237 comments on An Open Letter to Our Next President about Energy Policy
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This letter is a great report on what's to come, the potential hazards that lie ahead of us, the harsh reality that will challenge everyone, and you are right, the president ought to understand the fundamentals of this crisis.
What strikes me as ridiculous is this notion that the current administration and as well the presidential candidates are completely unaware of the situation, and thus the letter goes on to try to "teach" these media and political mammoths of the "harsh truth". The naiveté strikes me as plain stupid. It is very easy to understand that yes, the politicians do understand these fundamentals, as they have spoken between them and with big oil very frequently. The mere fact that these politicians do not "acknowledge" it, is simply and better explained by the fear of getting such message into the public. To say that the oil is "peaking" is publicly forbidden, you would immediately be labeled as a doomer and fetishist, sparking fears of socialism, just as Global Warming is. Where's the gain of votes in saying such a thing? If the net vote result is negative, they will never say it. When democrats have criticized GOP so much about its fear tactics, offering a paranoia about the "terrorists", you are just adding to GW another democrat fear tool: Peak Oil. And GOP will strike back at it. So no, they won't admit it.
So the question for politicians is not if PO is true, or it isn't. If they become president, there is little they can do to alter the fact of this crisis. They also know this. Market forces will prevail above any state action, with the most cruel of outcomes. Any presidential action will be minimal, and worse, they will pander to populist measures, as the tax break, not because it is a better move, it obviously isn't, but because their power depends on proposing such stupid irrelevant things. Only Obama so far hasn't proposed tax breaks on gasoline, but I doubt that he will resist the temptation of that kind of stupid measures.
Given this scenario, it is completely dubious the relevance and usefulness of this letter. Don't get me wrong, I support it. In the worst case, it will give these politicians the notion that a little percentage of this country does get it. It is the audience for which these politicians pander that the message should be spread. As Al Gore put it, politics are renewable resources. And they only change when the audience changes. Never before it.
The naiveté strikes me as plain stupid. It is very easy to understand that yes, the politicians do understand these fundamentals...
Personally, I think that's naive. I don't believe they do understand. The EIA and USGS are both saying that oil production is going to keep growing. Both sides believe we can maintain the status quo. The Republicans think we need more drilling; the Democrats think we need to mandate more biofuels. Neither side actually understands the seriousness of the situation, or they would be more willing to confront it.
If either party believed the threat was serious and imminent, there would be no fear in discussing serious mitigation efforts.
I think the truth is somewhere inbetween. They understand somewhat, but other voices are telling them: nothing to worry about BAU. A quote (I can't remember whose -so my apologies in advance) that it appropriate is:
"Don't expect a man to understand something on which his job requires that he doesn't". And the political application process is such that they can't afford to understand PO.
A small suggestion on bullet (2): It would be better, not to compute the expected revenues from the gas tax and set this amount into law. Much better would be to earmark the revenues to the people. That way the amount adjusts with the revenue, and corrective political action is not required when assumptions are proven wrong. It is all too easy to game a revenue neutral proposal such as your, by say overestimating revenue -and turning it into a tax cut.
Agreed. I don't think there's some big conspiracy where they all know about peak oil, but won't talk about it in public. OTOH, at least some politicians clearly do understand the problem. Republican Roscoe Barlett, for example. He may give his peak oil speeches to the cleaning staff, but they're on the record. Democrat Bill Clinton has given talks about peak oil, and Al Gore has mentioned it, too.
I think they know about it. Some of them, anyway. After all, most of them are old enough to remember the '70s energy crises. But they think we'll innovate our way out of it, as we always have in the past.
Like Tom Whipple said...politicians have so much on their plates already. Unless you can give them a solid and imminent date ("the gas stations will go dry July 3, 2008"), it won't be a priority for them.
"It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it." -- Upton Sinclair
Sorry , Robert, your proposals are totally inadequate. A 50% increase in prices spread over 5 years will reduce car mileage by about 10%. In France taxes are 70% of the pump price. You need to aim for at least $11.50 in the US just for starters. Then increase substantially each year.
By so understating the size of change really needed you are just breeding more complacency.
I disagree. The problem is defining the problem your trying to solve.
Now with that lets talk about the solution.
