Ministry For The Future

                                                                                                           written 17 Apr 2022

                                                                                                       published 24 Apr 2022

 

            Last Friday, April 22nd, was Earth Day, first celebrated in 1970.  While climate denial has been well funded, creating confusion to protect corporate profits, the physical and economic effects of the climate disaster increase every year, making it harder to ignore.  I am optimistic the tide of denial is shifting.  

            I recently read "Ministry For The Future", by Kim Stanley Robinson, a well researched science fiction nonfiction novel, examining the complex sociological and economic roots of the climate challenge, as well as describing possible solutions.  Written in 2020, it is a story of the next quarter century or so, as humanity actually starts dealing with the climate crisis.  

            It begins a year or two from now.  In India, the monsoons are late, and a high-pressure zone covers an unusually large area, creating a massive heat wave.  High temperatures increase the air conditioning load, which crashes the fragile regional electrical grid, shutting down water systems as well.  People begin to overheat and die as the temperature never cools off at night.  Even the lakes are too warm to have a cooling effect.  By the time the heat wave breaks, and outside resources can reach the area, entire villages are dead.  More than one million people die, but the final death toll is only an estimate.  

            The shocked reaction collapses the entrenched political structure in India, allowing a totally new party, unaligned with corporate interests, to begin ruling the country with an orientation toward preventing another such disaster.  The heat wave prompts the UN to create a Ministry to advocate for the future, who cannot speak for themselves yet.  The entire planet begins to shift, though progress is slow, given the global power of the economic and political status quo.  

            I want to focus on three of the many issues and solutions described.  

            The first is that most of the effective actions are led by women.  Patriarchy has dominated the world for thousands of years, bringing us to this moment when all life on Earth is at risk.  At the very least, it is time for women to not only have a seat at the table, but to bring their wisdom for solutions for a sustainable future.

            The second is shifting the financial world from prioritizing the destruction of everything for short term profit for a few, to prioritizing the long-term nourishment of the entire biosphere.  Capitalism is a powerful economic model, but fundamentally flawed, thus giving flaw consequences.  One of the flaws is discounting the future, which means that future events have relatively no value in present day cost benefit calculations.  This is due to the laziness of economics which ignores costs that are difficult to quantify, and the silo effect of looking at isolated parts rather than whole, complex, interconnected, systems. 

            The proposed solution is called a carbon coin, convertible to local currencies, backed by a collection of major central banks with long-term bonds paying out over 100 years.  This forces a long-term perspective into the financial world.  Carbon coins are paid to anyone forgoing extraction of fossil fuels, giving financial incentive for "leaving it in the ground".  Any activity that reduces fossil energy consumption is also paid in carbon coins, as is all activity that actively sequesters carbon in the soil, giving financial support for actions beneficial to the health of the biosphere.  The energy reductions and sequestration activities are rigorously measured and monitored to insure against fraudulent "greenwashing".

            The third issue is a little darker.  After the heat wave, the anger within India that they should die while the world goes about "business as usual", brings forth the secretive Cult of Kali.  It is justifiable homicide to kill another in defense of your life.  Republican "stand your ground" laws allow killing even when you simply "feel" threatened.  The Cult of Kali takes that attitude global.  On what becomes called Crash Day, 20 airplanes, primarily private business jets, crash after drone swarms attack their engines in flight.  Subsequently, all airline flights decreased sharply.  This was just one of many actions. 

            Millions are already facing economic loss or dislocation from drought, floods, crop failures, stronger storms and heat waves.  The world gives lip service, but atmospheric carbon content still grows.  What size "natural" disaster will it take?  What is enough?  We all need to think about this, and then vote, and act.

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

Oil Funds Tyrants

                                                                                                           written 10 Apr 2022

                                                                                                       published 17 Apr 2022

  

            Oil consumption is driving the climate crisis, and the peaking of global oil production, due to overconsuming a finite resource, contributes to high fuel prices.  Today I want to discuss how purchasing oil funds tyrants and terrorism around the world.

            In 2019, before the pandemic sharply reduced demand, global oil production was 95M barrels per day.  Few countries have oil production in sufficient quantity to allow for much export.  Just four countries account for 46 percent of global exports: United Arab Emirates (16.3 percent), Saudi Arabia (11.4 percent), Russia (10.5 percent), and Kuwait (7.6 percent).

            #1, United Arab Emirates, "is a federation of seven hereditary tribal monarchs.  All responsibilities not granted to the national government are reserved to the individual emirates.  Human rights in the country are generally substandard.  Citizens criticizing the regime are imprisoned and tortured, their families harassed by the state security apparatus, with cases of forced disappearances.   Sharia religious courts have exclusive jurisdiction over a wide range of laws; amputation and stoning are considered legal punishments, with homosexuality and apostasy from Islam,punishable by death."  

