Letters to the Editor
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Peak Oil solutions are myths
Peak Oil is a geological fact that is recognized by the National Academy of Sciences, General Accountability Office, and Congressional Research Service, etc. A review of scientific and government studies reveals the following:
Global oil production peaked in 2006 (or will peak within a few years) and will decline until all recoverable oil is depleted within several decades. Because global oil demand is increasing, declining production will soon generate high energy prices, inflation, unemployment, and irreversible economic depression. Regardless of the time available for mitigating Peak Oil impacts, alternative sources of energy will replace only a small fraction of the gap between declining production and increasing demand. Because oil under girds the world economy, oil depletion will result in global economic collapse and population decline. As oil exporting nations experience both declining oil production and increased domestic oil consumption, they will reduce oil exports to the U.S. Because the U.S.is highly dependent on imported oil for transportation, food production, industry, and residential heating, the nation will experience the impacts of declining oil supplies sooner and more severely than much of the world. North American natural gas production has peaked, importation of natural gas is limited, and the U.S. faces shortages of natural gas within a few years. These shortages threaten residential heating supplies, industrial production, electric power generation, and fertilizer production. Because U.S. coal production peaked in 2002 (in terms of energy provided by coal), the U.S. will experience significantly higher coal and electric prices in future years. The U.S. government is unprepared for the multiple consequences of Peak Oil, Peak Natural Gas, and Peak Coal. Multiple crises will cripple the nation in a gridlock of ever-worsening problems. Within a few decades, the U.S. will lack car, truck, air, and rail transportation, as well as mechanized farming, adequate food and water supplies, electric power, sanitation, home heating, hospital care, and government services. The full report is available at: http://www.peakoilassociates.com/POAnalysis.html
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Um. A Few Other Issues?
Plug-in hybrids are fine, but I'm wondering if there are a few points that they might not address. What about:
*** Limited PHEV battery range, which could limit interstate transport (also known as food)?
*** Any carbon-free substitute for aviation (also a big player in the food delivery system)?
*** Fertilizer for large monocultural farms and concentrated agricultural feedlot organizations (CAFOs), a pretty carbon-intensive process?
Not a peak oil doomer; just hopefully a realist about the problem. And it seems to me that driving might be the most obvious sign of a carbon addiction, but it's a relatively small -- and in the grand scheme of things, not all that important -- part of the disease.
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The car of the future is...
This article is so biased in favor of the, rather stupid, status quo that I don't know where to begin. First off, we don't have until mid century to get our emissions down by 60%, we have more like fifteen to twenty years to do so (unless genocide in Africa, Bangladesh and S. America are considered minor problems). Further, since the U.S. is responsible for so much of the current problem, we probably need to reduce emissions by more like 80-90% (don't forget to count as our emissions those that are made on our behalf by developing countries, which brings us to over 40% of global emissions).
Clearly, the car of the future is not a plug in hybrid. Rather, it is a hybrid of trollies, trains, bicycles and shoes. Even the current generation of hybrids take 5-10 years to break even when one considers the CO2 generated in their production.
If we choose to continue to allow people to generate all of the environmental damage that they can monetarily afford to, then we will be accepting the death of the planet. If we tax emissions to a level that will allow human life to continue, we are accepting the death of millions and the marginalization of the tens of millions of Americans who will not be able to afford to pay. Sure sounds like a recipe for violent revolution to me. Alternatively, we could use tried and true methods and put individual quotas on grid-provided electricity and liquid fuels. Quotas were good enough to win WWII and they are good enough to beat climate change. Of course, it means making the choice between driving nonessential miles or heating/air conditioning the over-large house. Eventually, we could even require the emissions of consumer goods to count against the quotas (bye bye cheap plasic crap from China; bye bye Wal-Mart).
I know the prospect of a world without motorized wheelchairs is frightening to most sedentary Americans. If my elderly uncle in Fairbanks can do it, I suppose most non-crippled people could manage to do it if they tried. Or maybe we will decide that leaving a living planet is too much trouble.
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Nuclear is not the answer
Just where is all this zero-carbon-electricity to come from to power the plug-in hybrid Utopia? Wind power and nuclear energy? Who is paying your bills, Joe? Nuclear is the most top-down, secretive, militaristic, subsidized, undemocratic, non-zero-CO2 non-solution possible. Besides which, houses & buildings generate more CO2 than cars, and you make no mention of them.
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Decimation
The future of humanity. A ~90% die-off, coming relatively soon.
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relax, there's a way out...
and it's lo-tech: reduce population by 90% and put the remainder on bicycles. told you it was easy.
nuclear war may do it, bio-war can help out. but until the human race faces up the concept of planned population reduction, the poor ol' four horsemen are gonna saddle up.
sorry, but flash new power supplies just push the problem back a generation or two. in the end, there is finite space on this planet, water and air are already overburdened, extinctions are rising- and still people are talking about 'growth' and 'development'.
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Nuclear power, anyone?
You write: 'And for that only one alternative fuel is even remotely plausible -- carbon-free electricity.'
Yet you don't specify what that is -- it is nuclear power, right? We don't have a chance of getting solar or wind power producing anywhere near the required amounts of power.
Now, that's fine with me -- the French have managed to make fission-based nuclear power remarkably safe by standardizing nuclear power plant designs and going with plant designs with built-in safety features.
But don't you think you should have mentioned nuclear power somewhere in this article?