Greens Offer No Viable, Compelling Vision
In 1995, Cornell’s David Price published an essay in the journal Population and Environment, in which he wrote that
the exhaustion of fossil fuels, which supply three quarters of this energy, is not far off, and no other energy source is abundant and cheap enough to take their place. A collapse of the earth’s human population cannot be more than a few years away. If there are survivors, they will not be able to carry on the cultural traditions of civilization, which require abundant, cheap energy. It is unlikely, however, that the species itself can long persist without the energy whose exploitation is so much a part of its modus vivendi.
Sure, his timeframe for collapse hasn’t exactly been borne out, but the peak oil crowd keeps saying, just you wait….
Now we have George Monbiot, the most interesting environmental writer alive today, who is not afraid to tilt against windmills (in every sense), writing in this thought-provocative essay:
The problem we face is not that we have too little fossil fuel, but too much. As oil declines, economies will switch to tar sands, shale gas and coal; as accessible coal declines, they’ll switch to ultra-deep reserves (using underground gasification to exploit them) and methane clathrates. The same probably applies to almost all minerals: we will find them, but exploiting them will mean trashing an ever greater proportion of the world’s surface. We have enough non-renewable resources of all kinds to complete our wreckage of renewable resources: forests, soil, fish, freshwater, benign weather. Collapse will come one day, but not before we have pulled everything down with us.
This admission comes on the heels of Monbiot’s recent string of columns that argued nuclear power was the only viable replacement for fossil fuels–at a scale commensurate with the world’s energy needs. That hasn’t gone over well with most greens.
At her site, Judith Curry takes note of Monbiot’s current essay for a passage that I too plan on highlighting in a minute. But in her lead-up, she survey’s Monbiot’s views on climate change and the range of solutions he has proposed over the years, none (as best as I can tell) of which have been adopted, much less seriously considered.
Taken together–the failure of Monbiot’s ideas to gain traction and the more recent hostile reception to his embrace of nuclear power–has perhaps led Monbiot to an epiphany, which comes in the conclusion of his current essay:
All of us in the environment movement, in other words ““ whether we propose accommodation, radical downsizing or collapse ““ are lost. None of us yet has a convincing account of how humanity can get out of this mess. None of our chosen solutions break the atomising, planet-wrecking project. I hope that by laying out the problem I can encourage us to address it more logically, to abandon magical thinking and to recognise the contradictions we confront. But even that could be a tall order.
That is indeed a tall order, but is there any other choice?
Of course, “Moonbat” Monbiot also wrote:
As people are displaced from their homes by drought and sea level rise, and as food production declines, the planet will be unable to support the current population. The collapse in human numbers is unlikely to be either smooth or painless: while the average global temperature will rise gradually, the events associated with it will come in fits and starts: sudden droughts and storm surges.
Is Monbiot also “interesting” when he writes things like this, which bear a striking resemblance to what Price wrote? Or is he only interesting when he punches hippies?
To anwser your question, the short anwser is no. IMO the question is how quickly nations will move to decarbonize absent public support for climate policies. The problem of course is that the longer we wait, the more expensive the transition is likely to be and the greater the climate impacts will be.
However, I would dispute Monbiot’s suggestion that there aren’t convincing scenarios to get us most of the way there. For starters I would suggest the IEA’s Energy Technology Perspectives 2010 Report
PDA,
You’re not addressing the post, just selectively riffing on something tangential to it. Also Monbiat clearly now doesn’t believe that collapse is around the corner, as Price did in that 1995 essay.
Monbiot is interesting because he is able to stay true to his core beliefs without being dogmatic. He displays a flexible mind. He doesn’t appear to automatically crouch into a defensive position when someone challenges his worldview.
I wish I could say the same for the very intelligent commenters at this site who are otherwise naturally aligned with Monbiot. You would do well to stop beating your chest and claim hippie punching (like Roberts) everytime someone challenges conventional green wisdom.
Unless you’re more interested in winning an argument than finding a solution.
