The massive oil spill flooding the Gulf of Mexico at this moment provides a timely, if grim, example of the failure of modern economic theory to take true costs into account. In economic parlance, the spill is an "externality" - something that is the result of a transaction between two parties, but which is largely paid for by others. The oil company (BP) rented the oil drilling rig from a company (Transocean) and hired another party to cement off the well (Halliburton), with the intention of either selling the crude oil to a refinery or refining itself, and then selling the resulting product, gasoline or diesel, to the consumer (you and me). Don't own a car, you say? How does your food get from the field to the store?
However, the economic costs of the spill will be borne by the residents of the Gulf of Mexico (and perhaps also the Florida Keys and the southern Eastern Seaboard). The ecological costs are the reason there are economic costs - a massive marine die-off and contamination of the entire fishery system is expected, with migrating birds and marine mammals taking another huge hit. Is ecocide too strong of a word? I seriously doubt it.
Now, if these costs were included in the price of oil, in the rig rental, in the offshore oil lease, you wouldn't see any oil drilling at all - instead, you'd see the investments move into wind and solar and photosynthetic biofuels, which have very low externality costs. However, academic economists have tended to avoid discussing this issue - because it would mean taking economics out of the 'business schools' and making it a branch of physics and ecology - and economists aren't required to learn basic science in college - look at any curriculum. Thermodynamics? Ecosystem structure? Even energy sciences, or engineering? Forget about it. This would require something of an academic revolution, I do believe.
Now, let's do our fact-check of the ABC roundtable - keeping this issue of 'externalities' in mind:
-begin transcript-
ABC: Here are few moments from last night's White House Correspondent's Dinner. The President donned his tux , took time out from his day job, and played comedian.
President Obama: It's been quite a year since I've spoken here last. Lots of ups, lots of downs. I happen to know that my approval ratings are still very high in the country of my birth [laughter]. I'm also glad that I'm speaking first, because we've all seen what happens when somebody takes the time slot after Leno's [laughter]... Even as we enjoy each other's company tonight, we're also mindful of the incredible struggles of our fellow citizens in the Gulf Coast. Both those leading the efforts to stem this crisis, and those along the coast whose livelihoods are in jeopardy. ..
ABC: An we're now joined by a powerhouse roundtable as always, George F. Will, from the National Action Network, the Reverend Al Sharpton, from HBO's Real Time, with Bill Maher, former Bush adviser Matthew Dowd, and Katrina vanden Heuvel, from The Nation, thanks one and all.
George, I've heard some conservative critics say that this oil slick is President Obama's Katrina. Is it?
GEORGE WILL: No, and it may come as a news bulletin to the president himself, but he's not responsible for everything - bad things happen. This is a reality check for a nation that's ravenous for energy, and has to be and always has been. Getting our source of energy has risks. The Exxon Valdez called our attention to the fact that it's very dangerous shipping oil across the surface of the oceans. Since the Exxon Valdez, there have been seven larger tanker spills. You can go up to West Virginia where twenty-nine miners are being mourned today, and they will tell you about the risks in mining coal. No one says, "Stop mining coal because of this."
WEALTH OF PLANETS: The fact is that the Minerals Management Service(MMS), the section of Ken Salazar's Department of the Interior that oversees all offshore drilling in the outer continental shelf and the Gulf of Mexico, could have issued regulations that forced offshore oil rigs to install expensive safety devices, as required by Norway and Brazil. Apparently, the MMS caved to pressure by oil companies (including BP and Halliburton, which have a huge lobbying arm in Washington) and decided not to require those safety devices on offshore wellheads. This is indeed similar to the Katrina-linked disaster in New Orleans, which could have been prevented if the needed improvements in levees had been made - and if the Louisiana National Guard's equipment hadn't been shipped off to the marshes of Iraq. However, Bush wanted to play down the dangers of global warming-fueled hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico, and Obama wanted to play down the dangers of offshore oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico - so yes, there are clear similarities.
As far as the Exxon Valdez, we've seen how Exxon lobbied against tighter regulations on oil shipping - for example, the requirement for expensive double-hulled vessels for shipping oil - as well as against paying the $5 billion settlement - which was cut by a federal appeals court in 2006 to $2.5 billion, and again by the Supreme Court to only $0.5 billion, in 2008. This is comparable to the cost of building a single supertanker today - and this is a company that has pulled down $40 billion in quarterly profits at one go. Exxon and the other oil majors have decided that rather than spend billions on upgrading their infrastructure to prevent spills, they'll just pay a few hundred million in fines from time to time - it's cheaper, isn't it? I'm not sure what point George Will is trying to make here, actually - more regulations are needed?