I'd say its Equitable ELP or shared ELP in other words the goal is sustainable economies that are energy neutral with a decent living standard for all. Obviously somehow population levels have to be brought into the issue but maybe this can be done by determining carrying capacity and developing target population levels.
A important detail but to move on.
Next you have to determine the time period in which to reach these goals. Communist style 5-10-20 year plans are a good way to at least talk about when to do things.
Then you talk about what to do.
From this approach it becomes obvious that one of the biggest problems is why are people driving all over the place in the beginning ? We need to focus on our work habits first and foremost since most of our energy expense is related to work not leisure. Can companies get satellite offices subsidized so workers can shorten their commutes ?
Can we get a national law to support commuters that take public transport ?
So instead of increasing taxes for roads. You decrease taxes for those that use public transport and redirect current taxes to fund public transport.
So say 50% of current taxes used for roads gets redirected to public transport.
Lightly traveled roads are privatized and taken out of the public domain. Same with the interstate system. We have good ways to collect tolls electronically and these can readily be made better. So toll collection should not interfere with traffic flow. This can be tied into GPS and if you put your route in you can calculate the tolls.
If you allow credit then people that don't pay their toll bill can have their cars confiscated.
By privatizing the roads we force the costs off the cities and onto the users.
You do the same for all the old infrastructure electric/sewage etc for suburbia. If you can really afford it then you get to use it.
Robert - Thank-you for taking the initiative and writing a letter that is commendable and prescient. For historical reference it will be interesting to review that letter say five years from now.
However I think you are sophisticated enough to know that the Federal Govt. is dysfunctional and deaf. National Politics is now truly a mockery of a travesty of a sham. I don't have any specific staticstics to back that up however. I read this blog regularly and I am impressed on a daily basis on the thoroughness of statistical information. I did however work for the Federal Govt for almost twenty years. Inertia overwhelms every department. Each year governmental management grows exponentially. Elected represenatives hardly mattered then and I wouldn't imagine that it has become more responsive.
The best thing that we can do is secure lifeboats for ourselves and not look to the govt. for help. Imagine Katrina...now multiply that by a factor of ?
However I think you are sophisticated enough to know that the Federal Govt. is dysfunctional and deaf.
Yes, this letter was written more out of frustration than anything. That's why I have to roll my eyes when people suggest that I am naive for thinking anything will happen as a result. Of course I don't expect anything to happen as a result. I didn't write it with the expectation that anything would change. But I do want to point out that I think there are ways to ease a rough road ahead. And someday - and it's already pretty late in the game - politicians are going to ask "What do we do now?"
Robert - Had to laugh when I read this. We were apparently writing nearly the same article--most of the same points, with a different focus--at the same time yesterday. Nicely done. Here's mine: Peak Oil: Living on the Banks of Denial.
I think all of your proposals are very sensible...which probably dooms them to never seeing the light of day.
As Leanan pointed out downthread, the fear of political suicide still seems to rule the day. Which suggests that we'll continue in our denial until we are forced to do otherwise. Just ask Jimmy Carter.
The fault for that is another question: Is it the clueless voter who won't support a candidate who tells them the ugly truth? Is it the media who favor business' vested interests above all else? Is it a lack of courage or knowledge on the part of the candidates?
As I suggested in my article, I think it's all of the above and more. If you look at society as a whole as if it were a person in the process of grieving, I think it brings the big picture into better focus.
Robert - "And someday - and it's already pretty late in the game - politicians are going to ask 'What do we do now?'"
You're exactly right about that. I'm into metaphors lately, and I think the comparison to Bradburry's "Farenheit 451" and the "Book People" is apt. In the story the Book People were attacked and persecuted for the illegal actions of reading books. They adapted by memorizing the books and waiting for the time when society would once again need books.
People in the MSM derisively refer to people who listen to blogs like the Oil Drum as "doomsayers". The truth is individuals who post, blog and follow sites like this are in fact societies best hope in the long run. For me I am grateful that places like this exist...
The politicians I know are basically confused, not diabolical. (This is not to claim that diabolical ones don't exist!) I think Al Bartlet said it right:
"For every expert there is an equal and opposite expert."
In general, politicians (and most people) don't seem to have a science-based epistemology. Thus, they rely on inputs to make decisions. If the dominant input is based on special interests via media and well-funded lobbying, then the recency bias will kick in and politicians will gravitate towards an absurd point of view.
