John Quiggin notes that despite mutually re-enforcing arguments from extreme environmentalists ("deep greens") and dead-ender polluters ("dark browns") that reducing carbon emissions to a sustainable level would be incompatible with maintaining high and growing material standards of living, the actual economics suggests that we can cut emissions and keep getting richer without that much trouble at all if we implement the right policies in a timely manner.
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Deep Green and Dark Brown
13 Apr 2008 04:39 pm
Comments (39)
John Quiggin is always excellent reading. That enviro piece you linked to is one of the best things I've read in a long time.
Which is pretty much a matter of common sense, at least for the first 40% of the gains. Drive down the highway in Chicago, Atlanta, Los Angeles, etc at rush hour. Imagine all those Hummer H3s carrying one person in stop-and-go replaced with Honda Fits or SmartForTwos [1]. Gas mileage triples, space used on highway reduced by a factor which alone is large enough to make a significant difference, /and absolutely nothing about the American way of exurban life is changed/. Except the need to express appendage size with one's automobile (admittedly a major force since the first horse was bred to be faster than the other guy's, but still)
Then add air-to-air heat exchange fresh air systems to all the exurban tract mansions built in the last 10 years and triple the amount of insulation in their attics. Bingo.
Cranky
[1] Let's go whole hog and imagine the SmartForTwo design documents turned over to Honda with orders to make it work right, as was done with many aircraft designs in WWII.
Several "deep green" guys have changed their attitude toward nuclear. Wendell Berry, for example, long the Jimmy Stewart/prophet for that side has softened his opposition dramatically.
Incidentally, the "Deep Green" tag is crap. So contrived, you can see the stretch marks.
Quiggin is right to some degree. On the other hand, if we're talking about, say, the average person going from living in a 1000 square foot duplex on an 1/16th acre lot to living in a 3000 square foot square foot detached home on a 1/4th acre lot, that really is a crudely physical form of economic growth. I suppose my point is, there are types of economic growth which are unimpeded or only slightly impeded by a reasonable effort to achieve sustainability, but there are other types of economic growth which do require restriction. Going from a 25 mhz 486 desktop to a 2.4 ghz duo core laptop? Nothing environmentally damaging about that type of economic growth. Likewise, learning how to do surgery using less invasive routes -- nothing contradictory about that form of economic growth and sustainability.
I can think of three big places where sustainability without restriction looks hard:
-Air transportation. Ground and water transportation have room for efficiency-based improvement (more hybrids, etc), but air transportation looks especially tricky to me. It uses a lot of fuel, and the best Boeing has come up with, the 787, is only about 20% more efficient. Moreover, although it's an environmentally destructive affair, air travel acheives genuinely wonderful things -- in a few hours, we can see distant relatives, see locales as tourists, etc. There is no real comparably fast substitute for moving people long distances. Even the TGV, which can average speeds of around 175 mph, is only about 1/3rd as fast, and of course it requires massive capital investments in extremely straight, level tracks.
-More per-capita housing -- as I mentioned above, this is a tough issue. A bigger house takes up more land, and that's not amenable to technological efficiency improvements, unless we can build something like a Dr. Who Tardis. On the other hand, having more space is genuinely nice.
-More environmentally-demanding foods -- Meat is the big one I'm thinking of here. Personally, irrespective of the environment, I would like to see an ever-increasing proportion of the populace give up animal products for moral reasons, but relying on that to solve global environmental problems is unrealistic. Technological solutions of the "vat meat" variety are possible, but not immediately feasible. Until then, governmentally restricting global meat consumption (possibly through a greenhouse gas tax taking into account methane, forcing prices up, turning it into a luxury etc) is not likely to be popular.
Re: Moreover, although it's an environmentally destructive affair, air travel acheives genuinely wonderful things -- in a few hours, we can see distant relatives, see locales as tourists, etc. There is no real comparably fast substitute for moving people long distances.
So we should make up for the CO2 output of airplanes by cuts elsewhere.