With the coal mine disaster, were are talking about Massey Coal, which have a long record of mine safety violations - again, they refuse to follow the laws because that would undercut their profits. What's another common theme here? The energy companies have tried to pack the courts - from the Supreme Court on down - with judges who will overturn jury awards and strip legislative bodies of the power to regulate them. Massey is a much smaller energy company than any oil major, but they all operate on the same wavelength.
One interesting issue on BP's past drilling operations:
The Tana Exploration Company, LLC was fined $190,000 after BP employees, working as contractors, bypassed the safety valves on a Tana rig. Investigators found that the rig failed to shut down in an emergency because the safety devices had been bypassed. As a result, "The pipeline experienced overpressure and the flange gasket ruptured allowing gas/condensate to escape," according to MMS records.
*http://inthesetimes.com/working/entry/5899/exploding_rig_company_has_history_of_safety_violations/
George Will's punchline is a standard PR gimmick - coal mine disasters are inevitable, and so are offshore oil drilling disasters, so just deal with it. However, the coal mine disasters aren't on the same scale - the ecological and economic effects of a major offshore oil blowout are far more severe in both time and space, as we can now see (and the same thing happened offshore California in 1969). Clearly, George Will is running a propaganda game here - what a performance!
ABC: Reverend, some critics, not just from the right - are saying that the Obama Administration was slow - the New York Times editorial board faulted the administration - is that unfair criticism?
AL SHARPTON: Well, I don't think so. I think that when you look at the fact that first of all this has been an evolving crisis, this did not happen, unlike Katrina, where you had a natural disaster that immediately blanketed a whole area, and we were watching it live on television, this got worse over time and I think that there's evidence that the White House has put out - I have not talked to them, but I've read this on their websites - of how they met each rising crisis with personnel there Cabinet members there, now the President going. Unlike George Bush, that said he didn't see the crisis and we sat there four or five days and watched it live on television - so I think any analogy is absolutely ridiculous.
WEALTH OF PLANETS: Having already pointed out that the failure of Obama's Minerals Management Service to require expensive safety devices on these offshore oil rigs parallels the failure of Bush's Army Corps of Engineers to install modern levees around New Orleans (as in the Low Countries of Europe*), let's take a look at the immediate response.
*http://www.wired.com/science/planetearth/magazine/17-01/ff_dutch_delta
Al Sharpton claims that this has been an 'evolving crisis' - and the same was true in New Orleans. Initially, the reports were that New Orleans had escaped a major disaster - and then the levees were breached. The scale of the flooding was initially underestimated, and resources were only slowly put in place. The Bush Administration's FEMA response was entirely inadequate (Heck of a job!) - all hat, no cattle, as the saying goes - and much avoidable death and destruction ensued.
Now, the first press report of the Deepwater Horizon explosion came through on April 21, at 1:20 am. While boats were trying to put out the fire with water, I've seen no pictures of any aerial bombardment efforts to douse the flames. There was no rapid-response team in place - indeed, the Coast Guard was primarily focused on rescuing oil workers, not on preventing a blowout or stopping the rig from sinking
*http://www.wwl.com/Oil-rig-explosion-off-Plaquemines-has-big-rescue-e/6854700
The first comments from the Coast Guard press officer, Mike O'Berry?
"It's burning pretty good and there's no estimate on when the fire will be put out... We're hoping everyone's in a life raft.. Our focus right now is on taking care of the people....It appears there is no oil coming out of the well at this time...We're not out of the woods yet but that is some positive news..."
Coast Guard Rear Admiral Landry repeated the PR line: "We are only seeing minor sheening on the water," she said. "We do not see a major spill emanating from this incident."*
In Washington, President Barack Obama said in a statement that the federal response to the disastrous spill "was being treated as the number one priority." Doing a heck of a job, Coast Guard!
At this point, could steps have been taken to secure the riser? Was there anything they could have done? I don't know - but they clearly seem to have ignored that issue. Notice also that at this point, they had calm seas and low winds*, so a perhaps a lot could have been accomplished.
