Self And Society

                                                                                       written 18 February 2024

                                                                                   published 25 February 2024

            All social ills can be viewed as a dysfunction between the needs of the individual and the whole.  This is clear in several corporate conflicts now unfolding.

            AT&T is planning to abandon their responsibility to provide land lines to every California customer that wants one, with no viable alternative.  They want to terminate this service to save money, eliminating an aging system suffering from decades of deferred maintenance.  In rural Mendocino county, this could be a life-threatening change as we have sparse wireless cell coverage, inadequate to meet critical needs in emergencies.  

            PG&E has begun planning to unilaterally cancel remote electricity customers, if the company decides service costs are too high.  After decades of deferring essential maintenance, their aging infrastructure is prone to igniting fires, so they are reducing service and raising rates.

            In both cases, despite decades of economic advantage from being public monopolies, these utilities have prioritized stockholder returns over commitment to maintaining their essential infrastructure, choosing private economic gain over service to society.

            A similar situation is happening in the fossil fuel industry, where a few corporate monopolies, knowing their basic raw material (oil) is depleting and becoming more expensive, are choosing to gouge customers while they still can (currently $1.60 per gallon in California).  They fund lavish stock holder buy backs, while pouring billions into climate denial, stalling any attempt to shift the energy economy in response to diminishing resources and the deteriorating climate caused by their product.  

            This choice of exclusive profits over social viability is threatening the entire economy.  

            According to Forbes, in 2023, the wealth of the 20 richest Americans increased by $311B, a 30 percent increase of $34.4M per hour, around the clock.  But we can't afford secure emergency communications, an electrical system that doesn't burn down communities, or affordable transportation fuel.

             Acceptance of such economic inequity is a cultural choice, not a fundamental of nature.  In cultures that understand the inherent kinship of all people, such financial extremes are signs of ignorance or mental illness, not to be emulated, but healed.

            This same prioritization of the individual over the collective is the root of the climate crisis as well.  While our economic system has little consideration for other people, it has absolutely no regard for the natural world that is the foundation of society.  The economy treats the world as a source of raw materials and a universal waste dump, not an essential living system. 

            A living planet is hard to kill, but we humans are numerous, and have become technologically powerful beyond all historic norms.  To be so ignorant of our connected fate, is foolish, like an individual wave on the ocean choosing to ignore the fact that it arises out of the same ocean as every other wave.  

            We see this foolishness every day.  A real estate agent, running for local government office, states that climate change doesn't exist, despite the fact that the fire insurance crisis, a consequence of the changing climate, is disrupting the entire housing market.  In an attempt to avoid the worst of the climate crisis, California set a goal of decarbonizing the economy by 2045, but some people deride the effort as onerous governmental over-reach.  In the US presidential race, one party is spending millions of dollars to defend a multiply indicted, convicted fraud, abandoning the rest of their party candidates.

            There are specific policies which could address some of these problems: public ownership of essential services like telecommunications and electricity, or a maximum wealth limit.  However, these would only deal with the symptoms, not the cause.  The culture is dominated by the illusion of separation.  There is no economic value put on peace of mind, being in harmony with nature, helping people, or being kind in every day situations.  

            Our economic model is an incomplete concept, regularly divorced from reality.  Expected future income (debt) is created from nothing, funding any questionable endeavor that has the proper support.  If it fails, the company is allowed to declare bankruptcy, avoiding responsibility for their previous actions.  It is even acceptable to externalize costs, making someone else pay, despite receiving no benefit from the deal.  Capitalism only works because the society pays for cleaning up the failures.

            This insanity is coming to fruition.  The climate issue is the ultimate inclusive force.  We will solve this for the benefit of all living beings, or it will all implode.

 

Sea Level Rise

                                                                                       written 11 February 2024

                                                                                   published 18 February 2024

   

            "California Against The Sea", written last year by Rosanna Xia, is an in depth look at the fact of rising sea levels, how it is already impacting California cities, and what people are doing in response.  

            Sea level rise is caused by melting of land-based ice, expansion of warming ocean water, and coastal land subsidence.  From 1880 to 2022, the ocean rose an average of 9 inches, but that was not uniform around the globe.  The US east coast experiences higher rise impact than the west coast, because the Atlantic is warmer than the Pacific.  Florida and the Gulf coast have the highest domestic rise impact, because the North American tectonic plane is still rebounding from the loss of the 3 mile thick sheet of ice that melted 12,000 years ago.  As the northern edge of the plate continues to rise, the southern edge sinks.

            Plate tectonics aside, the primary driver of sea level rise is the rapidly warming planet, a consequence of our energy policy.  90 percent of planetary warming goes into the ocean, the energy equivalent of seven Hiroshima bombs every second, 24 hours a day, all year long.  And this is accelerating.  Barring unforeseen increases, sea levels are projected to rise another few feet by 2050, and more than 6 feet by 2100.  But problems are already here in the form of greater storm surges and accelerated coastal erosion.  