His post was bereft of actual answers, other than vague hand waving at wind and solar. Wind is not reliable; you need equivalent levels of reliable power in case the wind levels aren't up to snuff. The same goes for solar - not to mention the fact that a large scale solar plant in, say, the desert, would be blocked on environmental impact grounds within a few seconds.
There's also the simple problem of "global warming" (now renamed "climate change" to make it more vague), is hardly proven - never mind Quiggin's airy dismissal.
Two Years Behind the Zeitgeist
"Applying this model it seems reasonable to project price increases [for oil] of 5-10 per cent a year into the future." ...John Quiggin, August 6, 2007.
That was the day I stopped reading John Quiggin. You can do your own research on oil prices since August.
A quibble: "Going from a 25 mhz 486 desktop to a 2.4 ghz duo core laptop? Nothing environmentally damaging about that type of economic growth."
Then you aren't aware of the "green IT" initiatives.
While it may not matter to the average home user, when you have thousands of servers in a data center running power-sucking CPUs and cooling systems, you'd better believe it's an issue.
I've never been particularly concerned about "the environment" (because at the bottom line, there is no such thing as "the environment"), but power consumption in the IT industry is considered a major problem, for cost reasons if nothing else.
"A bigger house takes up more land, and that's not amenable to technological efficiency improvements,'
Yes, it is - the problem is social. Start getting people to be willing to live underground, where the energy savings AND land space savings and security savings are huge. The problem again is social. Nobody wants to live underground.
Actually, since CPU/server performance is growing exponentially, along with memory and storage, the number of servers required for running today's internet should be dropping like a stone. The reason this isn't obviously happening probably has to do with extremely poor current software/system design and things like that, but these will probably get washed out in the near future.
For example, Wikipedia is one of the most popular sites on the Internet, with gigantic traffic. But I read in an article that it runs on just 300 older servers, which would barely fill a single row of cabinets.
Assuming those servers are a few years old (Wikipedia is broke), I'd bet that the whole thing could be replaced by a single fully-loaded quadcore 10-blade rack-server, which uses less than 3000 watts. 3000 watts to run one of the Internet's biggest web sites hardly sounds like a huge energy drain.
RSH, I was specifically comparing a single 25 Mhz 486 to a single 2.4 Ghz duo core laptop -- I wasn't talking about the whole computing economy.
I personally would like to live underground some day, but at any rate, I think it was fairly clear from earlier on (the talk of duplexes and such) that I was talking about conventional detached houses.
Re: There's also the simple problem of "global warming" (now renamed "climate change" to make it more vague
"Climate change" is more accurate. Some areas may actually cool, and the changes include things like different precipitation and storm patterns that are not captured by "warming".
Re: There's also the simple problem of "global warming" (now renamed "climate change" to make it more vague
No. The ohrase is more expansive and accurate since more things are happening than warming: sea levels and temps are rising and precipitation patterns are changing.
And there's no authority in charge of naming. If you want to call it 'global warming', help yourself. It's just more dumb non-issue cant from the obstructionists.
... that we can cut emissions and keep getting richer without that much trouble at all if we implement the right policies in a timely manner.
But -- how will we be America? How will we be able to stay in Iraq for a hundred years, and pay for the Forever War, and bomb Iran, and keep all of Lil' Boots' tax cuts just as they are and keep Guantanamo going strong? How will we keep wages stagnant as the enrichment of the Coalition Of The Haves and Have Mores continues??
The children, Matt; Think of the children of the top 1 per cent!
"Wind is not reliable; you need equivalent levels of reliable power in case the wind levels aren't up to snuff. The same goes for solar - not to mention the fact that a large scale solar plant in, say, the desert, would be blocked on environmental impact grounds within a few seconds."
You're about six months to a year behind in your understanding of these issues and all projects are and should be evaluated for their environmental impact.
"By irresponsible blanket opposition to nuclear power, Greenpeace has done nearly as much damage as an oil company to efforts to reduce carbon omissions."