*http://www.nola.com/news/index.ssf/2010/04/search_for_survivors_of_oil_ri.html
However, the only "rapid response" that the industry kick-started was the propaganda effort, led by their crisis management team:
American Petroleum Institute Pres. Jack N. Gerard, April 21, first thing in the morning: “Every time an incident happens, we ask ourselves what we can do better,” Gerard said. “We’re working for a zero-injury, zero-fatality effort.”*
Republican governor Bobby Jindall also chimed in: "Officials at the Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority are also working with the state's oil spill coordinator's office to monitor any potential environmental impact."*
Transocean (Geneva, Switzerland) spokesman Adrian Rose, on Halliburton's cementing off job: "This was conducted according to plan, with appropriate testing completed, with no indication of any problems. We don't know what caused the incident. Our efforts have firstly concentrated on caring for the people, and secondly securing the rig... There was undoubtedly some abnormal pressure buildup. As oil or gas came up, it expanded rapidly and ignited. This is an assumption. We still don’t know exactly the cause.”*
*http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-04-21/transocean-says-blowout-may-have-caused-rig-fire-update1-.html
Larry Goldstein, director of the fossil fuel funded Energy Policy Research Foundation: “It’s a tragedy, but at the end of the day we are not going to stop doing things that need to be done."* George Will echoed those comments, did he not?
*http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/23/us/23offshore.html
Here is where the failure to put the remotely operated acoustic switch on the wellhead blowout prevention device comes into play. Assuming the device worked, they could have staunched the flow immediately, put out the fire, and kept the rig from sinking. However, as the fire progressed on April 21, the rig began leaning over on its side. Regardless, no concerns about an oil spill had been raised - in fact, Coast Guard officials had been actively downplaying such concerns.
So - did the industry and the federal government know about the risks?
"Explorers began work on 17 new Gulf of Mexico wells last week in waters deeper than 1,000 feet (305 meters), spurred in part by a tripling in crude prices in the past decade. The threat of pressure surges, or blowouts, that can smash steel equipment and create gushing columns of fire increases as drillers probe deeper, Neal Dingmann, an analyst at Wunderlich Securities, said.*
*http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-04-23/oil-producers-risk-blowouts-blazes-in-search-for-deeper-fields.html
Then, on April 23, the rig sank to the bottom -with 700,000 gallons of diesel fuel onboard! An almost unremarked point. By April 24, the Coast Guard had stopped claiming that it there was no spill, and had publicized the 1,000 barrel per day number.
By April 25, they had finally gotten around to sending underwater vehicles down to the wellhead to attempt to active the blowout preventer - again, no remote acoustic triggering mechanism had been installed, due to BP's fierce lobbying efforts at the Minerals Management Service. Time elapsed: four days. Time elapsed in Katrina before a major response? Five days, wasn't it?
Doug Suttles, chief operating officer of BP Exploration & Production: "The blowout preventer -- which weighs about 450 tons and sits on the sea floor next to the well -- could take 24-36 hours to activate"*
*http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE63O27L20100425
By this time, the calm weather at the time of the accident was gone, and seven-foot seas were rolling in, closing the window of opportunity for a rapid response. Now, we're into April 26-28, and the robotic effort to seal the well - using untested methods - was faltering, and ultimately failed. Finally, on April 29, 2010, we get the first realistic statement from the federal government of the scale of the disaster: "Gulf Coast oil spill could eclipse Exxon Valdez"*
*http://www.boston.com/business/articles/2010/04/29/new_oil_leak_in_well_of_sunken_drilling_rig/
"It is of grave concern," David Kennedy of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, told The Associated Press. "I am frightened. This is a very, very big thing. And the efforts that are going to be required to do anything about it, especially if it continues on, are just mind-boggling."
The oil slick could become the nation's worst environmental disaster in decades, threatening hundreds of species of fish, birds and other wildlife along the Gulf Coast, one of the world's richest seafood grounds, teeming with shrimp, oysters and other marine life. Thicker oil was in waters south and east of the Mississippi delta about five miles offshore.
The leak from the ocean floor proved to be far bigger than initially reported, contributing to a growing sense among many in Louisiana that the government failed them again, just as it did during Hurricane Katrina. President Barack Obama dispatched Cabinet officials to deal with the crisis." "Cade Thomas, a fishing guide in Venice, worried that his livelihood will be destroyed. He said he did not know whether to blame the Coast Guard, the federal government or oil company BP PLC. "They lied to us. They came out and said it was leaking 1,000 barrels when I think they knew it was more. And they weren't proactive," he said. "As soon as it blew up, they should have started wrapping it with booms."
