a crisis—but it’s also a hint that it’s time to focus on how we’re going to replace oil.

Take it from Sadad al-Husseini: “The hidden opportunity may be efficiency and conservation.”

Bottom line: The sooner we can get our plug-ins and electric vehicles out on the road, the more secure our economy will be. 

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Getting Real About The Latest on Peak Oil

Chris Nelder just recently returned from the annual U.S. conference of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil (ASPO).  He has some reflections for us over at GetRealList:

Perhaps the thing that struck me most was how much the outlook on peak oil has changed since the first conference in 2005.

Four years later, the view on oil and biofuel has grown considerably worse.

We now know that conventional crude did in fact hit its peak-plateau in 2005, having remained around the 74 mbpd level ever since. The expected growth from non-OPEC mostly failed to materialize... More pessimistic observers now think the 87 mbpd all liquids peak recorded at the height of the 2008 boom was the peak, and the more optimistic ones have cut their expectations to under 100 mbpd, with 90 mbpd looking more likely.

Biofuels now have a black eye from the corn ethanol frenzy of 2007-2008, which has all but collapsed. Ethanol from algae and cellulose still looks about as far in the distance as it did in 2005, as no one has figured out how to produce either one at commercial scale or with an acceptable net energy return. And biodiesel has remained a minor player, with little expectation for it to scale up any time soon.

But the most surprising change has been the outlook for North American natural gas. In 2005, the majority of observers seemed to think it had peaked for good, and saw gas prices remaining in a high range of $11-15/Mcf. I don’t think any of them expected the recent boom in North American shale gas, and there was certainly no suggestion that gas prices would crash to nearly $2 this year.

In fact the main worry about gas now seems to be that the shale gas boom will prove to be short-lived, and sucker us into building more vehicles and infrastructure to use it just as it sputters out.

Reading reports like these gets me thinking about how much I can't wait to have an electric car that I charge from my rooftop solar system, so I just don't have to worry about this stuff as much.  Of course, my electric car and solar system won't help get food produced and to market if we have another oil price spike like the one in 2008.  That's why things like the drive toward local and regional food sources, and the explosion in numbers of home gardens, may offer a more accurate glimpse into our future than most people currently realize...

The more we can build resilience into our food, energy and transport systems now via a mass proliferation of energy efficient technologies and buildings, stable renewable energy sources, efficient clean transport, and regional networks of small (and notso small) farms, the better...  Which is, of course, exactly what the doctor ordered for solving -- and adapting to -- climate change as well...

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This Bodes Well - The Military Discovers Renewables and Efficiency Solutions

OK, here's a more optimistic piece -- about the military's lesson in the strategic importance of renewable energy on the battlefield: 

This was the first time a frontline commander had formally requested renewable energy backup in battle. Without alternative power sources, the memo continued, U.S. forces “will remain unnecessarily exposed” and will “continue to accrue preventable ... serious and grave casualties.” Put in civilian-speak: Too many of Zilmer’s troops were dying in fuel convoys, and the relentless gasoline demands of the diesel generators were partly to blame.

Renewable energy was not an environmental consideration for Zilmer, it was a tactical necessity—a matter of life and death, of victory or defeat.

This development bodes very well for our clean energy future.  Remember, game-changers like The Internet were first developed for military purposes...

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Getting Real - The Crossroads of Sustainability & Suicide

My colleague, Chris Nelder, has a good summary of the two very different directions the world can take, with the Copenhagen talks on a global climate change solutions treaty just a couple of months away:

At this crossroads in history, the United States can either seize the opportunity to reinvent itself and secure a prosperous future, or allow an unproductive process of selfish bickering to lead us further down a dead-end street. We can apply our vaunted ingenuity and innovation to the renewable energy challenge, or watch our fortunes continue to slide while the rest of the world kicks our butts.

Nelder reminds us that in spite of considerable advances underway under President Obama, we still have quite a ways to go in terms of really achieving a "Green Economy" and a lot of the clean energy "Yes We Can!" promise that Obama talked about in his campaign:

It must greatly amuse the Chinese to watch the Greens and Browns in the U.S. waste their energy squabbling over who’s going to pay for the transition to a sustainable climate, starving the country of investment in the clean energy solutions of the future while China is busy taking over the global PV market and implementing policies that will soon take it far beyond the U.S. in meeting climate change and renewable energy goals.