            "In 2013, the country had a population of 9.2 million, of which 1.4 million were Emirati citizens and 7.8 million were expatriates (guest workers).  The UAE, with the seventh largest oil reserves, has developed to one of the world's most wealthy states, but the wealth gap between rich and poor is one of the worst in the world, largely due to the amount of welfare and protection afforded to native Emiratis and the amount of neglect towards migrant workers."

            #2, Saudi Arabia, "is an absolute monarchy.  No political parties or national elections are permitted, and observance of Sharia law are mandated for Muslim and non-Muslim alike.  The Economist rated the Saudi government as the fifth most authoritarian government in the world."

            "A founding member of OPEC, Saudi Arabia controls the world's second-largest oil reserves, spending 8 percent of its GDP on the military, second highest in the world, receiving half of all the US arms exports to the Middle East.  There have been continual calls for halting arms sales to Saudi Arabia, due to alleged war crimes in the Yemeni Civil War, alleged sponsorship of Sunni Islamic terrorism, and its poor human rights record, characterized by the excessive and extrajudicial use of capital punishment, and failure to adopt adequate measures against human trafficking."  

            "In 2018, Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi dissident, columnist for The Washington Post, was ambushed, suffocated, and dismembered by a 15-member squad of Saudi assassins at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey."  

            #3, Russia, has been fighting in Ukraine for over 8 years, starting with the annexation of Crimea in the south and seizures of Donetsk and Luhansk regions in the east.  This February, the conflict expanded to the entire country, drawing the attention of the entire world.  The expected swift takeover failed, partially due to the stiff resistance of the Ukrainians, and partly due to the pathetic condition of the Russian military after 22 years of corruption under Putin's authoritarian rule.  The recent retreat from the area north of Kyiv has revealed evidence of extensive war crimes.  Russian oil and natural gas, the world's eighth largest reserves, account for 2/3 of their export income.  Europe gets 2/5 of its gas and 1/4 of its oil from Russia, a dependency Putin expected would give him a free hand in his invasion. 

            #4, Kuwait, "is an emirate, where the ruling family dominates the country's political system, and the state religion is Sunni Islam.  Kuwait is a developed country backed by the world's sixth largest oil reserves, and the Kuwaiti dinar is the highest valued currency in the world, yet Kuwait has the largest number of stateless people in the entire region.  Since 1991, accusations from a wide variety of sources describe Kuwait as the world's biggest source of terrorism funding, particularly for ISIS and Al-Qaeda."

            In all four of these countries, the control of oil is concentrated into the hands of very few people, encouraging and supporting massive tyranny, corruption, and misery within their population.  We support this as long as we consume their products.  To avert further misery, to avoid ruinous price swings, and to preserve the hope of a habitable planet in the future, we must eliminate the use of fossil fuels as rapidly as possible.

            All quotes are from Wikipedia.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

Why Is Gasoline Expensive?

                                                                                                             written 3 Apr 2022

                                                                                                       published 10 Apr 2022

 

            The short answer is: we are running out of affordable oil.  

            On March 28th, 2022, the California Energy Commission reported gasoline averaged $5.76 per gallon: 14 percent for local, state, and federal taxes, 41 percent for refining and distribution, and 45 percent for the crude oil.  Taxes are fixed percentages, and refining and distribution costs are relatively stable.  However, the price of crude oil has ranged between $32 and $115 per barrel in the last 2 years 

            In the beginning, a driller could literally pound a hole in the ground, and oil gushed out under pressure.  The easiest fields were developed first, but drilling technology improved, giving access to deeper deposits.  As a field matures, the pressure fades, and pumping is required.  When that production falls off, more elaborate extraction methods are needed, such as pumping water into the field to float out the last of the oil deposits.  As demand increased, oil companies scoured the world to find all the deposits available.    

            Since oil reserves are finite, the production of every field follows a typical curve: rising rapidly in the beginning, peaking at some point, and then inevitably declining to where the cost of extraction exceeds the value of the oil produced.  The field is then considered depleted.  In 1956, Shell Oil geologist M. King Hubbard suggested that US reserves in the lower 48 would peak before 1971.  Widely ridiculed at the time, US production did peak in 1972, upsetting the global economic order as the US lost control of the price of oil and OPEC soon took over that role.   

            Since the 1960's, global oil depletion has exceeded the discovery of new reserves.  In 2005, global production of conventional oil peaked, meaning most global conventional oil fields have peaked, or are in active decline.  In 2008, oil spiked to $125 a barrel, contributing to the economic meltdown.  

            Conventional oil is defined as being produced by historic methods, while unconventional oil is defined as deep water, shale oil (fracking), or tar sands.  Developing these resources is more costly, so increasing this type of production raises prices.  One of the earliest US developments of this sort is the North Slope of Alaska, which first produced oil in 1977, peaked in 1988, and is down 75 percent today.  It is a difficult area to access, requires a long pipeline to ship the oil out, which must be heated to keep the oil from freezing.  Now the permafrost is melting, requiring refrigerating the ground to prevent the pipe from breaking apart, adding more to the cost.  