Keith, if you’re interested in finding a solution, come let us reason together. Anthony Watts and his ilk punch hippies on the regular. I don’t complain and I don’t comment there. I comment here because I think you can be reached.
There are lots of prominent environmentalists support nuclear energy. Mark Lynas, the alarmists’ alarmist who wrote Six Degrees and makes Michael Tobis look like Tom Fuller, is pro-nuke. So is James Hansen. So is Stewart Brand.
There is a broad diversity of opinion in the environmental movement, and there always has been. This idea that the people you regularly highlight on these posts, from Judith Curry to Matthew Nisbet, represent some new movement of “speaking truth to power” or whatever is just fatuous.
There’s a huge amount of debate among committed environmentalists on how to balance the urgency of the climate crisis with a sense of hope. Your regular, relentless reinforcement of the meme of “environmentalists are grim catastrophists” is, in my opinion, not helpful. It’s not encouraging a solution. It’s deepening the problem.
There’s lots of places I can go to “win arguments.” Have you seen the kind of people who comment at Curry’s? Engaging here is an attempt to communicate. If you want to “automatically crouch into a defensive position when someone challenges [your] worldview,” that’s – sadly – your loss.
@4
“There’s a huge amount of debate among committed environmentalists on how to balance the urgency of the climate crisis with a sense of hope.”
Can you point me to where that is happening. Is it also accompanied by a bracingly honest discussion about solutions? Cause I’m not seeing that take place.
“There is a broad diversity of opinion in the environmental movement, and there always has been.”
Really? That’s not the environmental movement I’m familiar with. (Are their outliers and minority view points? Sure. But there is largely a mainstream, white, upper middle class movement with a few core beliefs).
“This idea that the people you regularly highlight on these posts, from Judith Curry to Matthew Nisbet..”
Huh. I’m not sure I mentioned Nisbet once before his recent report came up. And have you seen many Judith Curry posts in the last 12 months?
“Engaging here is an attempt to communicate.”
Sadly, that’s not what I see. I see mostly an attempt to score points. Engaging means acknowledging that the person you want to engage with has some legitimate points. It’s a give and take. I rarely see that from people (who if they knew me) would probably find similar core views about the environment and the need for a more sustainable path.
I just happen to want a more robust dialogue and less attempts to censor or shout down alternative perspectives on how to get on that sustainable path.
Engaging means acknowledging that the person you want to engage with has some legitimate points.
Fair. I make an attempt, but I don’t think I’ve done a good job of that. I think questioning how some mainstream environmental groups frame their messaging is legitimate. I think questioning how some pursue “mitigation only” as a solution and ignore adaptation and building in greater resilience to unpredictable events is legitimate. I think looking at nuclear as the only plausible short- and medium-term approach to reducing carbon output is legitimate. I agree with Monbiot on this.
At the same time, I can’t recall a post where you’ve acknowledged that Joe Romm, Michael Tobis, or any of your bêtes noires have any legitimate points. So by your own standards, the only reason you post about them is to score points against them.
And I think that’s fine, as far as blogging goes. If you want to present yourself as a seeker after solutions, though, I think you could do a better job of engagement.
Now, we’re making progress.
But you haven’t been reading me long enough to know that I’ve been quite complimentary of Michael Tobis in numerous posts the past few years.
By the same token, I have said in various posts that I think Joe Romm has gotten it right on hydrogen (a fantasy) and on the population obsession (that barn door has been open a while). I’ve also recently given him props here. That said, given the tactics Romm regularly employs, you can definitely expect the ratio to lean much more to the critical, assuming he stays true to form.
To me, the very fact of the fast pace of change in Monbiot’s views points to the fruitlessness of the attempts of looking too far into the future. Humans are pretty smart monkeys who are darn good at solving immediate problems. But not necessarily far remote or non-existent problems.
Sashka,
Indeed, which is why I always thought the low-hanging fruit strategy was a win-win in the absence of any discernible progress on the big CO2 challenge.