On other other hand, I have witnessed private citizens showing up to local government meetings make coherent cases that have swung the vote.
My brother is a politician, a smart and honorable man who wants to do the right thing for people. However, he always told me that money, while not buying his vote, will buy access. Clearly, the well funded special interests have the advantage in this regard. But we have to persevere anyway.
I agree that most politicians are not diabolical, but I do not think they are confused. They understand quite clearly that their primary mission in life is to make the world a safe place for private finance capital. They do not hold this position because they are Machiavellian bastards who are willing to plunder the present at the expense of the misery and degradation of the future; They do so because they are not capable of conceiving of the social, political, and economic universe in any other terms. If they could figure out how to carry out their primary mission and, at the same time, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, reduce our dependence on oil, etc. they would do so.
The problem is that any realistic response to peak oil, global warming and other resource and environmental crises must include economic contraction by the OECD countries. It is clear that we will have to drop through a wormhole into another universe (I am, of course, speaking in a psychological, metaphorical sense) before this truth can become an acknowledged political reality in our society.
I keep seeing this assertion. I believe it's false. Why can't the OECD go entirely fossil-free, and drag the rest of the world along by example?
One of the major drains on the US economy is the failure of government policy to promote exactly this end. The bulk of US production is tied to old and depleting forms of energy. Had the US made a major push to get PV manufacturing costs down and get economies of scale for traction batteries, we'd be set to sell solar panels and electric cars to the world. We'd live high on the hog on export earnings while squeezing the oil producers' margins. If you think this is physically impossible, I'd like to see you cite the facts which prove it.
Of course the full economic effect of fossil fuel depletion cannot be known with certainty in advance since technological progress cannot known be know with certainty in advance. I will give my reasons for doubting that business as usual economic growth can continue over the next several decades below, but let me say first that the strategy “”Let’s pursue BAU economic growth until definitive proof is given that such growth is no longer possible” does not strike me as being very intelligent. Since the ‘proof’ that we have reached the limits is likely to be financial and/or ecological collapse I do not understand why an intelligent person would want to follow this course of action. We have been following a similar course of action with respect to fossil fuel depletion for a long time; “Until the market gives us a clear indication that there is a supply problem let’s burn the stuff like there is no tomorrow.” In hindsight this does appear to have been a very intelligent strategy.
I should point out, by the way, that I do not regard green house gas emissions and global warning as the only human impact on the ecosystem that we need to worry about. Soil loss, habitat destruction and mass extinctions, pollution due to agricultural runoff, and so forth will continue to become worse if the whole world aspires to OECD standards of living, which standards of living, by the way, will be increasing all of the time unless major reforms occur to our economic system. Even if, within the next two decades, the global economy becomes completely decarbonized (or even carbon negative) and the human population stabilizes, I think that there are serious concerns about pursuing constantly increasing standards of living for many decades into the future.
Perhaps you will say that you do not want to pursue constantly increasing standards of living. You just want to maintain the goods and services we enjoy today while decreasing our environmental impact through cleaner energy sources and more efficient modes of manufacturing. I am skeptical that such maintenance can be achieved. Nevertheless, I would be overjoyed to see society adopt such a goal since it would be a major step towards economic sanity. My feeling is that if we could create economic institutions which can function well without growth, then they could be easily adapted to economic contraction if it was truly necessary to do so.
As for the source my doubts about maintaining economic growth in the face of fossil fuel depletion they are as follows:
The fact that the solar resource (I include wind as part of the solar resource) is large compared to today’s energy use does not matter if the cost of delivering 1 net unit of energy to the economy (including the cost of compensating for intermittency on short and long time scales) is much higher than the historical costs of fossil fuel. It is clear that the costs are significantly higher today or China would not still be building coal fired power plants like crazy. How low these costs will go in the future depends on the cost of load balancing as well as on the costs of primary generation. I have only seen hand waving arguments with respect to the solutions to intermittency. Point me to a detailed study showing how we are going to balance the load over a wide geographic area over a year long time frame with some real numbers for the amount and variety of storage required, the amount of long distance transmission required, and the amount of biomass backup required, with estimated costs. The statement that these problems will be solved at sufficiently low cost to keep global economic growth going for the rest of the century just because you believe that they will is not hard evidence.
