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175 comments on John Tierney's brilliant energy plan

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westexas on February 7, 2006 - 1:37pm Permalink | Subthread | Comments top
Strictly speaking, Mr. Tierney is correct--there will be alternative energy sources.  The problem is of course one of scale.   Once we are on the downslope of Peak Oil worldwide, which is where we are probably at today, alternative energy sources will only slow--and not reverse--the decline in the total conventional energy supply.  

In terms of BTU equivalent, we use--from oil, natural gas, coal and nuclear -- the energy equivalent of a billion barrels of oil every five days.   We use the energy equivalent of Prudhoe Bay every 60 days.  It will be very difficult for any alternative energy source or sources to make up more than a small fraction of this rapidly depleting conventional energy supply.

For example, in Canada, even with increasing production from tar sands, total oil production year over year is basically flat.  When you plug in the net energy calculations, total Canadian oil production is actually going backwards, on a net energy basis, year over year.  

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Glenn on February 7, 2006 - 3:25pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Exactly. Theoretically he's right, but he doesn't give any context to how that transition will occur or if we will have a better or worse standard of living on the other side. IMHO the process will be very painful to many people except the super rich. And on the other side we will have significantly lower per capita energy usage.

However that doesn't mean that after the adjustment we will necessarily have a lower quality of life...it all depends on what we do in the meantime.

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ericy on February 7, 2006 - 6:53pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
To me the real question is exactly how you define quality of life.  If having a high quality of life is defined as owning lots of stuff, then yes, you could say that the quality of life would be lowered.  In some sense this is part of the reason that past attempts to get people to conserve energy have failed - you are implicitly asking people to make a sacrifice in their lives - to give up something that they value.  The problem is that they still watch the advertising, and still want the stuff, and they don't like the fact that they cannot have it.

There are of course some things that we really truly need to survive.  Food, water, shelter, clothing are the basics needed just to keep the body alive - things like companionship and friendship would be needed by most people.

When energy prices go up, and people will have to go without, they will still remember and miss the things that they used to own and the things they used to do, and they would resent the fact that this is no longer possible.  People would be inclined to reach for anything to keep things going so that they don't have to give up their material things.

My thinking is that there needs to be a fundamental shift in thinking so that quality of life is measured in entirely different ways.  If we can reach a point where many of the materialistic and consumeristic urges are gone from our lives, then giving up material things up is no longer a hardship.  In fact, it can be liberating in the sense that having stuff that you no longer want or need is a nuisance.

Such a change does run against human nature to a degree, but I believe that many of the wants and desires are planted in our minds by the media.  For that matter, I doubt that most people could make such a change overnight - it will take a while to unlearn consumerism.

A non-materialistic society would seem to be incompatible with a capitalistic society.  Right now with growth being an economic requirement, there is almost a need for people to buy more crap each and every year in order to keep the whole thing humming along.  I have seen other comments here where people suggest that a new economic paradigm is needed - the problem is that nobody really knows quite what it is going to look like.

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enviro attny on February 8, 2006 - 1:32am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
"there needs to be a fundamental shift in thinking so that quality of life is measured in entirely different ways."

That is going to be long and slow.  I spend a lot of time on home theater forums (a very fun hobby which I will miss tremendously).  There are a bunch of very smart, very knowledgeable people on these forums.  However, almost uniformely, they spend an amazing amount of time talking about advancements in the future, how much prices will go down, what the equipment will be like in 5 or 10 years.  It is almost sad to think about what a shock the future is likely to be to these guys.

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Magnus Redin on February 8, 2006 - 10:02am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
They could move closer to each other and cooperate with building a little larger theathers where they share the electronics cost and input a lot of their own building work to get good acustics.

They could then recover some of the cost by selling tickets...

It wont be home theater any more, but small scale theater.
And it would generate social capital for them.

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Engineer-Poet on February 8, 2006 - 8:35am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
It will be very difficult for any alternative energy source or sources to make up more than a small fraction of this rapidly depleting conventional energy supply.
Very difficult, but only in the short term.  Humanity currently uses about 400 quads/year of energy from all sources.  In contrast, there is an estimated 72 terawatts of wind power available world-wide.  72 terawatts comes to 2150 quads/year of pure electricity (equivalent to about 3x as much fuel, due to conversion losses).

The world is literally awash in usable energy, we just need to develop the technologies to use it effectively.

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175 comments on John Tierney's brilliant energy plan

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