Getting off oil - Reality check!
Last night, everyone got to talking about “alternative” energy. It wasn’t long before it was about cars.
Cars are, after all, where many oil/energy debates go for good reason. Almost everyone owns a car, needs a car, thinks about their car, and has to pay for the gas that runs the car. It might well be that the lion’s share of American oil consumption is in our cars, though I’m not sure. We also use tons of oil for electricity, for our trains, planes, buses and trucks, for lubrication, and plastics, and pesticides and fertilizers (and tractors and harvesters) and so on. So it involves a lot more than just cars, but talk in the cafe was mostly about cars.
Now, the talk was scattered all about, over time, and not very organized, but as I pass on the gist of it, you get my selection and organization/reorganization of it all. But is a pretty good representation of the evening.
Everyone started talking about getting smaller cars, hybrids. That sometimes led them to other conservation technologies, but I was surprised when the Alcaide’s crowd got into stuff almost everyone else, in the news and political campaigns ignore. That’s what I focus on:
(1) The fact is there’s no way any of these transitions, these changeovers to new energy sources and new technologies are gonna happen in ten years (which is how long the Dems - and other anti-drilling for oil folks - say it will take for drilling to get new oil on line), or even for the next 20 or 25 years (which a lot of us older citizens only hope we will last). New technology doesn’t just pop up when we want! How long have we been inching our way into good solar?
(2) The costs of implementing these changeovers, when they’ve finally been invented and made doable - in money, resources, energy use and costs, and our landfills (you gotta throw the old stuff away!), are going to be huge beyond imagination!
For instance: there are now about 250 million (that’s 250,000,000) cars today, in just the US. How long will it take to build 250 million new ones – even if a super good replacement for “gas guzzlers”? How many years? And how much steel, copper, plastic, aluminum, rubber, glass, etc. will it take? And how much carbon-producing energy will it take to mine, refine, produce the raw materials, let alone manufacture and assemble 250 million cars? And what happens to the 250 million old ones? Some parts can be recycled, but at no small cost in labor, money, energy, and so-called carbon footprints!
Now, since everyone wants to start yesterday, with yesterday’s slightly improved “hybrid” technology, I guess we will try to build 250 million of them, then build another 250 million of the new improved technological marvels that come in 5, 10, or 15 years. Meanwhile, of course, how much in resources, manufacturing costs and energy will we use in just batteries for those hybrids we love today?
(3) Most people are stretched buying a new car every few or even ten years. Will they buy a new one? Maybe if it’s the law, they will! But with what money? Maybe another round of rebates or tax refunds? Say, about $25,000 per household. Where’s that money? Get real!
(4) What will the new cars use for energy? Electricity seems the dream. We who already have brownouts every summer wonder where that electricity will come from? Oh yes, the dreamers say we will build new power sources. Not oil or coal, of course. And most say not nuke either. So from what? Wind?
Have you noticed how difficult and much resources are required for a wind generator? Aluminum and copper and steel, not to mention the energy to refine and manufacture them? And how many “save the birds” and “save my view” and “Not here” objections are raised with every attempt? Even Senator Kennedy refused to let them be built in his ocean view (so far out they’d looked like toothpicks!). And how much copper, steel, concrete, and money and energy, will it take for every generator to be wired into the power grid? And how many hearings and debates over environmental issues and eminent domain squabble and political objection for permits?
(5) What about water power? Everyone mentions hydro as an “alternative”, clean and renewable power source. Ever build a damn? Try to do it today! Every objection imaginable will be raised, and no new damn will ever be built! In fact, where I live, they are tearing them down! Save the fishes, natural beauty, rafting, God only knows what other objections!
Besides, damns are not clean. Huge amounts of resources (concrete, steel, etc.) are used to build and wire them into the grid. They soon fill up with silt, kill fishes and habitats, etc. And it takes enormous carbon-based fuels to build a damn. (Surely, you don’t envision hybrid or battery-powered bulldozers and excavators and land-movers, do you?)
(6) What about nuclear? Well, even assuming they finally get the go-ahead from the public and politicos to build nuclear plants again, how long will it take to design even one and decide where to build it. How many years to get past the environmental and political objections of locals who NEVER want it (or anything) in their neighborhood or backyard? We can’t even get to bury nuke waste in the middle of a mountain in the middle of a desert after a quarter of a century!
(7) What about those ethanol fuels to replace oil? Oh yeah, let’s take the food out of our refrigerator (oh wait, saving electricity means getting off the old “icebox lifestyle, so make that “food out of our pantry”) and put it in our gas tanks! Great, idea. Took us only about 3 years to realize what a disaster that was becoming! (BTW, Fidel Castro was a prophet on that one, accusing us, from the get go of planning to starve the rest of the world!)
(8) OK, as some say, let’s just reorganize our living patterns. Stop scattering families across the nation. Stop living in suburbs. Only let farmers live in the country. Start building cities that are walk-able, with jobs and marketplaces and schools and recreation (movies, gyms, bowling alleys, EVERYTHING) within a few blocks. Well, now let’s repeat the litany of hurdles and costs and timetables we just went through for new cars, and not mention restructuring our entire culture, cultural geography, economy, and physical infrastructure (Did I mention, trains, planes, trucks, construction equipment, etc, too, which all require oil products? Oh yeah.)
Sounds great if you’re twenty-something, living in a San Francisco Victorian apartment, athletic, working in the neighborhood bike store, getting groceries at corner market, a girlfriend nearby, and parents a cell phone away, etc. But, if you went to State U, live with three kids in a development 3 miles from schools, about the same to the supermarket, 25 miles to his job, almost as far to her job, and 2 miles to day-care, and a thousand miles to grandparents and the same to brothers (uncles) and sisters (aunts), and the nearest public transit is … well, in town, the idea of reorganizing our civilization back down into a village/tribal … well, no way that will happen in your lifetime, at whatever cost!
Bear