The basis for claiming that nuclear energy costs are reasonable is more solid than for renewables, since France get 75% of its electricity from nuclear power and they have not become an economic basket case. However, unless we develop peaking nukes then costs of nuclear will go up as fossil fuels fired generation declines.
Secondly there is the problem of replacing the liquid fuel powered infrastructure (freight and passenger transportation, farming, construction, mining, etc.) with electrical alternatives. Airplanes and ocean going vessels are not going run off the grid. The daily commute to work is not the only problem which has to be solved in this regard. I would feel a lot more comfortable about such a transition taking place smoothly if we had started twenty years ago as recommended by the Hirsch Report. Peak oil is upon us and even expensive first generation PHEVs and EVs are years away from high volume manufacturing.
"What strikes me as ridiculous is this notion that the current administration and as well the presidential candidates are completely unaware of the situation . . .The mere fact that these politicians do not 'acknowledge' it, is simply and better explained by the fear of getting such message into the public."
There are likely significant gaps both in the knowledge and beliefs of elected officials and candidates for office, and also, as luisdias points out, gaps between what they know and what they feel they can say publicly without substantial risk.
But wait - did anybody happen to catch this tidbit, from an AP story picked up in the Salt Lake Tribune today? It appears that the Current Occupant himself has acknowledged Peak Oil:
"President Bush put politics ahead of the facts Tuesday as he sought to blame Congress for high energy prices, saying foreign suppliers are pumping just about all the oil they can and accusing lawmakers of blocking new refineries.
Bush renewed his call for drilling in an Arctic wildlife refuge, but his own Energy Department says that would have little impact on gas prices.
Asked what he is doing to try to get Saudi Arabia to pump more oil, Bush didn't answer directly. 'We've got to understand there's not a lot of excess capacity,' he said. Blaming "the lack of refinery capacity" for high energy prices, he said Congress has rejected his proposal to use shuttered military bases for refinery sites.
Global oil supplies are tight, in part because OPEC nations such as Saudi Arabia are refusing to open their spigots. The Saudis are pumping 8.5 million barrels a day, compared with 9.5 million barrels a day two years ago and have acknowledged the ability to produce as much as 11 million barrels a day." http://www.sltrib.com/business/ci_9101549
There's not a lot of excess capacity, indeed.
As an aside, this is actually a curious story, as the author quotes the President, then adds an analysis that ANWR drilling won't have an impact on prices (correct), but then adds the last paragraph of commentary about putative Saudi production ability as a critique of the President not putting enough pressure on them to "open their spigots," apparently - with the 11 m barrel-per-day assertion being completely unsupported. If Bush and family can't do it, if record high prices can't do it, then . . . what conclusion do you draw? In this case, this reporter's criticism of the Current Occupant appears wildly off target.
Given the close ties between the House of Saud and the Bush dynasty, the Current Occupant should indeed have a better picture of the situation that most recognize. That said, if you look at the policy positions being pushed by the administration, looming crisis will be used to justify non-solutions that benefit a few powerful players in the short term rather than the good of society in general.
Can a new president be brave enough to offer real solutions? You must remember that Jimmy Carter was pilloried and roundly mocked for his "sweater message" to the American public about energy conservation. Politicians also have long memories, and are often replaying "fighting the last war" rather than clearly understanding the next one. The fact that Carter lost to Reagan in part because Reagan sold the "new day," no resource limits story line to the public still resonates as a cautionary tale about asking the American public to re-negotiate its manifest destiny-driven way of life. Of course, it was easier for Reagan to emerge from the crisis and for the US and globe to eventually end up awash in an oil glut, because while the US had just reached peak, the world had decades to go.
Of the 3 major party candidates, only Obama has now rejected the notion of a gas tax holiday. This gives me a glimmer of hope that, with the right groundswell of public support, as president he could indeed have the courage to offer a new direction. That said, his support for ethanol and ties to the nuclear industry give one pause. Clinton's pandering to the so-called working class by joining McCain in calling for the gas tax holiday I find a distressing signal of weakness in the face of this crisis. McCain is not even worth talking about, I'm afraid, in terms of real leadership on this front. As many of us recognize, we needed a 10-fold increase in the gas tax starting in the 1970s, not a 3-month tax holiday in 2008. Nader is looking better and better all the time (easy for me to say in this deeply red state).