Indeed, the U.S. is fighting itself at every turn, offering more incentives that will increase CO2 output than those that would curb it.

Last week, just days before President Obama would warn at the United Nations that the “irreversible catastrophe” of climate change must be avoided, the Environmental Law Institute issued a new report finding that U.S. subsidies to fossil fuels ($72 billion) were over two-and-a-half times as great as those it invests in renewables ($29 billion). Of the latter portion, traditional renewables received only $12 billion, while corn ethanol—a net energy loser—got $17 billion.

What does Nelder recommend as next steps?

If the U.S. were serious about making progress on climate change and renewable energy, it would put aside the jockeying of narrow-minded interest groups and implement long-term policies with proven records of success.

As I see it, the effective policy approaches are stable, transparent, long-term, and simple:

1. Forget about cap-and-trade and RPS, and incentivize clean energy with a generous and long-lived national FiT modeled on successful programs elsewhere.
2. Shift all subsidies for brown fuels to green fuels, with priority given to those with the highest net energy (geothermal, solar, and wind), instead of those with the best lobbies (corn ethanol).
3. Level the playing field between rooftop and utility scale solar by removing net metering caps, allowing utility customers to put as much excess renewable energy onto the grid as they can generate.
4. Tear down the barriers between states and utilities, and create a national market for renewable energy.

Above all, we should stop framing our decision-making around short-term cost arguments, and accept the fact that all of the energy solutions of the future will cost more than those of the past. The cost of fossil fuels will continue to rise because the best resources have already gone up in smoke, and what remains is progressively more expensive to produce. The cost of renewables will cost more in the short term, but fall as the technologies mature.

Besides, ample research has shown that in the long run—once the true costs of all fuels are recognized, with nothing externalized, and cost-benefit analyses are extended into multi-decade time frames—renewable energy wins hands-down over fossil fuels.

He leaves us with a question to ponder -- and an answer:

With which would you rather align yourself: a dirty, mature industry going into decline that still claims to need billions in public support; or a clean, new industry that’s growing at 40% per year, with no limit in sight, and a reasonable expectation of being able to get along without subsidies in 20 years or so?

Beyond renewable energy’s long-term benefits—a more resilient economy, jobs created indirectly, better public health, a reduced burden on the national coffers for imported oil (on the order of $400 billion for this year in the U.S.), and other indirect and intangible benefits—there is the straightforward imperative that we begin the urgent transformation toward true sustainability.

The short-term cost argument is tired, and we have already delayed too long. It is time we evaluated our choices in terms of the wealth and welfare of future generations, not just the personal net worth and power of today’s kings of industry.

Amen Mr. Nelder -- great post.

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Planning the First 100 Days: Green IS the Recession Solution!

The Petroleum Ceiling and the Limits of Growth

Since the credit crisis began, we’ve been hearing a lot about how investing in a ‘Green New Deal’, ‘A Green Economy’, and ‘A Clean Energy Economy’ will rescue us. But how, specifically, will green solutions be our savior, and why – at the end of the age of oil and a time of increasingly dangerous human-caused climatic instability – is this type of policy package so crucial for President Obama to implement during his first 100 Days?

Over the past few months, as I’ve talked about how our economy won’t experience a prolonged period of growth until we wean ourselves from our addiction to oil, I’ve referred to this limit on growth as the “Petroleum Ceiling” on our economy. What I mean – even now as gas prices have temporarily dropped due to recessional demand and investors’ flight to safety in the dollar (among other reasons) – is that as long as our economy is so foolishly dependent on oil, once the business cycle starts to heat up again, demand for oil will go up and with it, the prices of food, commodities and other critical goods and services – bringing the period of growth to a screeching halt.

We saw what happens when gas prices skyrocket this past summer, and fortunately now have a chance to take steps to break through The Petroleum Ceiling before a Peak Oil crisis hits that makes the credit crisis look like a day in Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood. The solution that the new Obama Administration should implement, as a slew of experts have declared, is to invest our tax dollars in something far more inspirational – and likely a considerably better investment – than bailing out greedy, irresponsible investment banks: a Green New Deal centered on the strategic proliferation of renewable energy and energy efficient technologies.