But there again, the all or nothing mindset seems to win the day…
There is a hardcore element within the greens that will never support nuclear. There is also a hardcore group of free market ideologues will not support any intrusion into the cheap energy market by government intervention. If we are to have a substantive discussion about this, we need to talk about all the factors, this includes the mining and commodity price of uranium, storage of used poles, etc. Also, to get a majority of the public on board, strict safety mechanisms (concerns of water temperature, earthquakes, tsunamis, etc) all must be taken care of.
The interesting thing about George’s recent series of articles, first Fukushima and nuclear energy, then taking on Caldicott to complete the nuclear series, and now taking on the energy equation and finding that green solutions don’t add up, is the realism he has seemingly quite suddenly acquired, given a year ago or so he wrote that bettery powered combine harvesters were the way forward (along with sensible articles decrying the CO2 bank-for-buck in solar FiTs, to be fair).
It’s like he has stood back, and his very basic thesis, that decarbonising REQUIRES much more electricity, is a marvel of truth, given that he recognises no-one wants to go back to self-sufficiency and a global population of 1 billion.
Trying not to exaggerate, but it is a bit of an epiphany.
And no-one knows the green/environmental movement better than he.
Romm highlighted Jeremy Grantham’s quarterly letter to investors on the paradigm shift in commodity prices, which is defo worth a read.
@9
unfortunately the low hanging fruit isn’t as low as you might expect, at least in the u.s. context.
Consider, for example, how long it took for new CAFE standards for cars to get through the system. Despite the fact that countless improvements had been made in vehicle technology, the standard didn’t change for 20 years (27.5 mpg from 1990-2010)! It took an election, the collapse of the auto industry and the specter of persistent high prices to pass, what should be, from a policy perspective, one of the easiest pieces of the climate/energy security platform.
Instead, it got caught up in congressional politics (Dingell vs Markey) and presidential interference (Bush denial of Cali waiver despite clear legal advice from EPA lawyers). Given that u.s. federal politics is even more hyper partisan than it was during the Bush era, do you really expect any bipartisan climate/energy policy to survive in D.C.?
What Marlowe says is true. However, contrast that with what we are about to hear about U.S. fleet mileage over this period of time caused merely by rising fuel prices. I’ll bet we are converging on European performance standards.
Sometimes you don’t need a ladder to go after the fruit–a stick can do the job.
“None of us yet has a convincing account of how humanity can get out of this mess”
It is possible to argue what mess?
ie there is not a C02 derived mess… which they are calling for solutions for.
But all the other more pressing environmental issues in the world..
How ironic is it that lithium mining to increases 6 fold, if a projected demand for electric cars is realised, or mining for rare earth metals for all those wind turbines, etc,etc damages the environment far more than the ‘mess’ (AGW) that they are trying to fix.
Mark Lynas is the Maldive climate advisory, yet the Maldives are building more airports to ‘tempt rich westerners’ (relative to the poor) to fly to the Maldives (which he is advising to make carbon neutral..
Presumably that does not inlcude the tourism or the icoming jets co2 emissions that pays for it all..
There are other messes, over population, energy issues, sanitation, deforestation, etc,etc but these have been latched onto the C02 bandwagon for a solution.
Until the Chinese and Indians and Africa decide not to pursue the benefits and lifestyles that we in the West have been accustommed to, then the green’s are truly lost and I for one cannot see this happening.
Keith,
I absolutely agree on low-hanging fruit strategy (or maybe tactics is a better word?). To me, for lack of clear vision, it is best to stick to basic moral dictum in the spirit of “do no evil”. To me, rejecting low-hanging fruit is clearly evil. Those who reach for much more than that need to deal with their hubris. Monbiot is a very good example.
Roddy (11),
Agreed about Romm spotlighting the Granthan report–I’ve been meaning to to get around to that, which I too think is worth a read.
Marlowe(12),
True for the U.S. but the big argument, as I recall, was more about making low-hanging fruit the focus of international talks, to establish some agreement and get the ball rolling.
Barry (14),
The boundary levels model , while controversial and still very much developing, is kind of my big picture take on the “the mess.”
