A very useful George Monbiot article on why growing oil substitutes is at best a stop gap or minority pursuit -it's screw the world economy especially on the food front. [Someone once told me that to feed Britain's current fuel habit from biodiesel etc would require all the land area to be growing biofuels -sounds plausible fromthis article].
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"Spend and tax" not "tax and spend"
I got a response from my MP which got me kind of mad. You'll see why as I reproduce it here. Apologies for the strange changes in types...
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I've been watching the TV series 'Foundation'. I read the books about 50 years ago (I know!) but scarcely now remember anything...
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from: http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/online/2012/5/22/1337672561216/Annular-solar-eclipse--008.jpg -
"'Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill. For truly I tell yo...
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It's amazing to me that ALL of the commentary is about replacing fuels. Where is the discussion about conservation? I know that our Vice President believes this is for sissies but there is no question that advanced nations can reduce their use of all energy sources by about half within a decade and still lead gloriously luxurious lifestyles compared to most of the rest of the world.
As an example of successful conservation efforts I direct you to the record of Seattle water usage which is significantly lower than it was 15 years ago despite a steadily rising population: http://www.seattle.gov/util/stellent/groups/public/@spu/@rmb/@resplan/@plancip/documents/spu_informative/waterusag_200312020908103.pdf
Or take the example of conservation after the OPEC oil embargo of the 1980's. The only reason this was associated with economic dislocation is because we allowed the crisis to happen before we changed our behavior. It is human nature to resist change except in the face of disaster but that's why we create government -- to establish fire departments and enact building codes; to force us to act responsibly even though it's not in our nature to do so. And this also points out the basic problem with democracy: instead of leaders, we elect followers that pander to the perceived desires of the masses. But nothing prevents individuals from taking action on their own. It is my sincere belief that this is how progress will be made as we head into the Peak Oil years.
You're absolutely right about the capacity for reductions of consumption. It's one tack the British government are taking with a little success [and it has a socially progressive entail in that it improves the lot of the poor quite drastically].
What I'm left wondering about is how we can engineer it so that power companies find it within their interest and 'duty' to shareholders to encourage power saving measures. So far I can only come up with regulating them so that they have to offer services to maintain and improve insulation/double glazing and to install local renewables. But that seems like quite a big sledgehammer whereas I think I'm looking for a toffee hammer.
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