A Key Lesson of the Credit Crisis: If You Know There's a Problem, Solve It Before Catastrophe Hits – Especially When There's So Much Hope In the Solutions
Reading through various sources over the past couple of months to glean some pattern of truth about what’s really going on with the financial crisis, more than one of the authors referred to the Petroleum Ceiling problem as evidence that we’ve reached the limits of growth that are possible via an oil-fueled economy given our current transportation, energy and building technologies and infrastructure.

I’m no economist or oil market guru, so I’d love some insight on these ideas from experts in economics and oil. But at this point, it seems pretty clear that we have reached a turning point in human history – a period of a few years where society changes profoundly as old technologies meet their limits, and humanity is faced with the challenge of either finding new ones to replace them (i.e., via a jobs-creating revolution in sustainable clean energy, energy efficiency and more from which will emerge new Bill Gates, Larry Pages and Steve Jobs who bring us technologies that we can now only dream of), or facing some, shall we say, very difficult times.

What kind of difficult times? One recent article asked if the 2008 financial meltdown is a symptom of humanity approaching – if not overshooting – our carrying capacity. Overpopulation and the earth's 'carrying capacity' for humans (the highest number of individuals that available resources can sustain, in humanity’s case depending on lifestyle-related consumption levels) are, of course, a kind of taboo topic – a veritable Elephant in the room during discussions about the ultimate causes of humanity’s environmental and social ills. Wikipedia’s page on human overpopulation, for example, is labeled “disputed”, and is a cacophonous mess of discord.

However, what is quite clear from the ongoing debate over how many people are too many is that we are depleting our ‘natural capital’, with losses rising beyond even the level of the astronomical financial losses stemming from the credit crisis. This depleting natural capital, of course, includes the reality that the energy source that powers our transport, food and climate control systems, which has allowed the human population to grow from 2 billion in 1900 to over 7 billion today, is set to start to decline within 10 years. At the same time, our climate is growing increasingly – and dangerously – unpredictable, with numbers of natural disasters growing rapidly, leaving insurance companies (among others) reeling. What happens if a major Peak Oil Shock hits? As oil markets guru, Matthew Simmons has stated, food shelves could begin to empty in as little as 5-7 days… Clearly, the risk of a catastrophic decline in our quality of life is growing.

Fortunately, of course, humans have this little noodle between our ears that can help us navigate through such challenges to figure out ways to adapt, survive, and flourish. Now that we’ve elected Barak Obama president during this critical time – with a once-in-a-century financial crisis, a peak oil crisis, and a climate crisis closing in upon us – if we’re going to avoid the dire consequences of each of these related calamities, the time to ‘Step it Up’, as Bill McKibben says, is truly right now! Electing the right president was just the beginning.

A New Green Economy – Yes We Can!
It's time to get to work making sure that the solutions President Obama proposes during his first 100 Days and beyond approach the path to solving the financial crisis right, in a way that addresses our three most pressing – and intertwined – crises:

1. The Economy: our broken economy and financial system;
   
2. Peak Oil: our dependence on increasingly unpredictably-priced, unreliable, and polluting oil supplies (and fossil fuels in general) and the inefficient vehicles and buildings that they power; and
3. The Climate Crisis: the quietly – almost radioactively so – spreading catastrophe that is global heating, or ‘Atmosphere Cancer’ as marketing guru, Seth Godin, calls it. ('climate change' and 'global warming' have proven to be tragically inadequate terms for conveying the civilization collapse-inducing potential of humans' destabilization of the earth's climate system, but that's a topic for another post...)
   

The good news: the same technologies and green infrastructure projects that will create millions of jobs in key emerging 21st century industries will also free us from dependence on oil and help us reduce our greenhouse gas emissions by the recommended level of 80% by 2050.

Who would have thought just 10 years ago that our next period of economic growth would not only thrive on a clean energy and energy efficiency revolution, but would depend on it? For those of us who’ve spent our lives working to advance what we now call “sustainability”, it’s our time. The next few months, if not years, are likely to give us quite the economic roller coaster ride, but let’s not lose sight of how we have the answers right in front of us – and it’s just a matter of executing on the policy end, and on the task of strategic deployment and proliferation of clean energy and energy efficient technologies. Our time has finally come to support President Elect Obama and prove to the world – and to our children and grandchildren who we are passing it on to – that “Yes We Can”!