If the strong (high sulphate effect) version of AGW theory is correct global economic collapse is not a solution. It would lead to an increase in the rate of temperature rise not a decrease. Similarly large scale global depopulation is not a solution Partly due to the same effect, loss of aerosol shielding and partly because in many regions the current ecosystem are highly dependent on human intervention. Much of Europe has a highly managed ecosystem and it can be argued that this has lead to higher rather than lower biodiversity, although that has been changing.
To simply walk away would amount to an abdication of responsibility, an admission of failure, and a confession to the guilt of havine done harm. That it was not good to have been man.
When embarking on great projects, intent without a solution, out trumps a solution without intent. We cannot foresee the optimal trajectory nor know that the objective can be achieved yet hindsight comes to make much that was hidden obvious.
In the first years of WWII it was far from obvious that a commitment not to agree terms with Germany would turn out the way it did. That Russia and the USA would be attacked and hence open lines of progress was far from inevitable. Ignorance of the true nature of the enemy seemed to make the task forlorn. In hindsight one can pick out the key decisions and paramount were the intent to fight on, to retreat in some order, and to prevent invasion. At the outset the capacity of the victors to wage war seemed dwarfed by that of the enemy and this view has achieved almost mythic proportions. To this date we are still trying to evaluate why the war in Europe was not lost in 1940/41 and new thinking is turning to the view that it only seemed to be miraculous when it was in fact likely, given the intent to fight on and the true nature of each sides strengths and weaknesses.
If the resolution of the climate issue falls into a model of progress against apparently insurmountable hurdles, success could be engendered from intent, and attempt. At present we know not for certain the scale of the problem only that it looks forbidding, neither can we evaluate our capacity to respond nor which nations will ally themselves to what goals. The resolution of WWII was neither the result of an pre-existing consensus nor a coherent plan. It progressed from a decision widely seen as illogical and ruinous, supported not by rational argument but by rhetoric, myth, and values.
There is no consensus on values, but that is no bar to nations adopting stances that seek to protect that which they most cherish, no matter how illogical or ruinous that may seem. A choice to have a smaller material share of a less intollerable world awaits us and is widely shunned, but for those that belief that we are having a detrimental global effect, must not greater material comsumption in an increasingly intollerable world lessen who we are.
The tragedy as I see it Tom, is that the world is in for a lot of needless suffering that could have been avoided but for the failure of human institutions. Sticking with oil for the moment, there is near unanimous consent among industry forecasters that the world has reached or is very near to peak production. Persistently high oil prices will cause far more economic damage than any of the climate change proposals that have been put forward over the past decade in the u.s. The reasons for this are pretty simple. Over the short term demand for gasoline is relatively inelastic; people still need to drive to work, pick up the kids, etc. People will of course make some adjustments (i.e. fewer leisure trips, slower speeds), but overall consumption doesn’t change by much. Longer term poeple may decide to move closer to work, buy a second car, etc.
Now once people realize that high prices are here to stay what do you think they’ll demand from the pols? Lower gas taxes, R&D for renewables/EVs, or tire pressure monitors? I know which one I’d pick, despite the fact that its the most useless.
The other thing I’d point out is that while the market can sort things out eventually, there is often a lot of roadkill that can result. Consider, for example, what happens to the value of housing stock in suburbia or all those SUVs and pickups that people bought when they thought that gas prices would stay relatively low…
@16
there is in fact quite a bit of movement on black carbon at the international level, although it’s not necessarily occuring in public view…
Keith Kloor Says:
<i>But there again, the all or nothing mindset seems to win the day</i>
I’ll defer to a term favored by General Petraeus…”Setting Conditions”.
When one is ‘setting conditions’ it frequently appears that nothing is happening..or that you are losing.
If the UK government hadn’t built windmills and provided generous subsidies for solar panels that in the end proved that at least for the UK, wind and solar energy availability are poorly correlated to demand I doubt Mr Monbiot would have had his ‘nuclear’ epiphany.
Hence, going down the windmill and solar panel road, even if it leads to failure was at least for the UK a necessary policy in order to ‘set the conditions’ for acceptance of nuclear power.