            Deep water oil, such as in the Gulf of Mexico, is also expensive.  The Deepwater Horizon made world news in 2010 when it exploded.  It was in water a mile deep and drilled into the bedrock another 3.5 miles.    

            Rather than pulling millions of barrels from a single large reserve, fracking is like pulling a single barrel from a million puddles.  Despite the increased expense, in 2010, US production boomed.  But individual well production drops by half in the first couple of years, demanding constant drilling of new wells.  By 2020, the industry had lost over $300B.  In addition, fracked oil doesn't produce diesel very well, which is why the price of diesel has been above supreme gasoline for over a decade.  Since diesel is so integral to American food production, food prices have risen.

            In 2018, global oil production, including unconventional sources, peaked, but the pandemic shrunk demand, diminishing the impact.  Now that the world economy is recovering, demand has increased, and the Russian invasion has restricted supply, resulting in a sharp price increase. 

            In 2021, the US oil production was 11M b/d (barrels per day), and consumption was 17M b/d, with .7M b/d imported from Russia.  President Biden just announced that the strategic reserve will release 1M b/d for the next 6 months, which should have some effect on domestic prices, but worldwide disruption will still be extreme.  The Saudi's were asked to increase their output by 1M b/d, a 10 percent increase, and they refused.  Maybe they want the increased income, but maybe they can't produce more oil.  They have been pumping in water to boost production for over 20 years, indicting their fields may have peaked.

            The age of affordable oil has ended.  Yet another reason to switch to renewables as fast as we can.

 

Power To The People (part 4)

                                                                                                           written 27 Mar 2022

                                                                                                         published 3 Apr 2022

 

            Over the last three weeks I have described an energy transition that might preserve the habitability of our planet, discussing how to get new power and switch our transportation economy, giving a rough cost estimate.  While this transition is possible, and even saves money in the long run, there is one important unanswered question: is it likely?  As one Ukiah leader recently told me, "it will never happen", but I remain hopeful. 

            I believe climate change is real, accelerated by human activity, and already here.  Having wasted so much time in denial, only a massive coordinated effort has any chance of being effective, requiring social cohesion and unified action, applied over decades, to avert the possibility of total collapse half a century from now, when most of us will already be dead.  

            But we are a collection of such rugged individualists, focused on short term personal gain, that we can't even agree to protect our public health in the face of a deadly pandemic.  A few climate researchers think it is already too late, believing we have passed critical tipping points unnoticed, and at the other extreme, some Americans still believe the Earth is flat.  

            Folks heavily invested in the economic advantages of the current fossil fuel economy can't allow themselves to believe they are backing a dying horse.  Others are so used to believing what they are told by people they trust, that they never examine the subject for themselves, automatically opposing anything presented by the "other side".  The necessity of wide scale coordinated action can seem to threaten local control.  Some are just afraid of change, thinking they will lose something vital if they consider anything new.  Recent events are not encouraging.

            The fossil fuel industry, to protect their enormous profits, has pushed climate denier information for decades.  A conservative commentator, having gone along for the ride, recently declared that Americans are "not gullible, and will not accept the well-heeled and noisy climate activists hasty and ill-conceived switch to renewable fuels" (Liz Peek in The Hill).   

            Last month a Republican "leader" in Arizona flatly stated that climate change is a hoax, even as Lake Powell hit its lowest level since it was filled, threatening water resources and hydroelectric production for most of Arizona.  The proposed solution is a $1B desalinization plant at the upper end of the Gulf of California, to "secure Arizona's water future for the next 100 years", with no discussion of how it will be powered.

            Some people deny the crisis by claiming climate is always changing, which is relatively true.  But the magnitude is very rapidly getting more extreme.  The warming at the poles is changing several times faster than in our area.  Last month the Antarctic was 90°F hotter than normal for this time of year, and the Arctic was 50°F above normal.  Last August, Tennessee had 21" of rain fall in one day, shattering records, and a few weeks ago, eastern Australia received 42" of rain in just 3 days!  Fire season is now all year long, and the area burned increases each year.  Late last December, the normal depth of winter, a wild fire outside on Boulder, Colorado, destroyed over 1,000 homes, before being extinguished a few days later by a snow storm.  

            But the tide of public awareness is turning, and a growing portion of the population recognizes the serious threat, especially the young who will have to live with the consequences.  The hardware we need is now available.  Big finance is starting to realize a dead planet is bad for business, so investment funds are shifting from just maximizing short term shareholder gain to long term preservation of the biosphere.   

            Rather than trying to convince folks, I choose to talk to those who already know we have a problem, and want to do something with whatever time we have left.  Begin having the climate conversation with everyone you know.  Make sure your power company and employer know you care about the climate impact of their businesses.  Let your elected representatives know your care, and vote.  Investigate how you can make your life choices and home more carbon neutral.  We are currently the frog in the rapidly heating water, headed toward frog soup.  But we are still alive, and can try to make a difference.