The Massive Stimulus Potential of Efficient, Clean Technologies
As numerous reports and articles have made clear, the returns for America (and the world) on investment in a sustainable clean energy and efficiency revolution will be to cut our energy costs considerably, thus freeing up hundreds of billions of dollars for Americans – and citizens of the world – to spend on everything else, generating cost savings that reverberate far and wide throughout lives and businesses. At the same time, these solutions will slash our greenhouse gas emissions and boost our public health, national security, and quality of life. Consider the following very brief set of examples:

Savings on Gas Costs – Switching from a car that gets 20 mpg to one that gets 50 mpg will save the average American nearly $1,100/year in gas costs at $3/gallon (given the average distance Americans drive per year – about 12,000 miles; savings rise considerably as gas prices and miles driven go up). That savings is nearly two times the cash provided to us by our 2008 stimulus checks! Multiply that by the 112 million households in the U.S. alone, and that’s $123.2 billion/year that American households are now spending on gas that with a mandate for more efficient vehicles, they would have to spend on…everything else – electronics, clothing, travel, education, you name it. Or of course just to SAVE for themselves or their children.

Not to mention that at 20 lbs of carbon dioxide (CO2) emitted per gallon of gasoline, these financial savings translate to 3.6 tons of CO2 emissions saved. Multiplied by 112 million households, that's an annual reduction of approximately 358.4 million tons of CO2 emissions – about 5% of America’s total.

Savings On Home & Business Energy Costs – Throw in home energy efficiency, including such typical tips as purchasing EnergyStar appliances, using energy efficient light bulbs, and operating your home more efficiently by sealing leaks and turning down the heat and AC a bit, and savings jump another $500 to more than $3,000 per household per year (the final amount depends on the size and energy use of the home; numbers derived from Conservation Value Institute’s ‘GreenTracker’ sustainability savings calculator). Again, multiply that by 112 million households, and find that another $56 billion to $336 billion of Americans’ hard earned dollars are freed up from energy bills for us to spend widely, to save for our children and theirs, and to contribute to charitable organizations working to make our world better.

This is the green vision of a broad economic and social stimulus for America – and one that doesn’t just come and go like our $600 2008 stimulus checks. This is a stimulus that feeds back positively upon itself, providing returns for decades as our transportation, energy, and building technologies and infrastructure become more energy and cost efficient. Green IS the recession solution!

Of course, as a critical bonus, at an average of about 1.34 lbs of CO2 emissions per kWh of electricity and 11.7 lbs of CO2 emissions per Therm of natural gas, these cost savings on home and business energy use translate to hundreds of millions of tons of additional reductions in greenhouse gas emissions per year – significantly further cutting humanity's carbon footprint!

Savings on Health Care Costs & Related Pollution Impacts – A green economy will also generate direct and indirect savings on our skyrocketing health care costs, which have been increasingly weighing down consumer and business spending. Directly, Americans’ costs on pollution-induced health problems like asthma – estimated well into the $billions – will go down. Indirectly, companies that currently have to pay full wages to workers who are either home sick due to pollution-related illnesses, or who are not working at full capacity, will get more bang for their buck as clean technologies replace polluting ones.

How much of an impact will a cleaner, greener economy have on our public health? Consider the findings of a 2006 study that examined the health impacts of air pollution in California’s San Joaquin Valley alone. The researchers estimated that annually, air pollution causes some 23,000 asthma attacks, 3,000 lost work days, 188,400 days of reduced activity in adults, 260 hospital admissions, and 460 premature deaths among people age 30 and older; and for children: 3,230 cases of acute bronchitis, 17,000 days of respiratory problems, and 188,000 days of school absences! The study estimated the financial cost of these impacts to be $3 billion – a regional cost that grows to astronomical levels at national and global scales. Green technologies are clearly healthy for not only our environment and economy, but for ourselves!

Savings on Security Spending AND Greater Economic and National Security – Finally, our national security position will be greatly strengthened. Free from the pressure to make choices that defy American values just because we don’t want to risk angering our oil suppliers (many of which are governments that don’t like us very much), our ability to do what is right for America and the world will no longer be so tragically – and expensively – compromised as it is right now. Consider the security costs of our pursuit of oil in Iraq and Afghanistan, which for the Iraq War alone are estimated to have required enough of our precious tax dollars to shift the world to renewables! The financial and diplomatic benefits are truly exciting, and will almost certainly generate groundbreaking foreign policy breakthroughs in regions where diplomacy and human rights are currently compromised by petropolitics.