Who knows, maybe the Germans will manage to somehow match solar and wind energy availability to demand. It seems that for the time being they are not ready to give up.
In the meantime, various Gen 3+ nuclear power plants are being built around the world that will provide solid cost numbers that will either dispel the belief that nuclear plants can’t be built on budget or confirm it.
In the end the market will decide not based on theoretical evidence but on ‘in practice’ evidence.
Obviously, the windmill, solar panel and nuclear sales people would like us to decide based on their rosy sales brochures and achieve a government policy that locks us into that choice forever.
I agree that rejecting low hanging fruit is wrong, and I’d join Keith in critiquing anyone calling for an all-or-nothing approach. I’m not aware of anyone in particular making that call; as I understand it, it’s the “other things first” camp that says we have to stop doing anything at all about CO2 while picking the low-hanging fruit.
The counter-argument is that we can both walk and chew gum at the same time. I don’t know of anyone saying they would oppose action on black carbon or CFCs or cattle farts or whatever unless it also included curbs on CO2.
The ideas that really inspired me years ago about transforming culture along ecological lines were probably William McDonough’s ‘cradle to cradle’ concept of better classification of material streams and manufacturing of products with an aim to increasing recyclability and minimising toxicity, and Terence Mckenna’s ‘dematerialising the culture through virtual reality technologies’. That and a heavy focus on bioregionalism. I used to imagine that if McDonalds could swap out their gardens for native biodiverse species, then you’d be well on your way to fixing the environment. 🙂
I think common sense suggests finishing picking up low-hanging fruit before climbing up the tree.
One person can climb the tree, one person can pick up fruit. If we’re going to argue by analogy, let’s at least agree on the analogy.
Maybe another guy can climb the tree. But why?
Again, the analogy is imperfect. Say you have a limited time to get all the fruit (think peaches, not apples). Or that one guy doesn’t like to climb, and one guy doesn’t like to reach up over his head… or they disagree whether the fruit on the bottom or the top of the tree is sweeter.
The point being, there’s no reason why both guys have to do the same thing.
The statement:
“The problem we face is not that we have too little fossil fuel, but too much.”
really should not pass without challenge.
I read that as implying that we are incapable of managing a resource and it would have been better that nature had managed it for us.
Fossil reserves have many benefits beyond their destruction by incineration. They sustain us in inumerable ways from pharmaceuticals, plastics, composites, pesticides, to fertilizers. That we may not have to face a stark trade off between burning reserves and processing reserves into material goods must be something I welcome.
We do have a problem in how these reserves are going to be managed, who is going to manage them, and to what end.
I have regarded the burning of complex soups of hydrocarbons as a tragedy for the long term, since the days when reglaciation was considered a threat. I was young then and capable of holding a long term view as was so commonly the case.
My weakness in the debate lies in that I could not impose my highly radical views on how to lead a better life on others. I do think that I have maintained some wisdom from my youth but part of that is that ideologies are like lighthouses, useful guides to steer between and away from. For the purposes of guidance I could be considered to hold views akin to unhyphenated anarchism and philosophical absurdism. These belie any attempt to forge a dogmatic stance.
Yet I must deplore appeals to deluvian solutions, to wish such would be cruel and inhuman for I have no vengeful god. To me it reverberates an Old Testament worldview on the benefits of purification through catastrophic punishment.
I worry that there are people who do wish for such things and it seems that, besides his fine personal qualities, Mr Monbiot is one such.
Thinking that only environmentalists care about climate change is wrong from the start. Declaring every major scientific organization in the world an “environmental” group is clearly wrong. Claiming that 97% of climate scientists or 84% of geophysicists are environmentalists also strikes me as very unlikely to be true. Although I spent a couple of years as a registered member of the Green party (before the Ralph Nader incident) I honestly have never considered myself an environmentalist at all – I enjoy eating lots of meat, staying in a nice dehumidified air-conditioned home, etc. In many ways I’m pretty pro-business and pro-technology (5 computers in the house) etc.