So - eight days later...Is the Katrina analogy appropriate? There are certain undeniable similarities, are there not?
Deputy Interior Secretary David Hayes: "The U.S. Minerals Management Service, the U.S. agency that oversees offshore drilling and its parent, the Department of the Interior, and the Coast Guard will investigate the cause of the explosion."
Now, can we trust them to investigate the cause in any detail? We'll see.
ABC: Bill, I was watching your show Friday night, and you said, in language more suitable for premium cable...
BILL MAHER: I promise I won't here. They're so nervous about that.
ABC: ...that you're surprised that President Obama isn't getting more, shall we say, "guff" for this crisis?
BILL MAHER: "Guff" - exactly. I think he should. He owns this issue now, because it was only a few weeks ago that he came out for offshore drilling, and I would say philosophically, you know, the problem I think a lot of people on the left have with this country, and have had for many years, is that there's no one who really represents our point of view. There's two parties who want to fight the war on terror with an army in Afghanistan, there's two parties who want to drill offshore - where is the other side on this? So, I could certainly criticize oil companies, and I could criticize America in general for not attacking this problem in the seventies, I mean, Brazil got off oil in the last thirty years, and we certainly could have. But it is very disappointing, I think, for this president to be taking a position as he has - and I guess he's backpedaling now on it, I hope - I mean, I hope there's a flip-flop I can believe in there, but...
ABC: There's a slogan for you. "Flip flops you can believe in."
BILL MAHER: Yeah, I could believe in that one, and I hope he does.
WEALTH OF PLANETS: Maher is correct that Brazil has diversified their energy system - renewables provide a remarkable 45.1% of their energy mix, whereas OECD countries (industrialized nations) only get 6.2% of their energy from renewables. In 2008 sugarcane ethanol overtook gasoline as the most used transportation fuel in Brazil. Sugarcane, incidentally, is not a driver of deforestation in the Amazon - that's mostly due to soy and cattle production for export to OECD countries.
However, as a developing country with limited resources, Brazil has been slower to adopt solar and wind, despite the vast potential. It could earn foreign exchange by selling sugarcane ethanol to the U.S. - but, at the behest of the oil refiners in the U.S., our government has slapped high import tariffs on Brazilian sugarcane ethanol - in direct opposition to the "free-trade" mantra that the U.S. government will chant at the drop of a hat. George Will is silent on this as well.
The one point I'd make with Maher is that energy and ecology are not "left-right" issues, in that everyone requires energy services (light, heat, cooling, transportation), and everyone requires ecosystem services (food, clean water, clean air, and, yes, biodiversity). People are part of the ecosystem - like it or not, left or right, top or bottom, that's the reality. To think otherwise is sheer insanity - but that's a common illness among modern economists - on both the left and the right.
ABC: Matt, where's the public on this issue?
MATTHEW DOWD: Well I think the public - first of all, the public doesn't think there's any equal nature to Katrina and this. I mean, Katrina obviously evacuated an entire area, and what that issue was was such a different issue than this - but I think where the public is on this, I think if you put this in the context of what happened in West Virginia in the mine disaster, and this in context of Katrina, even though it was different, and this in context of many things, I think the public sits there and says, "Who is in charge? Who is accounatable and who - what governmental entity can actually be effective in doing anything?" And I think that ultimately is where the public is - just another example of the fact that we cannot trust the government to do anything that we need them to do. From mines - even I believe on health care, to the oil spill - it's a loss of faith, again I think, in the government.
WEALTH OF PLANETS: While this may or may not be true, public opinon wise (polls?), Dowd ignores the underlying reason why the government can't be trusted with these issues - it's because the financial interests that benefit from fossil fuels have too much influence over government decisions - it's a corruption issue. The legislative, the judicial, and the executive branches of government no longer view the public interest as their top priority, but rather the private interests - the ones who finance their political campaigns, the ones who provide lucrative executive positions for compliant government bureaucrats after they exit government, and the ones who blacklist any government employee with the guts to stand up to their agenda.