Better quality of life – Better quality of life, of course, is what this all translates to – by investing in a renewable energy and energy efficiency revolution that powers A New Green Economy.

Concluding Food for Thought
Since the beginning of the financial crisis, as I’ve read an array of articles on the subject of green stimulus, I have been particularly inspired by the following three quotes:

“Just imagine what a trillion-dollar investment would return to the economy…if we committed at that level to green jobs and technologies…The exciting thing about the energy technology revolution is that it spans the whole economy – from green-collar construction jobs to high-tech solar panel designing jobs. It could lift so many boats.”

– Tom Friedman, NY Times 9/29/2008

“In a green economy, we would rely less on credit from foreigners and more on creativity from Americans…It’s time to stop borrowing and start building…Let’s put people back to work ¬ retrofitting and repowering America. You can’t base a national economy on credit cards. But you can base it on solar panels, wind turbines, smart biofuels and a massive program to weatherize every building and home in America.”

– Van Jones, NY Times, 9/29/2008

“If the 1960s were about raising baby boomers and the '90s about technology, what should the '10s and '20s be about? It's obvious: energy and climate change. That's where the present great unmet needs are. So, let's use the next few years to plan, mapping out a program of energy conservation, reconstruction and renewable power.”

– Economist James K. Galbraith, Washington Post, 9/25/2008.

As I’ve been telling friends over the last year or so, “Green IS the recession solution”! These are not times to be fearful, they are times to be bold. They are times for those of us who've dedicated our lives to advancing sustainability to support President Obama in his mantra: “Yes We Can!”

Jonathan L. Gelbard, Ph.D. is a conservation biologist and communications expert. He is the Executive Director of the Conservation Value Institute and National Sustainability Producer of the Green Apple Festival.

The Future of America's Major Media Outlets - Fixing the Fourth Estate After Failures On Drilling and Iraq

Why do the American People -- needing the right information to choose a president whose policies will prevent Peak Oil and Climate Change from becoming society-destabilizing catastrophes -- believe the fantasy that domestic oil drilling is the right energy solution to bring down gas prices? How can this be, when even our Department of Energy's own Energy Information Administration makes clear that this idea has no more basis in reality than believing that the Superfriends are going to save us by swooping down and leaving solar-powered hovercrafts in our driveways?

As this disturbing report from the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) points out:

"there is no empirical basis for believing that drilling in environmentally sensitive offshore zones would significantly affect gas prices. The U.S. Department of Energy's Energy Information Administration (EIA) projects that such drilling would add some 200,000 barrels of oil per day at peak production in about 20 years. This is about 0.2 percent of world production, and the EIA describes this as too small to have any significant effect on oil prices."

Even if the EIA's projections end up being short by a factor of five, and these areas produce 1 million barrels per day, it will still take well over a decade for this oil to reach gas stations, and will still be only about 1% of global output -- far too little to significantly bring down gas prices. So if this is what the best available data tells us, the critical question becomes the one that the CEPR report examined:

"How did 51 percent of Americans come to believe the opposite, that this drilling would significantly lower gasoline prices?"

The report's authors found that:

"By repeatedly reporting the false claims of drilling proponents, while giving little or no attention to the available facts, the most important news media helped to convince the public of something that is not true, and thereby influenced the entire political climate around this issue."

The Study - Methods and Results

The authors examined 267 news programs between June 16th and August 9th, 2008 that covered the drilling issue, including ABC World News Tonight, NBC Nightly News, CBC Evening News, The Today show, Good Morning America, Meet the Press, CNN, and Fox News. They found, shockingly, that of those 267 news programs:

"there was only one, or less than one half of one percent, that cited the EIA's estimate that the increased oil production would not significantly affect gasoline prices."

Just as disturbingly, when examining coverage of politically-charged calls for increased domestic drilling as a solution to high gas prices:

"in 91 percent of the news programs in this sample, the opposing 'opinion' (that domestic drilling will not, according to our best data, come close to solving our woes at the pump) was not even presented...despite the fact that this dissenting 'opinion' is actually true."

It's not just the major media outlets who the public can't trust to present the drilling issue credibly, the report notes. It's also Republican Presidential Candidate, Senator John McCain, who has repeatedly said that increased domestic drilling will bring gas prices down. Not surprisingly, the authors point out that talk radio is also enforcing this view:

"Rush Limbaugh's radio show, for example, reaches an estimated audience of 14.25 million people per week. Limbaugh, like other conservative talk show hosts, repeatedly reinforced the view that the proposed drilling was necessary to lower gasoline prices."

