I'm in Martha's Vineyard and hanging out with my father-in-law. We can look out at the horizon where local people successfully blocked a windfarm. My father-in-law and I are both peeved about that. He said he's for Obama for a simple reason. Because Obama is intelligent and my father in law thinks he will grapple with the number-one issue darkening the future, energy. In his pie-chart of public concerns, my father-in-law assigns 40 percent to energy. 20 percent to the terror issue. 20-30 percent to health care. Don't start adding these things up, he warned me. I said that in 50 years we're going to have a higher quality of life and not be dependent on oil, and he gave me a look. I don't care about 50 years, I care about the next 10 to 15, and they don't look good at all. Oil production continues to go down, and the shocks to the civilized world (his words) are going to be extreme. A radical reduction in quality of life at $10 a gallon. Starvation, riots, etc.
He says the only responsible thing to do is to implement a program now of 30 different initiatives re energy to keep the gas price under $10 for as long as we can. This includes wind farming and natural gas cars and conservation measures like tire gauges (which could save what we're getting from offshore drilling right now) and government crackdown on the auto companies. He said he's going to write down his 30 things. It also includes drilling in Alaska. Anything, he says, to get us through the transition to the next technology as smoothly as we can.
The politicians are being irresponsible (he makes an exception for Obama), he can't believe that the newspapers aren't covering the declines in oil production more routinely, and the only good thing to be said for high gas prices is that they will cut solar warming.
He was grim and insistent. I asked him if his father-in-law had ever been so pessimistic about society's future. He said Never. I asked him if he had ever seen such stormclouds over civilization. He said Never in 80 years.
I'll provide the entire list of 30 things when he gets it to me.
Of course you only care about the next 10-15 years- because you are an idiot.
I don't think you are being quite fair, CK.
The point is, if we don't get things right on climate and energy policy in the next 10-15 years, what happens in 50 years' time is a moot point because industrial civilisation will be over.
In my view, the window to begin reducing carbon emissions is more like five years and peak oil is likely to happen in a similar time frame if it hasn't already.
An 80-yr-old man is worried about the next 10-15 years? Seems pretty normal, don't you think? He doesn't want to be a frail elderly person living through nightmares. OK his grandkids might have a hope of riding it out, fifty years from now, but he wants to avert the worst of it for the short term.
What's wrong with that, and why call names even if you don't agree?
Your in-laws sound like my kinda folks. I would probably like your wife a lot, too.
I'm sure that prominent on FIL's list would be good old-fashioned Yankee frugality – radical conservation. Why couldn't we live to the standard of rich WASPs in the country house circa 1940 – plenty comfortable but not so bloody consumption-oriented.
Re-engineer our lives to get rid of all the d*** plastic, disposables, most of the useless gadgets, packaging.
Shade tree for a/c, sweat it out when it's hot, insulate like crazy for winter, put up storm windows or new double-pane glass, re-install working shutters like in old NYC brownstones – insulated curtains over closed shutters will keep you very warm in January, reduce your heating bill.
O I could go on with my own list. I have in the past. Maybe I'll do a post about it. Thank you, Phil.
RE: "Of course you only care about the next 10-15 years- because you are an idiot.
Posted by: charles keating | August 21, 2008 at 12:34 PM"
That post is not mine. I agree with the subsequent comments.
SOG's playing again.
Conservation is the way.
The largest energy consumption in modern world is used for transportation, then space heating/cooling, then electrical generation, then industrial uses.
"Insulate your house" accomplishes both savings in heating load and savings in cooling load.
Ride-sharing, mass transit, living close to work, buying regionally manufactured products (rather than long-long-distance), installing Photovoltaics on homes to generate electricity at peak air conditioning power demand, generating electricity from wind (rather than oil, gas or coal).
Mostly pretty simple.
Last month I blogged "where to start" with green living – sparked by No Impact Man.
http://bedouina.typepad.com/doves_eye/2008/07/green-living-where-to-start.html
Just a few preliminary, baby steps, not the radical change, long list. I am eager to see the father-in-law's list.
Clotheslines. A recent article claims we spend 3% of our energy in the USA on drying our clothes. I haven't researched this number so I won't swear by it… but heck, putting up a clothesline is low-lying fruit.
I haven't done it yet, though… Soon. Soon.
I agree with all the green suggestions. How much gas do our Humvees, Abrams tanks, big trucks, etc use? And our military jets? How do we curb the military-industrial complex greed?
Dr. Daniel Nocera of MIT thinks a combination of solar and fuel cell energy may be able to replace fossil fuel usage within ten years, using a breakthrough he developed involving photovoltaic cells. The cells provide electricity during the day for general use and for the specific use of splitting water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen — emulating the process of photosynthesis in plants. The hydrogen then will run fuel cells at night to produce electricity when it's dark. The process he uses involves platinum as a catalyst, and some aren't as hopeful as he about the prospects of finding a cheaper catalyst. Undaunted, Dr. Nocera thinks a Manhattan-type project (or interstate highway type project) could get us off fossil fuels in just ten years — I'm thinking the investors in power, coal, natural gas, and oil companies will have the political clout to delay the timeline by fifty years or more, regardless of what science can do.
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Aloha ~~~ Ozzie Maland ~~~ San Diego