These private interests also exert great control over corporate media outlets in the U.S. - which is why people like Dennis Kucinich always get smeared by the press, blocked out of political debates, and so on. Stating that people don't trust the government, while not explaining the root sources of that distrust, is nothing but a shady propaganda device aimed at smearing the current government - when, the other party would run government exactly the same way. Matthew Dowd and Al Sharpton do come across as political hacks for their respective parties, in this sense.
KATRINA VANDEN HEUVAL: What we've seen are the risks are too great - offshore drilling is the problem not the solution, this is not Katrina, 1500 dead, hundreds of thousands homeless - I think more important is to understand that we now need a government that is going to regulate a company, BP, which was a serial abuser of workers and of safety regulations, just like Massey, we need regulations - tough enforcement -
ABC: Massey - with the West Virginia mine?
KATRINA VANDEN HEUVAL: The mine. We need a government that understands that. I would also point out that this was the week, that for the first time an offshore wind farm was approved. And George Will may not see a future in that, but I believe we need a Manhattan Project and an Apollo Alliance to ramp up public and private investment - at the moment, energy companies spend one quarter of one percent of their budget on R&D. We can do better. We are a nation which should do better, George, and not rely on dirty energy which just compounds the problem effecting this country and the planet.
WEALTH OF PLANETS: So close, and yet so far off the mark! I've already pointed out the Katrina analogies, which are really seen in the run-up to both events - years of neglect lead to both disasters, and then there was a rush to play down the severity, followed by a shameful admission of "Oops, we screwed up again, but we're doing the best we can. Everyone is behaving splendidly" - and then the statistics - "we have (x) people working around the clock on this, and so on."
Heuval ducks the reason why there aren't regulations, however, and also the reason the regulations aren't enforced - it's cheaper for the corporate interest to pay the fine, rather than to invest billions in better, safer infrastructure. This won't end until criminal penalties are put in place, as well as severe financial penalities - which is why I think the assets of BP and Halliburton in the U.S. should be frozen, so that they'll be there to pay for the massive damages to the regional economy. The damages to the ecosystem cannot be counted in dollars alone - here's where the academic economists and I part ways - and that's why ecocide should be a criminal offense.
Heuval also is ignorant of the facts on renewable energy technology - the Manhattan Project for solar was done in the 1950s at Bell Labs, when the technology was devised. The Apollo Alliance might be a little closer, but getting to the moon is much more difficult than building and installing silicon photovoltaic panels.
Most importantly, she neglects the fact that renewable energy, in the eyes of OECD energy corporations, is an inherently disruptive technology. What is a "disruptive technology" you ask? It's like an "emerging technology", but there's a key difference - rather than simply creating a new consumer market, it also destroys an older consumer market. Computers were an emerging technology, in that there was nothing like them - but solar cells, also based on silicon chips, would have undermined coal, oil and gas sales on a massive scale. Hence, solar cell use was initially limited to remote installations (satellites, Coast Guard buoys, etc.) and the financial centers refused to invest in them. On the other hand, billions were dumped into computers, and huge fortunes were made along the way. (Although the computer industry is now facing new disruptive technology, like Linux operating systems, which threaten those profits).
Wind energy, for example, relies on a free commodity - so if you build and operate a wind turbine, and then shut down a natural gas, coal or nuclear plant, you also disrupt the sales of gas, coal and enriched uranium. Since our major banks, from Goldman Sachs to Bank of America, are also big-time commodity traders in natural gas, oil, coal and uranium - well, do you think they're going to invest in technologies that seriously undermine their business plans?
So, to change this you'd have to first reform the federal government's research budget and their regulatory rules and incentives in the energy sector. That means a major overhaul at the Department of Energy - but has The Nation every ran an analysis of the DOE budget in the context of energy research? They might be shocked at what they find - which is that the DOE's research budget for solar and wind energy is a good deal smaller than "one quarter of one percent." In fact, most goes to nuclear weapons-related research and nuclear waste cleanup, followed by fossil fuel research. The cause? The bureaucratic revolving door - the private contractors - aka, "corruption in government."