The report's conclusion packs a punch:

"Major media outlets provided daily repetition of the false claim that expanded drilling in environmentally sensitive zones would lower gasoline prices. At the same time, these outlets failed to report the official data from the Department of Energy's Energy Information Agency, which showed that these claims were false. There can be little doubt that this reporting had a significant impact on public opinion, and contributed to the widespread misunderstanding reflected in polling data. In doing so, the major media exerted a very significant influence on an important matter of national policy. The media have most likely changed the debate and political climate in a way that would not have been possible if they had simply reported the most important official data, thereby showing that the central claim in this debate was false."

The Traditional Mass Media - A Broken Fourth Estate

The traditional mass media programs covered by this study should be embarrassed. Jefferson, who called for the media to act as a Fourth Estate that educates the people so that our democracy can function properly, hangs his head in heaven. Somebody should probably go to jail for the decisions that have so grossly misinformed the American people about the right energy policy prescriptions for solving the intertwined problems of high gas prices, Peak Oil, and climate change. Especially when the solutions -- sustainable clean energy and energy conservation -- hold so much promise as not only climate change solutions, but solutions that will grow our 21st century economy, create jobs and fight poverty, and improve our public health, national security, and quality of life.

Fixing the Fourth Estate - A Key Energy Independence and Climate Change Solution

If we are to prevent Peak Oil and Climate Change from becoming disasters that shake the foundations of life as we know it, America needs to focus on real solutions -- solutions that the best available information from our best experts tell us have the best prospects for success. While there is no one silver bullet that will replace the oil that powers our vehicles -- while also helping us avoid, or at least minimize climate change -- the media needs to be held accountable if they are presenting the public with information that is influencing America's most important policy decisions, and that information is wrong. Just look at what this type of negligence cost American taxpayers (not to mention the lives of our brave soldiers and their families) when major media outlets failed to vet the drive to war in Iraq! Our major media outlets' failure to properly educate the American people in critical issues like this reminds me of a key recommendation for solving climate change that David Orr made in his legendary essay, "One Hundred Days of Climate Action":

"To ensure that the public is adequately informed, not mislead and deliberately confused, the president should direct the Federal Communications Commission, among other things, to reinstate the "fair and balanced" standard necessary to hold a license to broadcast over the public airwaves."

Clearly, it is time.

In my next piece, I'll discuss another reason I think the American people take to drilling right now more readily than to renewables. I'll also discuss how, from the standpoint of behavior change science, by becoming a part of the clean energy revolution, YOU can help shift public opinion away from the fossil fuels of the 20th century and build public confidence in the emerging Clean Energy-powered economy of the 21st century.

When Will Our Leaders Start Leading On Energy?

With oil soaring past $93 per barrel today, China starting to ration diesel, and everybody from airlines (are our days of flying numbered?) to farmers (rising food prices coming soon...), and consumers feeling the pinch (more are buying hybrids and car-sharing), when are our leaders going to see the writing on the wall and start leading us to a more efficient, clean, and secure energy future?

Just curious...

As a Union of Concerned Scientists official declared in one of the articles linked to above:

"What we really need on this broad level is for Congress to act to give us the patriotic cars that are going to relieve the pain at the pump, to reduce our dependence on oil," said Jim Kliesch, a senior vehicles analyst with the Union of Concerned Scientists.

How much more pain can U.S. consumers take before it's clear as day to our elected officials that they either vote to do it or their jobs are toast?

2007 As a Tipping Point for Climate Change, Peak Oil, and Sustainability: A Few Thoughts

With the realization that not only Climate Change, but perhaps also Peak Oil are here now, 2007 sure seems to be turning into quite the tipping point for the future of society as we know it.

A friend of mine just returned from a Peak Oil conference in Houston, and declared "this is it. Peak Oil is here NOW." Indeed, just last week we heard it from legendary oil tycoon Boone Pickens: with demand (88 million barrels per day) exceeding supply (85 million barrels per day - a plateau we've been floating around since 2005), we can expect oil and gas prices to keep going higher. Whether we're there now, or just a few years away, oh boy... What's going to happen to all those unpatriotically gigantic Dodges and Ford 350+ type trucks on the road, which may soon become too expensive for most people to operate?!

