Supply-side environmentalism will fail, because #itsthedemand

Let's say a solar project uses x units of energy. That project is promoted as "saving" x units of fossil fuel. But the x units that were not purchased on the fossil fuel market are now available for purchase for another use. This means that the solar project has either 1. allowed more growth with no change to fossil fuel use, or 2. has freed up x units of fossil fuel energy for use, reducing pressure for price increases.

In either case, nothing was done to reduce demand for energy.

As long as humans believe that growth is good, there will be strong demand for energy, and higher net energy sources will be used first. As long as there is demand, all efficiencies will be consumed per the Jevons principle.

What to do? First let's decide what best reduces demand. Then, let's ask how to get there with the least pain for the 99 percent.

Why free transit?

The current autosprawl system, which is spreading like cancer around the world, is heavily subsidized by deferring costs and externalizing them from corporate balance sheets and passing them to the taxpayer, the biosphere, and the future. This subsidy allows demand to grow. It is false demand.

But this system has an Achilles heel. It depends on a consumer product, the private auto, having critical mass as the mode of human transport. Free buses are the main thing that can break this critical mass. Once broken, cars will lose economy of scale, and the subsidy will be seen as subsidy, and not as necessity.

We can then redirect the resources wasted on autosprawl subsidy to making cities attractive. We can provide more services such as education and health more easily with the economies of urban density. Carfree cities with good education and health services will cause birth rates to drop.

Demand-side environmentalism is the key to the future.

Fare increases for public transport are self-defeating

Scoop News: "Today's revelation of fare increases proposed for Auckland buses after the rollout of Auckland Transport’s Hop card are particularly senseless and self-defeating.

This proposal will INCREASE traffic congestion as passengers swap to their cars to avoid the higher fares – up to three times as much in some cases.

It’s a senseless proposal and the opposite of what Auckland Transport should be doing.

We could end transport congestion in less than 12 months and at half the cost of new roads with Minto for Mayor’s plans for free and frequent public transport.

At the moment we have two bad alternatives – expensive travel by bus or car.

However making buses and trains fare-free will give Aucklanders two great choices – either take a free bus or train with free wifi or drive your car on a congestion-free road.

The road to the future is with Minto for Mayor."

The peak demand fantasy

fcnp.com: "There is considerable discussion in energy optimist circles these days about how “peak demand” might occur, thereby slowing oil production to some kind of false peak. This of course is always tied to the increased efficiency with which we use oil and not to economic hard times during which fewer will be able to afford the increasingly expensive stuff. No one ever mentions the circa 70 million people that are being added to the world’s population each year who might like a little energy in their lives."

Can increased efficiency, or renewables reduce oil demand enough to ease the pressure on supply? So far, there has been no sign of it. Demand destruction has only happened due to economic recession. That is simply the effect of the correctly predicted peak of cheap oil in 2005.

And as long as capitalism continues, and population grows, demand for any energy will continue. What happens when that demand cannot be satisfied? We already know. Economic recession, mass unemployment, homelessness.

That leaves the question. Will there be a hard crash? The answer is that crashes come from bubbles being ignored. Right now, a new bubble of oil supply optimism is being inflated. The longer the bubble goes, the harder the crash.

Is there a solution? Yes.

make public transit fare free
make cities attractive, car-free, and safe
educate all children

This will cause birth rates to fall.

Growing global energy demand will negate all progress on #climatechange

Peak Oil News and Message Boards: "Global energy consumption will grow by 56 percent between 2010 and 2040, according to the report, released Thursday by the US Energy Information Administration (EIA). Renewable and nuclear energy are projected to grow the fastest, but fossil fuels will continue to dominate, making up 80 percent of world energy use through 2040.

...The result is increasing emissions. Worldwide, energy-related carbon dioxide emissions will rise from about 31 billion metric tons in 2010 to 36 billion metric tons in 2020, according to EIA, and then to 45 billion metric tons in 2040. That’s a 46 percent increase over 30 years."

Tallinn, Estonia, offering to spread #freetransit to nearby towns

ERR: "In an interview with uudised.err.ee, Tallinn Deputy Mayor Taavi Aas said that the city is hoping to cooperate with surrounding municipalities and the state to extend the free public transport service.

Aas said Tallinn would gladly extend bus routes to nearby local governments, and allow residents of those municipalities to enjoy the perks of free transport, if the local governments were willing to co-finance the project.