We also need a new set of guidelines for electric utilities - such as a nationwide renewable energy portfolio standard, feed-in tariffs that guarantee prices for renewable energy providers, and the elimination of subsidies for non-renewable energy sources. Both Obama and Bush are opposed to such efforts - not too surprising, considering that Obama and his closest advisors (Axelrod and Emmanuel) all owe their positions largely to the largesse of the energy and finance sectors, particularly coal, nuclear and utilities. This is slightly different from Bush, who was more closely associated with global oil and natural gas concerns - but only slightly. If Obama switches course, he'll be abandoning the very interests who've been his prime backers from the beginning - that's hard to do.
ABC: Mr Will, your name has been invoked.
GEORGE WILL: Well, one in five steps of the approval process has now been taken for the wind farm vigorously opposed by people who are all in favor of renewable energy elsewhere - because they think it will spoil their view.
ABC: This is the wind farm of the coast of...
GEORGE WILL: The wind farm off the coast of...
ABC: Massachusetts, that a lot of people including the Kennedy family were fighting tooth and nail.
GEORGE WILL: Right, and by the way, wind farms kill a lot more birds daily than are probably going to be killed in this oil spill in the South - but I'd like to get back to Bill. Could you just explain to me in what sense Brazil got off oil?
WEALTH OF PLANETS: Oh, good work George Will! You get your PR lines in and then switch topics before they can be challenged. First, the coalition opposing the wind farm has plenty of members with vast holdings in fossil fuels - see the above comments on disruptive technologies. If you own oil wells, you're probably not going to be too happy about wind farms.
Second, the comments on more birds being killed daily than in the oil spill is pure nonsense - and of course George Will doesn't want that one answered. Offshore wind turbines have massive blades that rotate at slow speeds - birds easily avoid them, as studies undertaken using infrared monitoring cameras show.
George Will is a real impresario - he spews some nonsense, then switches topics to Brazil (see above).
BILL MAHER: I believe they did. I believe in the seventies, they had a program to use sugarcane ethanol, and I believe that is what fuels their country.
GEORGE WILL: I think they still burn a lot of oil and have a lot of it offshore.
WEALTH OF PLANETS: See above - and recall again that in 2008, sugarcane ethanol surpassed gasoline as the top motor fuel in Brazil. There's no reason that the U.S. could not have done the same - and does George Will support lifting the import tariffs on Brazilian ethanol? Furthermore, who are the top investors in Brazilian offshore drilling? Perhaps he wants to take a look at the Obama Administration:
"The U.S. is going to lend billions of dollars to Brazil's state-owned oil company, Petrobras, to finance exploration of the huge offshore discovery in Brazil's Tupi oil field in the Santos Basin near Rio de Janeiro. Brazil's planning minister confirmed that White House National Security Adviser James Jones met this month with Brazilian officials to talk about the loan. "*
*http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203863204574346610120524166.html
Is Obama interested in lifting the tariff on sugarcane ethanol? He's not saying...
KATRINA VANDEN HEUVEN: But George, you are a man who understands that there are always alternatives in politics and in science. Why should we be relying on what we are now seeing the risks of? And by the way - we can do better with existing oilfields. We can get as much from existing oilfields, which the oil companies, for profit reasons, aren't doing much with. So I just think we have seen the risks, and we need to take action. It is just too much to look at what is going on in the Gulf, and what will happen if it moves into the Arctic, and I agree with Bill. I think President Obama was pandering when he moved to this offshore drilling, but I think this White House has the ability, unlike previous White Houses, to understand and see the light, and take a different stance.
WEALTH OF PLANETS: I'm not so sure that using enhanced recovery technology on old oilfields will really do much to lower oil prices by increasing supply - it usually means pumping a lot of water or CO2 from coal plants or natural gas plants down into the well, which means more drilling with a lower chance of return. It's just as messy and dirty as any other approach.
Second, the Gulf Coast from Texas to Florida is drenched in sunshine - not as much as the American Southwest, on a yearly average, but enough to make it prime real estate for locating gigawatt-scale solar panel systems for feeding the entire Southeastern electricity grid.
Photosynthetic fuels, in addition, are a real possibility for replacing oil - and for the U.S., the best option is likely going to be algal biofuels, which can go right into oil refineries and come out as gasoline, and more technologically advanced systems that use solar and wind energy to split water, produce hydrogen, and then combine that hydrogen with atmospheric CO2 to produce methanol and longer-chain hydrocarbons (this is the fossil fuel-free version of Fischer-Tropsch condensation, which usually begins with hydrogen from natural gas and/or coal steam, and carbon monoxide from coal).
