by Charles Hugh-Smith
Change the incentives, and the outcomes change.
Ecologist Howard Odum offered a profound perception into human enlargement, stagnation and collapse. He argued that people are wired to maximise energy output (i.e., consumption) moderately than maximize effectivity.
In different phrases, people are wired to strip the tree of each ripe fruit and throw a celebration, have extra youngsters and use the excess meals to feed a military of conquest. Environment friendly use of assets is just not a part of what I time period Wetware 1.0, the set of instruments that was chosen and optimized over the previous 200,000 years for small hunter-gatherer tribes roaming an apparently near-infinite world.
We’ve squandered the surpluses enabled by hydrocarbons to maximise power output (consumption) moderately than obtain effectivity. That’s lastly coming round to hang-out the complete “infinite development on a finite planet” established order.
Right here’s the completely satisfied story being promoted by the established order: we are able to maintain overconsuming / losing assets on an unlimited scale by electrifying every part that’s presently powered by hydrocarbons: The Electrification of All the things: What You Must Know.
There are a fantastic many issues with this fantasy. One is that per Odum, humanity doesn’t change hydrocarbons with wind-solar, it consumes all of the alt-energy being added, too. Including power simply will increase consumption.
One other is that the amount of scarce minerals and assets wanted to interchange hydrocarbons with so-called renewable power is so huge that it’s unrealistic.
As I’ve famous many instances, per analyst/educator Nate Hagens, “renewables” are literally ‘replaceables’, as photo voltaic panels and wind generators put on out and should be changed each 20-25 years, if not sooner.
The dimensions of power consumption is so huge and the proportion equipped by photo voltaic and wind is so insignificant. Most charts lump photo voltaic and wind with hydropower and biofuels (wooden), however wind and photo voltaic present at finest 3% of world power, after all of the tens of billions of {dollars} which have been invested.
To supply the vast majority of world power consumption, we’d want to extend solar-wind 20-fold, from 3% to 60%. The issue, as Tim Watkins explains, is the Earth doesn’t have sufficient scarce minerals to construct this monstrous world system, after which change it each 20-25 years: Are you continue to shopping for this?
“Internet-zero carbon dioxide by 2050 would require the deployment of ~1500 wind generators (2.5 MW) over ~300 sq. miles, day-after-day beginning tomorrow and persevering with to 2050.”
“Challenges of utilizing ‘inexperienced power’ to energy electrical automobiles: If wind farms are chosen to generate the facility for the projected two billion automobiles at UK common utilization, this requires the equal of an extra years’ price of whole world copper provide and 10 years’ price of world neodymium and dysprosium manufacturing to construct the windfarms.”
“To exchange all UK-based autos in the present day with electrical autos, assuming they use essentially the most resource-frugal next-generation NMC 811 batteries, would take 207,900 tonnes cobalt, 264,600 tonnes of lithium carbonate (LCE), no less than 7,200 tonnes of neodymium and dysprosium, along with 2,362,500 tonnes copper. This represents, just below two instances the full annual world cobalt manufacturing, almost the complete world manufacturing of neodymium, three quarters the world’s lithium manufacturing and no less than half of the world’s copper manufacturing throughout 2018.”
Each kilogram of those scarce minerals have to be mined, transported and processed with hydrocarbons.
The issue with wind and photo voltaic is intermittency: fashionable industrial economies require regular electrical energy 24/7 or they fail. Wind and photo voltaic generate energy intermittently, which means they’ll’t generate a gradual provide 24/7 nor can they generate electrical energy when shoppers need to use it.
So the intermittency downside turns into a storage downside: how can we retailer surplus electrical energy in portions massive sufficient to energy our huge consumption when the wind dies and the solar goes down?
There are not any low-cost, straightforward solutions to storage, and concepts resembling changing all of it to hydrogen should not lifelike attributable to value and questions of safety. There isn’t sufficient lithium and different scarce minerals to construct batteries for two billion autos and storage for each electrical grid on Earth. (And be aware that lithium batteries have very restricted lifespans and should be changed each decade, if not sooner. Only a few batteries are recycled, so recycling billions of batteries can also be a fantasy.)
As Gail Tverberg observes in her latest publish, How the World’s Vitality Drawback Has Been Hidden:
“So-called renewable fuels are typically very damaging to the atmosphere in methods aside from CO2 emissions. This level is made very properly within the new ebook Shiny Inexperienced Lies: How the Environmental Motion Misplaced Its Means and What We Can Do About It by Derrick Jensen, Lierre Keith and Max Wilbert. It makes the purpose that renewable fuels should not an try to save lots of the atmosphere. As a substitute, they’re attempting to save lots of our present industrial civilization utilizing approaches that are inclined to destroy the atmosphere. Chopping down forests, even when new timber are planted of their place, is particularly detrimental. Alice Friedemann, in her new ebook, Life after Fossil Fuels: A Actuality Verify on Various Fuels, factors out the excessive value of those options and their dependence on fossil gas power.”