I have no problem with environmentalists like Monbiot when they support things that are scientifically valid, and I have no problem criticizing them when they get stuff wrong. Monbiot’s been wrong now on both sides of his nuclear opinions; the fact that he swung from total opposition to rabid support should indicate that there are many things he has never understood, and still doesn’t understand, about the issue.
Analogies are never perfect but this is a relatively good one. The point is that climbing up the tree indisputably takes an extra effort (or, in economic terms, expense). To justify that you need to invoke some extraneous reasons which is exactly what you are doing. Either lack of time or the higher-hanging fruit is better or whatever. But you need to throw in additional variables.
Once again, I don’t disagree that it is possible to do both. I just don’t see why. In terms of economic reality and AGW, these additional variables are hard to agree upon.
Well, here the analogy is slipping. The question at hand is not the choice between action on CO2 or Other Things First (or both), but the decision of whether we should push for action on CO2 or OTF or both.
Achieving meaningful action on OTF may be easier than getting curbs on CO2. In the present environment, it may not be. The problem is that we don’t have a Political Impossibility Index.
Sashka,
If I may be permitted more than one tree?
Japan, Europe, the USA, China, India, Africa, etc. all have different stages of development and a different ranking again when it comes to other metrics such as energy intensity. I think that it is just these disparities that will lead to a diverse approach.
Now it may be that improvements in energy intensity in China will be difficult to achieve, that is to say the fruit although plentiful is not low hanging but in Japan it is neither low hanging nor plentiful. Perhaps in the USA it is both plentiful and low hanging. I am not sure of the details except that the trees are not identical.
Arthur (28),
I’d hardly characterize Monbiot exhibiting “rabid support” of nuclear power. Just read the last graph of this column.
Also, instead of merely stating that Monbiot is wrong, how about pointing to a good counterpoint that was published after his recent run of nuclear power-related columns. I’d like to see the argued rebuttal to him, if you’re not inclined to do it.
Arthur 28#
George Monbiot and Mark Lynas for their articles and stances on nuclear are now ‘Chernobyl Death Deniars’ according to some greens/environmentalists
http://www.marklynas.org/2011/04/time-for-the-green-party-and-guardian-ditch-nuclear-quackery/
“Yesterday I was an environmentalist. Today, according to tweets from prominent greens, and an op-ed response piece in the Guardian, I’m a “Chernobyl death denier”. My crime has been to stick to the peer-reviewed consensus scientific reports on the health impacts of the Chernobyl disaster, rather than ““ as is apparently necessary to remain politically correct as a “˜green’ ““ cleaving instead to self-published reports from pseudo scientists who have spent a lifetime hyping the purported dangers of radiation.”
I think Harry hit the nail on the head- folks who think nothing has happened on the climate front over the last few decades have their heads in the sand. Monbiot seems to be emerging from the dune.
Over the last 15 years we have:
-evaluated and discovered serious flaws with alternatives such as hydrogen, wind, solar, geothermal, bio-fuels.
– evaluated and discovered very serious flaws with policies such as – the effectiveness of energy taxes in reducing demand, cap-n-trade style approaches (particularly flaws in ETS), mandates and subsidies.
Meanwhile, over the past 15 years we’ve:
discovered massive oil fields in the deep ocean, brazil, and central US as well as massive natural gas reserves in the US, as well as improved nuclear power plant designs.
So, the status is that the green movement hates all the solutions that work and the public hates all the solutions that don’t work. Monbiot seems to care enough about climate to see this as an absurd “stalemate.”
Barry, as someone who is familiar with the Lynas book (I also assigned this review of it), I’m fascinated with the reaction to him, and have been meaning to write about it.
Hi keith
This is a must watch video for you
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vb_NCdbq5ZA&feature=related
Franny Armstrong (10:10 ) interviewing Mark Lynas at Copenhagen.
As the Maldives Climate advisor he was in the room, when the negotiations failed.
It is just one of Franny’s Age of Stupid – Spanner Films clip (and has only had a few thousan youtube views.. It is candid, a sort of insider documentary of advocates interviewing advocates.. so very relaxed not on message for the wider media
Mark makes it clear That Cop 15 faiiled not because of the West (but 2 big countries (China and India) He later wrote about it identifying China in the Guardian.