BILL MAHER: Can we have the judges fact check this on Brazil? [cross-talk] I don't think I dreamed that.
WEALTH OF PLANETS: See above. Brazil is running 48% of its energy system on renewables, in the face of opposition from OECD countries including the U.S. - there are no trade restrictions on importing Brazil's oil, soybeans, sugar or beef - just on their ethanol. Likewise, the U.S. is not financing solar and wind farms in Brazil - just offshore oil drilling and perhaps a few more dams. New dams in the Amazon are ecological and humanitarian disasters, however - ask James Cameron and Sigourney Weaver about that.* Solar and wind don't have such problems.
*http://www.boston.com/ae/movies/articles/2010/04/12/cameron_amazon__dam_dispute__real_life_avatar/
AL SHARPTON: While Bill and George are in Brazil, let's get back to the United States. I think that Katrina is right. I think that there is a challenge here, and I think that the President and the Congress has to deal with the reality that we're facing. And I think that the reality is - usually it's not about who's going to speak for the left or the right. It's whose going to be right on these issues. We see what can happen here. Now, what do we do about it? And I think that clearly a failure to stand up and lead at this point is something that all of us would criticize, but I'm not convinced that this president won't, I think he's going down there, I think he's going to reassess, and I think we've got to see where that goes, and if he goes right, then support him - and I think he will. But I think to act like this is Katrina, I think this is to step beyond the realms of a sane discussion.
- end transcript-
Well, I've said my piece on the Katrina comparison - but let's just note that during the Bush Administration, there was a clear effort to play down the dangers of global warming, such as unusually strong (if relatively infrequent) hurricanes fueled by warming Gulf of Mexico waters. If they had responded to the threat, they would have given credence to what they called "global warming alarmism" - so they insisted that building new levees was unnecessary. Likewise, the Obama Administration attempted to play down the risks of offshore drilling, and a vigorous effort to include more safety devices on those rigs and wells might have upset that effort. In both cases, you have this obsession with the image, not with the reality - and that's dangerous. Otherwise, Al Sharpton is correct - it's not about the left and the right, it's about getting the right solutions in place...
On that note, I will leave you, gentle reader, with two short excerpts from one of my favorite authors, Joseph Conrad, from the introduction to his short story, "An Outpost of Progress."
"The two men watched the steamer round the bend, then, ascending arm in arm the slope of the bank, returned to the station. They had been in this vast and dark country only a very short time, and as yet always in the midst of other white men, under the eye and guidance of their superiors. And now, dull as they were to the subtle influences of surroundings, they felt themselves very much alone, when suddenly left unassisted to face the wilderness; a wilderness rendered more strange, more incomprehensible by the mysterious glimpses of the vigorous life it contained. They were two perfectly insignificant and incapable individuals, whose existence is only rendered possible through the high organization of civilized crowds. Few men realize that their life, the very essence of their character, their capabilities and their audacities, are only the expression of their belief in the safety of their surroundings. The courage, the composure, the confidence; the emotions and principles; every great and every insignificant thought belongs not to the individual but to the crowd: to the crowd that believes blindly in the irresistible force of its institutions and of its morals, in the power of its police and of its opinion. But the contact with pure unmitigated savagery, with primitive nature and primitive man, brings sudden and profound trouble into the heart. To the sentiment of being alone of one's kind, to the clear perception of the loneliness of one's thoughts, of one's sensations--to the negation of the habitual, which is safe, there is added the affirmation of the unusual, which is dangerous; a suggestion of things vague, uncontrollable, and repulsive, whose discomposing intrusion excites the imagination and tries the civilized nerves of the foolish and the wise alike...."
"To grapple effectually with even purely material problems requires more serenity of mind and more lofty courage than people generally imagine. No two beings could have been more unfitted for such a struggle. Society, not from any tenderness, but because of its strange needs, had taken care of those two men, forbidding them all independent thought, all initiative, all departure from routine; and forbidding it under pain of death. They could only live on condition of being machines. And now, released from the fostering care of men with pens behind the ears, or of men with gold lace on the sleeves, they were like those lifelong prisoners who, liberated after many years, do not know what use to make of their freedom. They did not know what use to make of their faculties, being both, through want of practice, incapable of independent thought."
Joseph Conrad - the prophet of these times? Revamping the global energy system will require a great deal of independent thought, certainly... and that perhaps is the central challenge.
