Bob London
How promoting renewable-energy technologies will help the economy.
Can we stimulate the economy and create a sound green-energy policy at the same time? Of course. In fact, it's not possible to have a sustained economic recovery that isn't green.
Our entire economic system is unsustainable. It's a global Ponzi scheme: investors (i.e., current generations) are paying themselves (i.e., you and me) by taking from future generations. To perpetuate the high returns that the rich countries in particular have been achieving in recent decades, we have been taking an ever greater amount of nonrenewable energy resources, especially hydrocarbons; natural capital such as fresh water, arable land, forests, and fisheries; and the most important nonrenewable natural capital of all: a livable climate.
Like all Ponzi schemes, this one will collapse soon--if we don't voluntarily and aggressively switch to an economy built on renewable resources and a commitment to sustaining natural capital. Since action on global warming is inevitable, countries that lead the way in promoting clean technology with incentives and strong, innovation-promoting regulations will gain a competitive advantage. As President Obama said in March, "We can remain the world's leading importer of foreign oil, or we can become the world's leading exporter of renewable energy. We can allow climate change to wreak unnatural havoc, or we can create jobs preventing its worst effects."
The stimulus plan and the president's budget promote energy efficiency, renewable energy, and alternative-fuel vehicles, especially plug-in hybrids--all of which are key to getting us on the sustainable path (see "Can Technology Save the Economy?" p. 44).
States have been showing the way. Half of them have standards that require utilities to purchase certain amounts of renewable electricity. The result: in 2008 U.S. wind energy grew by a record 8,300 megawatts, restoring this country to leadership in that power source. Wind was responsible for 42 percent of all new U.S. generating capacity installed last year.
In the future there won't be a debate about green versus non-green jobs. The only jobs will be ones that don't consume nonrenewable resources and do help avert catastrophic global warming.
Can we stimulate the economy and create a sound green-energy policy at the same time? That, as the president has said, is the only strategy for attaining lasting prosperity.
Joseph Romm is a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress and editor of ClimateProgress.org.
The true solution to the green revolution will have to come from the private sector. The federal government can provide incentives or tax rebates to stimulate the technology but competition and economic pressures (rising gas prices) decide what technologies win out. To be sure, the green revolution can not completely eliminate carbon sources as energy any time soon. Wind energy is great as long as the wind blows. When the wind stops it MUST have a backup source of power. And the only source which can come online quickly is from a gas power plant. Just a quick point that one should always be aware of.
The Ponzi scheme which will surely collapse is your argument, because it based on wrong hypotheses piled on top of one another to support your forgone conclusion. When your foundation hypothesis proves not to be true your forgone conclusion will crumble like a cracker under an elephant's foot.
For example, you fret about disappearing forests. Not really happening! Forest bio-mass in North America has increased by 30% since 1950. Canada alone plants 1 billion tree seedlings every year. The key to sufficient fresh water is energy. Water does not leave the biosphere. It just gets dirty and needs to be cleaned up so that we can use it again.. and again … and again. With cheap energy, cleaning up dirty water is actually very easy to do. In fact, the world now does that every day in thousands of locations. As for arable land, that is a function of adequate water supply which is a function of cheap energy. We pump water “uphill” all the time. In fact, we know how to raise produce in the desserts and we can ever grow produce without using any land at all. As for fisheries, fish farming is still in its infancy, and yet on a regular basis, hundreds of millions of people eat aqua farmed tilapia, shrimp, salmon, catfish, trout, oysters, clams, seaweed, etc..
From the tone of your argument, it is apparent that you believe that burning fossil fuels is bad for the planet. That is the fundamental flaw of your argument. Hundreds of thousands of scientists throughout the world who understand the carbon cycle, think that is utterly ridiculous. CO2 currently exists at a level of only 4 parts of 10,000 parts of atmosphere. Water is 50 times more abundant than CO2 in the atmosphere and water molecules can absorb much more or the infrared spectrum than can CO2. At most, anthropogenic CO2 is 1 part in 10,000 of atmosphere produced over the past 150 years. In addition, atmospheric warming potential of CO2 is not linear. Twice as much CO2 will result in only a slight increase in global temperature simply because the energy spectrum being reflected from the earth and which can be absorbed by CO2 is finite. There is only so much energy reflected from the earth in the spectrum which CO2 absorbs. That energy is already being absorbed to extinction. As an analogy, consider the impact of placing another shade to cover a window which is already perfectly dark. Since all the light has been blocked by earlier shades, adding another shade will make no difference in the amount of light entering the room.
The key to the survival of the all world economies, America included, is a continual source of cheap energy! I hope that America understands this as well as do China and India. America has enormous amount of Natural Gas and Coal. There is now scientific reason for us to restrain our use of these resources. When fossil fuels become too expensive, other energy sources: fission, fusion, wind, solar, tides, waves etc., will emerge in a thoroughly natural manner. The CO2 boogie man is but a childish fantasy of hysterical Gorites. We don't need to rig the system by handicapping one source of energy to assure that another will thrive. Left alone, and the markets will sort this all out. China and India will not change their long term energy plans just to pacify a hysterical and momentarily irrational America and Europe. My suggestion... relax. Have a beer or a cup of joe, and stop trying to change that which is out of our control.
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tdinkel@sunreports.com
2 Comments
Stimulating Green Energy
All-
I agree that providing stimulus to any sector of the economy is a good idea at present, particularly to the renewable energy sector.
However, there is a vast difference between providing stimulus - in the form or hard dollars - and talking about providing stimulus - in the form of political sound bites.
This current form of stimulus, or rather the 'promise of stimulus' is somewhat lacking in the delivery of the stimulus to those seeking to be stimulated.
When / IF the rubber meets the road, we can talk about its effectiveness. At present, there is no rubber meeting this road, and I've been searching for a way to get my bucket under that faucet!
My company is 'shovel ready', we have engineers working for options, we are ready to go to the next level, and gov't 'stimulus' would go a long way to launching our company. I can't find any.
Best Regards...
tdinkel
CEO
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