Guardian: How do I know China wrecked the Copenhagen Deal – I was in the room
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/dec/22/copenhagen-climate-change-mark-lynas
Mark Lynas knows why the greens will all fail, from the above..(Dec 22)
“But China’s growth, and growing global political and economic dominance, is based largely on cheap coal. China knows it is becoming an uncontested superpower; indeed its newfound muscular confidence was on striking display in Copenhagen. Its coal-based economy doubles every decade, and its power increases commensurately. Its leadership will not alter this magic formula unless they absolutely have to.
Keith, my post here was in part a rebuttal to Monbiot, though much more general in content. The point is, nobody sensible on the subject of nuclear power thought Chernobyl had killed a million people, and nobody sensible should ever quote only the direct radiation deaths of a few dozen. The reality is, from many different analyses, several thousand to several tens of thousands will have suffered premature death from the accident and the radiation it spread.
We also should have been well aware that was not a worst case. The reason Russia sent many thousands of workers through Chernobyl to try to fix problems after the disaster, rather than leaving it alone, was that it could have gotten much much worse. The Chernobyl reactor is *still* a problem, and they are *still* spending billions trying to fix it. Fukushima looks like it’ll be very similar, though so far with less direct fatalities.
As I wrote in my piece:
“It seems clear to me that our current technologies for turning nuclear fuel into energy are far too primitive; the dangers come inherently from the tiny fraction of the energy content we are able to extract in a reasonable period of time. It is similar to the early days of the industrial age, when steam power was highly inefficient and dangerous. At least with fossil fuel technologies, as the examples above discuss, we generally are in the 10s to 100s of GJ energy range when accidents happen. With nuclear power, in principle, we have millions or billions of times more at stake. Carlo Rubia’s accelerator-based fission idea may be a real solution; I don’t think any other type of reactor currently proposed can possibly really be safe given the necessary large energy content in every other design.”
and
“Many people have noted that the problem with nuclear power is not so much safety as economics. But it is the intrinsic dangers inherent in the enormous energy content of nuclear power that makes it so expensive. If we weren’t worried (with good reason) about the possibilities of widespread radioactive contamination there would be no need for those expensive containment domes, etc. Hydro power has similar cost constraints that may well limit it in future just as for nuclear (i.e. except in countries that are able to ignore economics or safety…)”
Of course, Joe Romm has said much the same as I have, in different words…
I think progress is starting to be made in the nuclear area. When I starting looking into this stuff in detail over a year ago, I was amazed how discussing nuclear energy was essentially a forbidden subject on most climate science forums.
Unfortunately it is truly a wedge issue for environmentalists, it seems like it is equivalent to discussing abortion or religion, you just can’t go there and expect rational discourse. Which I think is sad, because IMO it is clearly the bridge issue between right and left politically.
I’m certainly guilty for using it as a litmus test for AGW advocates. If you claim AGW will have catastrophic results for earth, but you will not accept nuclear power as a viable solution, than I can’t resolve that position as rational.
This AGW advocate is either a hard core idealist, or more likely has simply co-opted AGW for other personal environmental agendas (wealth redistribution, social justice, reduced consumerism, etc.).
Somethings got to give though. This looks like a losing battle (which is fine by me) for the greens now with little hope of change anytime soon.
Drop windmills and solar
Embrace nuclear to replace coal
Give up on “sin taxes” (Cap and trade, carbon tax, etc.)
Get off the moral high horse, America has an economy to run, and perceived threats to this is a non-starter.
That’s where I see middle ground. I think the right is more than happy with status quo, and watching the greens splinter and form circular firing squads is not going to bother them.
One thing for sure, more of the same will result in more of the same results.
Arthur Smith Says:
“Many people have noted that the problem with nuclear power is not so much safety as economics.”
The general rule of thumb, all other things being equal is that coal has to cost at least $4/MBtu and gas has to cost at least $6/MBtu for nuclear to be economic as baseload.