The good news, of course, is that as oil and gas prices go higher, demand will at some point decline in response, and a new equilibrium price range will be established. I hope that the range is high enough to motivate (1) dramatic reductions in the use of fossil fuels to power our vehicles and (2) dramatic increases in the use of clean, highly efficient, and cheaper-to-operate technologies to power our vehicles. These developments in the oil and transportation markets are, of course, the types of things that need to happen anyway if we are to reduce our carbon emissions sufficiently to spare humanity from very destructive impacts of climate change. Hopefully they inspire China and India to move towards efficient, low-emissions personal transport options before the balance of their masses who want cars actually get them.

I find it interesting that tipping points in both climate change and Peak Oil seem to be following a parallel timeline. It's almost as if Earth's response to humanity's spewing of climate-destabilizing greenhouse gases into the atmosphere is to start shutting down the planetary oil spigots, which will, in turn will help bring levels of greenhouse gas emissions back down! This kind of response of Mother Nature reminds me of how grasslands and deserts respond to being overgrazed by livestock: plants that livestock eat are replaced by weedy plants that livestock don't find very tasty, until eventually the land can no longer support grazing. The resulting decline in livestock numbers typically allows the land's soils, plants, and wildlife to begin to recover. It will sure be interesting to watch as the earth responds to the increasing strain being inflicted by humanity, and how the earth's response affects humanity's capacity to continue to inflict strain. How will Mother Nature's response affect the well-being of human societies?

My guess is that we're headed down a path towards a presidency - perhaps 2008, but more likely 2012 - where a worried and stressed public demands a New Deal type agenda that not only fights climate change and its increasing ecological, economic, health, and quality of life impacts, but takes bold steps to advance society past our dangerous dependence on fossil fuels.

What kind of bold steps are needed? At a grand scale - a key item is to increase the sustainability of our cities. And who'd have thunk it, but a small Middle Eastern country is among those leading the way in demonstrating how cities can become independent of oil.

Get a load of the idea for the sustainable city of Masdar, proposed by one of the United Arab Emirates:

Masdar is being designed to run entirely on renewable energy. World renown architect Lord Foster is designing Masdar so that its 50,000 residents will live on streets modeled on traditional souks and medinas - but draped with shades of fabric that convert sunlight into electricity. There will be fields of solar concentrating mirrors in the desert and wind turbines will catch breezes from the Gulf.

Palm and mangrove plantations will create a green belt around the city to provide raw material for bio-fuels, a new industry that, say developers, may one day supplement oil and gas revenues. The tiny emirate is the fifth largest exporter of oil in the world, but it is envisaged that Masdar City will not need a drop. "We want to position ourselves as thinkers and progressives," says Sultan Al Jaber, the chief executive of Masdar. "Years ago in the Middle East we lived in a very sustainable environment. We are bringing that back by creating a compact city where people don't need to use a car."

Adjacent to Abu Dhabi International Airport, the goal is to create a city based on sustainable employment, eventually facilitating a population of 100,000. The first stage of development will set the tone for the entire project; the construction of a state-of-the-art photovoltaic power plant that will deliver the energy required to build the entire city!

The compact, high-density city will be completely free of cars and their emissions; a world model of energy conservation with zero carbon emissions and zero waste. Compared to average urban levels, fossil fuel consumption will be reduced by 75%, water demand by 300% and waste production by 400%. Cycling and walking will be the most common means of travel.

According to the city's master plan, no one will be more than 200 meters from essential facilities, including shops selling locally grown produce. A Light Railway Transport system will link the Masdar development to adjacent developments, the airport and in the future with the center of Abu Dhabi.

Wow!

So we see a solid example of what is possible in the development of future cities.

But how will existing cities rise to the challenges posed by Peak Oil and climate change, from transportation to water to maintaining an affordable food supply?

We are currently seeing lots of good ideas emerging. Amazingly, even Wal-Mart is taking a leading role in driving innovation!

Stay tuned for what promises to be an interesting few months ahead as oil approaches $100 a barrel, and the impacts of rising oil prices start to reverberate throughout society. I look forward to seeing the positive developments that ensue, as the world is forced to turn with greater urgency toward more sustainable alternatives - both in our products and our everyday practices.