Many individuals I respect see thorium nuclear reactors as the reply, however like all the opposite proposals to interchange the staggeringly massive consumption fueled by hydrocarbons with another supply, it’s not as straightforward in the true world as it’s conceptually.
India has reserves of thorium and has an bold plan to construct thorium reactors. However the thorium nuclear gas cycle is extraordinarily non-trivial, and regardless of billions of rupees invested, India has but to finish a single large-scale thorium reactor–and neither has every other nation. There are seven analysis reactors scattered world wide, however no precise energy crops. India’s Bold Nuclear Energy Plan–And What’s Getting in Its Means:
“With the commercialization and enhanced use of renewable power applied sciences, the per unit value of electrical energy produced from renewables has gone down considerably. The price of solar energy in India proper now’s Rs 2.62 per unit, nearly half of the per unit value of electrical energy being produced by the lately operational Kudankulam nuclear energy plant (Rs 4.10 per unit).”
The issue is we’ve based mostly our complete world financial system on maximizing consumption, not effectivity, in order that waste = development = maximizing earnings.
Think about this chart of power consumption, and the chart of power effectivity, which displays the appalling inefficiency of our consumption.
Provided that we incentivize earnings earned from rising waste (i.e. “development”), this shouldn’t shock us.
As Tim Morgan has defined, our complete monetary system presumes that money-finance is the grasp system that controls every part in the true world, when in actual fact the monetary system is an overlay on the power system. In essence, the complete monetary system is nothing however summary claims on power that in contrast to power might be endlessly multiplied.
Claims (forex and debt) might be created out of skinny air, however power methods can’t be created out of skinny air.
The reply isn’t to aim to interchange a disastrously inefficient and wasteful system with replaceable power sources–a delusional fantasy. The reply is to put aside our Wetware 1.0 programming to maximise power output and consumption in favor of maximizing power effectivity and conservation.
There are a selection of how this transition could possibly be made. For instance, moderately than tax human labor, we may tax the consumption of non-renewable assets.
UnTax–Taxing Away Local weather Change:
“But the explanation for this inertia is straightforward: the value we pay for fossil fuels, and most different non-renewable assets, is way too low, as a result of we don’t pay for his or her creation which took a whole bunch of hundreds of thousands of years, however just for their extraction. To make issues worse, greater than 90% of all taxes are paid on labor in most international locations, which discourages employment and forces automation into each a part of the financial system.
This mix-up, a by-product of the commercial revolution, results in air pollution, greenhouse gasoline emissions, waste manufacturing and the pointless use of automation, which damages our ecosystems and on the similar time deprives future generations of their proper to entry these scarce assets.”
Do we actually need to return to the “regular” of waste = development = maximizing revenue if this “regular” is destroying the planet?
Chopping consumption is anathema within the present mindset of waste = development = maximizing revenue, however the Pareto Distribution suggests we may minimize consumption by 80% and nonetheless retain 80% of the necessities for a great life resembling clear water, wholesome meals, fundamental shelter, and so forth.
As I posted in Musings #9, think about this brief movie of Market Avenue in downtown San Francisco shot a number of days earlier than the catastrophic earthquake and fireplace of 1906. A visit down Market Avenue earlier than the hearth (Library of Congress).
Life was fairly good in 1906 San Francisco and plenty of different cities. Now have a look at the power consumption round 1900: it was round 15 TWh in comparison with in the present day’s 160 TWh, roughly 10% of present consumption. And the engines and machines of 1906 have been by in the present day’s requirements extraordinarily inefficient. Alter for will increase in inhabitants and effectivity and it’s clear lower-consumption life just isn’t essentially a return to residing in caves.
Do we actually need to return to “regular” if “regular” is destroying the planet?
Waste is in all places in our lifestyle as a result of waste is worthwhile within the present association. What would occur if waste was taxed at very excessive charges and effectivity was the only real technique of maximizing earnings?
Charlie Munger (head of Berkshire Hathaway) famously stated: “Present me the inducement and I’ll present you the end result.” That’s how people function: we reply to the incentives offered, even when they destroy the planet.
Change the incentives, and the outcomes change. What if efficiencies and conservation earned the largest rewards and human labor was free of taxation? The outcomes would enhance very dramatically–and that’s simply the beginning.
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