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December 22 2018
Why Climate Mobilization as Currently Envisioned will Fail.
"If you are going to try to go to war, or to prepare for war, in a
capitalist country, you have got to let business make money out of the
process or business won't work."
-- Henry Stimson, US Secretary of War, 1940
The accumulative stresses of climate change, human over-population,
pollution, species extinction, and growing food, water and energy scarcity
have gotten to the point that some outreach groups are now choosing to
speak the scary truth [1,2,3] about just how precarious our situation is
and how little time is left to attempt some remedial action before one
or more systems the global industrial civilization depends upon start
to break down and action becomes untenable.
The remedial action currently being called for by various climate action
groups is a government-led World War II style endeavor, an emergency
climate mobilization. The thinking is that the changes required are too
structural, too significant for market forces to accomplish in the time
frame needed, generally thought to be around 10 years, thus the government
needs to come up with a zero-carbon transition plan and implement it
as was done during the WW-II war mobilization which converted much of
American peacetime industrial output from consumer goods to the armaments
destined for use by allied forces in Europe and the South Pacific.
On the surface this sounds rather reasonable; the US, and presumably
the other countries living energetically large, will collectively begin
to build our post-carbon future of a steady-state egalitarian economy
powered by 100% clean energy. It sounds wonderful and one has to wonder
why we didn't start 50 years ago when many of the troubles first started
to become noticed.
The problem is that that future vision is not achievable, at least
not with current technology and certainly not at current energy usages.
And yet the belief that photovoltaics and wind can be replace all the ways
we use fossil fuels and we just need to commit to doing it is apparently
widely held among climate transition groups and indeed what most climate
mobilization plans are based around.
Some quick facts about renewable energy technologies:
- renewables are not carbon-free
- renewables are not cheap
- renewables are not portable
- renewables are not available where and when you need them most
- renewables are not environmentally benign
- renewables are not easily recyclable
Fully covering all of wind and solar shortcomings would easily fill
several articles and others [4,5] have done the work. Both need mined
resources and mining is very fossil fuel dependent. Even if mining
could be electrified it needs to be a steady source, neither of which
are wind or solar. Same with the facilities needed for solar cells;
very dependent on steady power sources. Since the best solar and wind
locales tend to be great distances from where the power is actually
needed many miles of high voltage power lines are needed which are very
expensive to build and maintain, and line losses can be significant.
The much touted "smart grid" doesn't yet exist and likely never will for
similar reasons. Since both are variable both seasonally and throughout
the day one either needs more natural gas power plants (not renewable;
produces greenhouse gases) to even things out or the addition of storage
(pumped hydro or batteries), further wrecking their net energy value.
Basically wind and solar are too variable, too site dependent and
need too many inputs (energy and materials) in their manufacture,
construction and maintenance to be significant net energy producers.
That they are currently in use at all is largely due to significant
government subsidies and/or regulations requiring their use.
But lets assume we went ahead and replaced large chunks of the electricity
production infrastructure with solar and wind. Certainly some is possible
and improving the energy efficiency of our homes and workplaces could
help some as well. The problem is none of that addresses all the ways
we are currently using fossil fuels for our autos, agriculture, mining,
trucking, and shipping. While urban areas can probably replace some
of the personal internal combustion cars with electric equivalents,
and many light-rail and urban buses either are or could be electrified,
most heavy trucks can not be, nor can freight trains, nor airplanes,
nor agricultural or mining equipment. The power requirements of these
applications are simply too high to be replaced with batteries. While
tethering may work for some applications, in others such as freight trains
the expense and logistics of running overhead power lines is prohibitive,
and of course a steady power supply would be needed which makes wind
and solar unsuitable. This is what is known in peak oil circles as
the 'liquid fuels' shortfall which was the focus of the Hirsch report
[6]. Alice Friedemann's book "When Trucks Stop Running: Energy and the
Future of Transportation" outlines the issue in detail [7].
Well okay, so maybe there are a few things to work out in the transition
to our post-carbon future; lets still push for a government-led WW-II
style mobilization. It worked against the Nazis so maybe it'll work
against climate change right?
It turns out that the US WW-II mobilization was very slow until the attack
on Pearl Harbor which galvanized industry and the masses [8]; even then,
the US government had to do some serious enticing (see opening quote)
to get the industrialists on-board. If we wait for a similar event
before seriously addressing climate change it will be too late.
And mobilizing for war is much more straightforward than for climate;
the former simply requires building as many ships, planes, bombs,
guns, etc. as quickly as possible, without much concern for quality,
pollution, or energy input. The latter requires industry buy-in without
the promise of profit and with many strings attached with respect to
pollution, quality, durability and a whole lot of government over-sight.
In addition, only nuclear power coupled with some natural gas will make
heavy reliance on solar and wind feasible; nuclear has always been a
hard sell both from a business investment and public acceptance point
of view and comes with it's own EROEI issues as well as some uniquely
challenging issues surrounding waste and fuel reprocessing (uranium
will become scarce without reprocessing).
So, the full truth: climate change is happening much faster than the
models have predicted to-date [9]. Add that to human over-population,
falling soil fertility, collapsing fisheries, the 6th extinction,
deteriorating political institutions. Then mix in the impending peak of
economically recoverable oil (conventional oil already peaked; light
"fracked" oil is expected to peak in just a few years) and the lack
of anything energetically similar to replace it; it makes a climate
mobilization as envisioned untenable.
Where the US WW-II mobilization was a "build up", a reality-based
climate mobilization looks more like deconstruction as it requires
turning away from a consumption-based growth economy. Industry would
have an orders of magnitude smaller role in any sort of non-growth,
lower energy society. The resulting economy would likely not support
the degree of specialization the current industrial economy supports
(and demands). With that comes a paring of many of the pillars of our
civilization: advanced healthcare, higher education, social safety net
services, and cheap, varied foods year-around.
Even if we opted for more nuclear power we'd still have to live more
localized lives on a much less energy, drastically reducing our mobility
and consumption; the era of mass-produced consumer goods, and happy
motoring would be over. How to address this in the face of the suburban
sprawl most of us live in is an open question. Ultimately we are likely
talking about an increasingly agrarian society with many fewer people;
it's a hard truth to sell.
--
References:
[1] https://www.resilience.org/stories/2018-12-21/to-tell-the-truth/
[2] https://below2c.org/2018/01/the-power-of-climate-truth-2/
[3] https://www.vox.com/2015/5/15/8612113/truth-climate-change
[4] http://energyskeptic.com/2018/wind/
[5] http://energyskeptic.com/category/energy/solar-energy/photovoltaic-solar/
[6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hirsh_Report
[7] http://energyskeptic.com/2016/when-trucks-stop-running-so-does-civilization/
[8] https://www.encyclopedia.com/education/news-and-education-magazines/world-war-ii-mobilization-1939-1943
[9] http://www.climatecodered.org/p/what-lies-beneath.html