He said an agreement is in place with Viimsi, which is partially serviced by Tallinn's buses, but other municipalities, like Maardu, do not have the means to participate.

The city is cooperating with the Ministry of Economic Affairs in creating a more efficient park and ride system, which could allow residents of neighboring municipalities to use Tallinn's public transport for free, Aas said."

Country full of people who want #publictransit, but congress full of people who don't

Yahoo! News: "These policies, they say, are carried by powerful, well-established interests that back road-building over alternative transportation modes such as light rail, commuter buses and shuttles, bike paths, and pedestrian walkways.

“Starting in the mid-’90s, we started to see a structural shift in what the market wants. Unfortunately, how we fund the infrastructure system, the subsidies, the land-use laws—everything is geared to just delivering drivable suburban. The cards are stacked,” said Christopher Leinberger, a visiting fellow with the Brookings Institution.

“It’s because we have been subsidizing huge industries. You’ve got all the road builders, you’ve got the National Association of Realtors, the homebuilders, the office- and business-park people, and they all like their subsidies,” he said. “They fight back.”"

'via Blog this'

People who are saying #peakoil is dead are leaving out one thing. Data. - @nelderini

SmartPlanet: "But my bet is that U.S. and European consumers can’t tolerate significantly higher prices. Price tolerance is something that Cornucopians never talk about, so you won’t hear that argument from them. If I am correct on that point, then production will have to decline as prices become intolerable. By virtue of its upward pressure on price, unconventional oil production contributes to, not cures, peak oil."

BBC reads geophysics report, draws opposite conclusion that just happens to match oil industry propaganda

Nafeez Ahmed | guardian.co.uk: ""Global production of crude oil and condensates... has essentially remained on a plateau of about 75 million barrels per day (mb/d) since 2005 in spite of a large increase in the price of oil. Even more important, the global net oil exports from oil-exporting countries (oil production minus internal consumption) have peaked and are in decline.""

We add that the plateau of production is inflated by measuring in barrels instead of energy units, and biofuels have been added in as well by most publishers of this data.

The oil industry is living on a bubble. If investors realize that much of what is being counted as reserves will never be able to get to market, there could be a crisis of confidence and a loss of value.

This is why there is a massive propaganda campaign. Unfortunately, many so-called scientists and journalists are complicit.

To keep up with the actual facts about oil and energy in general, we recommend these writers:

https://twitter.com/NafeezAhmed
https://twitter.com/kurtcobb
https://twitter.com/nelderini

Reports of Peak Oil’s Death Are Somewhat Premature

From Center for a Stateless Society:

America’s 20th century economy developed largely by adding more and more inputs of artificially cheap resources, guaranteed by the state, rather than by using resources more efficiently. The fossil fuel economy and everything dependent on it — mass production factories supplying distant markets, suburban sprawl, the car culture — was essentially a free rider on this artificial abundance created by the state. And now even the state is realizing that there are limits to its resources.

Meanwhile, a recent IMF study found that simply eliminating government subsidies to fossil fuels would reduce carbon emissions 13% worldwide. That’s not even counting subsidies to specific forms of energy consumption, like the U.S. civil aviation system and Interstate Highway System.

If climate change is a real problem — and I believe it is — it’s not something the government needs to fix. It’s something the government needs to stop causing.

Arctic permafrost has 4 times as much carbon as humans have released since 1850

phys.org "Permafrost (perennially frozen) soils underlie much of the Arctic. Each summer, the top layers of these soils thaw. The thawed layer varies in depth from about 4 inches (10 centimeters) in the coldest tundra regions to several yards, or meters, in the southern boreal forests. This active soil layer at the surface provides the precarious foothold on which Arctic vegetation survives. The Arctic's extremely cold, wet conditions prevent dead plants and animals from decomposing, so each year another layer gets added to the reservoirs of organic carbon sequestered just beneath the topsoil.

Over hundreds of millennia, Arctic permafrost soils have accumulated vast stores of organic carbon - an estimated 1,400 to 1,850 petagrams of it (a petagram is 2.2 trillion pounds, or 1 billion metric tons). That's about half of all the estimated organic carbon stored in Earth's soils. In comparison, about 350 petagrams of carbon have been emitted from all fossil-fuel combustion and human activities since 1850. Most of this carbon is located in thaw-vulnerable topsoils within 10 feet (3 meters) of the surface."

Continue reading... Is a sleeping climate giant stirring in the Arctic?