The current price of coal in Europe and Asia is about $6/MBtu and the price of gas is about $8/MBtu.
The only major places the ‘economics’ discussion is valid are Russia and the US as they are both coal and gas ‘rich’.
Coal is expensive to transport…in the US the farther one gets from Gillette, Wyoming the more expensive coal is to use. So we see Plant Voglte Units #3 and #4 in Georgia and VC Summer Units#2 and #3 in South Carolina are still progressing while the NRG project in Texas was canceled.
Without the qualifier ‘where’ every energy source can be made to look economically attractive or unattractive. I.E. Solar Panels are never going be economic in Alaska but they might become economic in the US Southwest. Windmills are never going to make it in the US Southeast but they are doing ‘fair’ in the US Northwest.
…”to abandon magical thinking and to recognise the contradictions we confront…” (Monbiot)
This is the ideal. This is the logical. This is NOT going to happen. We are going to run and dash over the edge into the roiling sea below.
Consider that “Slience is Golden” (if only for a moment;-). Why do we say it’s “Golden”? To achieve the Monboit objective would require utter silence and total reflection. To accomplish such a feat in today’s world we would need two very good sized CME’s directed directly at the Earth with an 11 and a half hour interval between impacts.
Nope! We’re going to have to duke it out the hard way, and we’re not going to achieve anything meaningful or worthwhile. Same-o same-o. Mother Nature – “4.5 billion”, Mankind – “O”.
How to solve the Fossil Fuel Crisis…
http://fakescience.tumblr.com/post/4722624742/how-to-solve-the-fossil-fuel-crisis
Nuclear seems to be the only practical solution to most of the “clean and reasonable priced” future required energy needs (possibly except flying, which might be satisfied by biofuel). It is the greens opposing nuclear that prevent its wide acceptance.
2. Marlowe Johnson Says:
May 5th, 2011 at 9:29 am
[…]
However, I would dispute Monbiot’s suggestion that there aren’t convincing scenarios to get us most of the way there. For starters I would suggest the IEA’s Energy Technology Perspectives 2010 Report. Where the heck do you find ANYTHING in the IEA report that is a workable solution to our future speculated energy crisis?
Somebody please read Marlowe’s comment #2 linked IEA Energy Technology Perspectives 2010 Report. If I was unaware of all the other accomplishments of the IEA and judged the IEA solely on this high level summary for policy makers…I would vote to defund and disband the IEA. Did someone from WWF have extra time and throw those 12 or 15 pages of text during a lunch hour for the IEA?
Where are the energy solutions proposed by the IEA in Marlowe’s linked IEA report?
Most of us would love to be utilizing some mysterious energy solution that is not carbon intensive. Marlowe, I find nothing in your suggested IEA report to support your assertion, “However, I would dispute Monbiot’s suggestion that there aren’t convincing scenarios to get us most of the way there.” What are you seeing as solutions in this report that I am not?
It is my hope that we have common ground and that we all recognize that some revolution in energy production is desirable and somewhere down the line in our future. Wind/Wave/Solar can be continued to be stuffed in a pipe like medical marijuana at a second hand smoke conference. Non-Gen-4 nuclear energy has potential but is cost prohibitive.
OMG, Marlowe, I am generally out of sorts by that IEA report. Forget bells and whistles I think the Air Raid Siren went off, and my USA grade school “Duck and Cover” training came into play.
How do we look at Leaf & Volt EV car sales projections in ratio to actual sales and come up with the same warm and fuzzy conclusions of this report from the IEA(which should be a reputable organization). Somebody please read Marlowe’s comment #2 linked IEA Energy Technology Perspectives 2010 Report. I am so tired and frustrated with the we have to do something, anything – NOW, thought process.
Marlowe, my sentiments in no way are directed at you but at our common nemesis. You gave me a link to an IEA report that I didn’t have and for that I am grateful.
“Non-Gen-4 nuclear energy has potential but is cost prohibitive.”
That statement was poorly stated.
What I intended to state was that Gen-4 nuclear energy has potential but is cost prohibitive and that non-Gen-4 nuclear should not be considered.