            In the last 50 years, "nuisance flooding", also called "sunny day flooding", is 9 times more frequent.  The City of Imperial Beach, south of San Diego, spends a significant percentage of their annual budget clearing sand from the roads after high tide events.  But increasing sea levels means large portions of the city will become flooded and uninhabitable.  

            Coastal erosion has always been a California fact of life.  Encinitas used to have 7 streets west of highway 1, but now the western most is 4th street.  As the sea rises, another 130 feet of bluff retreat is expected by 2100.  In Pacifica, houses are falling into the sea.  In Del Mar, the rail link between LA and San Diego is threated by erosion and landslides.

            Over geologic times, sea level has changed from 200 feet higher to 400 feet lower, but human civilization grew in a time of relative stability.  Trillions of dollars of invested infrastructure are now threatened by changing reality.  In a conflict between human desire and the will of the ocean, the water wins.  The choices are to fight the facts, or plan for resilient adaptation.

            Since coastal California is some of the most expensive real estate in the country, many landowners choose to fight, trying to armor the coast with sea walls.  Where seawalls are built, the beach is destroyed, as waves scour the sand away.  Seawalls can cost millions, and the protection is temporary, eventually being over topped, or undermined, some destroyed in a matter of weeks.  

            Low lying areas trying to defend with sea walls find the rising ocean forces the inland water table to rise as well, causing fresh water flooding.  A seawall might delay the demise of a home on a coastal bluff, what about infrastructure that has to be at sea level for commerce and transportation?

            Sea level rise is forcing a re-examination of our entire notion of property rights.  Native people knew we don't "own" the land, but are transient guests, and lived in ways that accorded with the changes of nature.  Western civilization killed off those naive ideas, and made lots of money selling "rights" to the land.  Our culture is rigidly rooted in certainty and endurance, which is in conflict with the dynamic reality of nature.  The coast line is a fixed concept, but a moving reality, always changing, sometimes very slowly, and other times in rapid transformation.

            Much like the foolish king who commanded the tide to halt, humanity is confronted with a situation that can't be forced into submission by application of money or power.  We need to become more pliable, learning to work in harmony with nature, not be at war.  This is a profound social transformation, but the ocean is inexorable.  Most coastal California communities have begun discussion and planning for how to address the issue.  California Against The Sea describes some of the emerging solutions, none of which have yet to be been applied on a larger scale.  But the discussion has begun.

 

The Change Is Here

                                                                                         written 4 February 2024

                                                                                   published 11 February 2024

            I began writing this weekly column 7 years ago, early in the Trump administration, before the regular parade of big California fires and PSPS concerns.  My focus has been the illusion of separation, and how that illusion gives rise to the accelerating climate crisis.  

            The intervening time has brought things into clearer focus.  The polarization of everything is separation in action, and the result is corrosive to our society.  None of the "isms" are new to these times, some in effect for thousands of years, but they have been given permission to surface, no longer hidden, demanding to be dealt with.  What feels like a disaster is an opportunity to look within, acknowledging our own pain and trauma, which begins the healing.  Rather than following revenge addicted leaders, we can choose to become the best of what we can be.  

            There are fundamental realities that affect everyone, transcending what we believe.  All life is connected and we are all kin.  The connection extends beyond the limitation of just human interaction.  We are guests here, not owners, whether we like it or not.  Suffering comes from being at war with a fact.  Chronic suffering debilitates the system, leading to exhaustion, collapse, and death.  This outcome is true for individuals, civilizations, and ecosystems.

            The climate crisis is the physical manifestation of denying that universal connection, being at war with nature.  All life on Earth is adversely affected by the rapidly changing climate, and human civilization is responsible.  For decades, the changes have been going on at the margins, mostly out of sight, while the population boomed, civilization expanded, and technological marvels became mundane.

            But the impact of weather extremes is increasing, making news everywhere.  Last summer, Greece endured 21 inches of rain in 24 hours.  Acapulco expected a tropical storm, but it more than doubled in strength in just one day, arriving as a category 5 hurricane, which damaged the entire city.

            Drought and wildfires alternate with inundation and floods.  Twelve of the twenty largest California fires have happened since 2017.  The ocean is becoming more acidic and getting warmer, fueling stronger storms, while the rising sea is destroying and flooding more populated areas.  The atmosphere is at record heat, affecting food production and transportation, and beginning to make outdoor summer labor lethal.  Species extinction accelerates, including many critical to human food production.  In some areas, fire insurance is becoming unaffordable, if attainable at all, and real estate lending in areas of repeat disasters is now more questionable.  

