 | Further Evidence of the Influence of Energy on the U.S. Economy | The Oil Drum: Net Energy | A Net Energy Parable Revisited |  |
49 comments on Using Thermodynamics to (Re)Examine Environmental Kuznets Curves
Comments can no longer be added to this story.
| Show without comments | PDF version
49 comments on Using Thermodynamics to (Re)Examine Environmental Kuznets Curves
Comments can no longer be added to this story.
| Show without comments | PDF version
User login
Contact
- theoildrumeroi at gmail dot com
Personnel
Archives
License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
GAIA Host Collective
Although your heart may be in the right place, there is no thermodynamic first law of pollutants. Yes, matter/mass is conserved (except for nuclear processes), but chemical forms do matter. Sulfur dioxide wasn't present in the coal, but is rather formed in the burning thereof. Likewise, it isn't extracted and dumped on the ground as SO2 either, because that is a gas. Moreover, "pollutant" is a nebulous term, sort of like "weed". Recovered sulfur is actually useful; it is the trace metals in coal flyash that are the biggest problems (as well as emitted mercury).
With EKCs, there is also the regurgitated idea that, left on its own, a prosperous market economy will spontaneously produce a clean and livable planet. In fact, political decisions (such as mandating scrubbers for coal plants) are usually required for environmental improvement.
I think a bigger problem with EKCs is that high GNP countries tend to export their dirty industry to low GNP ones. Someone else deals with the mess. Similarly, Agricultural waste from the US heartland is exported to the GOM, and everybody's CO2 goes into our collective atmosphere while we kid ourselves that it doesn't matter because the earth is so large.
As for deforestation, if fossil fuel supplies become constrained, we will burn everything including the furniture. Of course, the GNP will nosedive as well, sliding us back down the curve.
I never claim that there is a thermodynamic first law of pollutants. Chemical forms do matter, and as I say in the post, wealthy countries can afford to alter the form of a harmful pollutant to a less-harmful form. I agree also that there are other pollutants in coal that are of bigger concern than sulfur. I am trying simply to provide an alternative view of pollution as EKC theory tends to give people the idea that pollution disappears when countries are wealthy, and as we know, that is simply not the case.
Your point about wealthy countries exporting polluting industries to less developed countries is important, although I did not focus on that in the post.
OK, but you said this:
You are using energy as an analogy for pollution, but this is not valid because pollution is not a precise term. What are the units of pollution?
It's good to be critical of the greenwashing of environmental degradation in the name of progress which will eventually clean it back up, but starting with thermodynamics to do it leaves a lot of missing steps and a results in a lot of handwaving.
Ok, I agree that it is not the most precise language, but the basic message is there. The units of pollution, as you are implying (I think), will change as substances are transformed. For example, sulfur dioxide is formed during combustion and then transformed during scrubbing, so the pollutant has changed, yet there is still a pollutant, of some form, to be dealt with...
I don't see how starting with thermodynamics as a theoretical foundation instead of EKCs leads to "handwaving".
You get a byproduct. It may or may not constitute a form of pollution.
Maybe a better way of saying:
Thermodynamics is an analogy. It's not a law of physics which applies here.
But is the analogy a useful one? Mass may be conserved, but form matters. With you rather have a pound of plutonium or a pound of soot scattered in your backyard? Location and other issues also come into play. If various technologies and policies actually do manage to mitigate the harm from industrial byproducts, what are the added insights from an analogy with thermodynamics? I agree with JoulesBurn's earlier point...there is no scalar measure of pollution that is conserved. The fact that sulfur is scrubbed from emissions does not automatically imply an equally harmful form of pollution somewhere else.
I acknowledge that very point in the post,
The EKC doesn't imply that society will eventually be pollution free. It only implies that pollution levels will eventually decline. The usual argument is based on environmental quality as a normal good, so as incomes rise people want more of. Brian Copeland and Scott Taylor use production functions that imply an upper bound to pollution abatement in their models.
Edit In economic models, the EKC results from policy intervention (typically a pollution tax). Since full abatement is ruled out, there is always some level of pollution in these models. There is no law of human behaviour that I'm aware of that dictates the response will actually happen.
Copeland, Brian R. and M. Scott Taylor (2003). Trade and the Environment: Theory and Evidence Princeton University Press.
"For example, sulfur dioxide is formed during combustion and then transformed during scrubbing, so the pollutant has changed, yet there is still a pollutant, of some form, to be dealt with..."
You can sell your pollution(gypsum) to ofset some the cost of the FGD system.