            Some people give up, thinking it is already too late.  But we are still alive, and know what needs to happen: stop making the problem worse (economic decarbonization), and repairing what we have damaged (atmospheric carbon capture).  Without a doubt, this will be expensive and disruptive to the status quo, in part because we have delayed effective action for decades.  But as the fiscal cost of disaster management and recovery grows, avoiding climate response risks economic collapse and possible human extinction.  Realizing we are losing our habitable home, we can become mobilized to action.  

            In the last seven years, awareness of the climate crisis has grown.  The Redwood Valley and Tubbs fire storms got attention, showing it is no longer a "future" problem, but already here.  Everyone in the community was impacted, or had family or friends who were.  Storm damage, accentuated by sea level rise, has generated commissions all around the State working out how to address the issue: armoring the coast, planning managed retreat, or something else. 

            A large majority of voters support addressing climate change, despite the best efforts of the fossil fuel industry.  Only the most partisan still deny the reality of the crisis.  I expect the next election will confirm this.

            But we are still left with the question, "what can I do?"  Start with a deep breath, and think about what it is you most love in your life, and would least like to lose.  For me, I want to have a habitable planet, with access to electricity, the most versatile of technological energy.  I vote in every election, as if it might be the last, supporting people whose policies align with mine.  I structure my social activism toward my chosen goals, finding groups working in that direction, or starting the conversation myself.  This action helps me feel empowered in the middle of this turbulent change.  You can too.

 

Energy Transition

                                                                                       written 28 January 2024

                                                                                   published 4 February 2024

   

            Over the last few weeks, I described the four primary energy sources of our global economy: nuclear, natural gas, oil, and coal.  They produce 70 percent of the global electricity and 86 percent of the total energy used.  All are forms of stored energy, created long before humans existed.  Nuclear fission releases energy by breaking apart heavy atomic nuclei, and the three fossil fuels release energy by combustion of stored hydrogen.  They are all finite.

            With the exception of coal, the least versatile of the fossil fuels, human consumption has already developed and depleted the richest deposits, leaving only increasingly less economic deposits.  We act like a foolish spendthrift, rapidly burning through our energy inheritance.  But it's time to grow up, and live within our energy income.

            All life starts with stored energy at the beginning, and then makes transition.  In seeds, the germ of the plant grows using stored energy until it can draw sustenance from the larger world.  Similarly, all egg laying life forms grow on the stored energy in the yolk, before hatching into the larger world.  Mammals use the energy from the mother to develop to the point of birth.  The very first bacterial life on Earth lived off the abundant chemicals already existing, then population growth and resource depletion brought about the transformational evolution of photosynthesis, drawing energy from sunlight.  Humans are now at that stage.  Confronted with the decreasing availability of stored energy, we have now developed the capacity to harvest the sun.

            The four primary energy sources are expensive, centralized industries, requiring many billions of dollars for construction of the energy hardware, and then trillions more every year for the extraction and delivery of the stored energy to be consumed.  This has created corporate monopolies, and supported autocratic governments, which extract massive profits by constraining access.  This energy inequity enriches a few, and impoverishes multitudes.  Even if a truly democratic, inclusive, society wanted to share, the basic energy system frustrates that impulse, as resources are unevenly distributed across the planet.  In addition, the power plants now used can't be efficiently miniaturized for wide spread distribution.  

            Finally, the way the energy is stored produces debris when the energy is released.  Nuclear debris, the fission byproduct, is extremely radioactive, some toxic to life for millions of years, and tends to bioaccumulate.  Waste disposal must be secure and very long term, compared to human civilization.  Fossil fuel combustion produces chemical debris, which is also toxic to life, and has the added problem of heating the planet, threatening not just our technological civilization, but even continued human existence.

            In summary, the push toward energy transition comes for the rising cost of diminishing resources, the desire for energy justice, and the accelerating environmental destruction from the waste products.  Fortunately, humanity knows how to make the necessary transition, if we so choose.  

            The three main renewable energy sources are solar, wind, and geothermal.  Solar comes from the ongoing existence of the sun, which we can assume will last longer than life on Earth.  It is completely inclusive, freely shining of everyone at least part of the time, and can be installed down to the level of individual houses.  Wind is a consequence of solar input, also free, but less evenly distributed.  Geothermal taps into the heat of the planet, good for the life of the planet, and also free, but even less widely distributed than wind.  

            It is important to understand that any cost associated with these energy sources comes from the hardware to collect and store the energy, not the energy source itself.  This means there is no inflationary element in the energy, only the fixed cost of the hardware installation and maintenance.

            The biggest challenge is to shift how we think about energy.  Instead of expecting to produce the energy we want when we want it, we have to collect energy when it is available, and store it for when we need it, which requires restructuring of our culture and energy system.

            This is already taking place.  However, the greed of status quo investments continues to fund denial of the imperative for this change, so the pace is slower than necessary.  But resource depletion and the climate crisis don't care about self-serving, ignorant denial.  As the economic and environmental impacts continues to accelerate, more and more people are experiencing the necessity.  We CAN leave a habitable planet for our descendants.