It wouldn't be the first time that Greenpeace has been wrong about something. But as for nuclear, no fricking free ride. I'm not subsidizing something that can't demostrate viability and no short cuts on design, safety, security and environmental impact.
I'm not saying that nulcear can not achieve those things and I've begun to change my mind a bit on nuclear, but let it compete on a level playing field with other technologies. If it can survive an actual real life free market, fine. But if we're going to pick "favorites" and continue to perpetuate outdated information or just plain misinformation regarding the alternatives, count me out.
"There's also the simple problem of "global warming" (now renamed "climate change" to make it more vague), is hardly proven - never mind Quiggin's airy dismissal."
If you were to approach it rationally, you'd understand that "climate change" is a more accurate description. As to its existence, I think I'll continue to rely on those whose expertise is a tad bit better refined than yours.
So far all the climate change, CO2 reduction, quality of life, "Deep Brown vs. Deep Green" discussions omit the Elephant in the room.
That elephant is population growth. In 1960, America was 160 million. 90% white, 10% black with a smattering of Latins and Asians. We exported oil. It took 20 minutes to drive from one end of LA to the other on uncongested freeways. Now, we are 302 million. We are to go to 438 million in 2050 with Open Borders - which most Deep Greens support or claim is a distraction from the "real ways" of getting sustainable energy.
In 1960, world population was slightly under 3 billion. It is 6.7 billion resource users now, and will explode further to 9.4 billion in 2050.
In 1960, Asia had 1.6 billion , Africa 240 million , and Latin America/Caribbean 176 million. In 2050 Asia will have 5.3 billion resource users, Africa 1.8 billion, S. America 809 million.
Talk of "exciting wind and solar" is pissing in the wind. Conservation using "Gore-approved" lightbulbs making a dent in 2050 energy usage a joke. Making talk of "high tech solutions" laughable as constraints on hydrocarbons, arable land, water resources, open recreational land space are encountered in the US and globally.
In 2050, just as now, billions will want America to keep Open Borders and honor "anchor babies". And they will be even more deperate to get here. So US Census says 438 is a guess. 2050 was estimated to be 290 million back in 1960, our infrastructure was mostly built on the premise of reaching 280 million in 2050. And every 5 years, the estimate has gone up as high-breeding 3rd world populations have come in after the 1965 Immigration Reform Act.
Anyone who talks about environmental solutions of sustainable resourcing is self-delusional if they do not dare bring up sustainable population levels. If they do not think 300 million Americans now, 438 by 2050, 730 million resource-constrained, lower standard of living, lower quality of life Americans by 2100 unless we change course and seek stable population.
One of the consequences of corn ethanol as fuel is showing up right now: a lot of food will soon be priced out of the reach of the poorest of the world's poor. And we haven't even started to make a dent in terms of replacing petroleum. If there continues to be a competition between the poor and our cars, Chris Ford won't have to worry about sustainable population levels because Malthus will come home to roost in a big way.
Like most leftwing domestic policies, leftwing environmental policies reduce job opportunities for blue collar workers. By restricting the use of our most plentiful and cheapest energy sources (e.g., coal and nuclear), lefties limit the growth of high-paying blue collar jobs in resource extraction and they limit the growth of domestic manufacturing jobs, by making the energy input of domestic manufacturing more expensive than it would be otherwise. As a bonus, by making energy more expensive, lefties reduce the standard of living of blue collar (and all other Americans), by making them pay more for home heating, electricity, etc. than they would have to otherwise.
This is consistent with the leftwing position on unskilled immigration (i.e., More, please!) that reduced the wages for residential construction work during the recent real estate boom.
The Left's "solutions" to the plight of blue collar Americans are similarly unrealistic (e.g., post-high school educations for everyone, including the 50% of blacks and Chicanos who can't graduate high school) or destructive (mandating expensive 'safety net' policies that hinder job creation).
Aside from making venture capitalists like Al Gore and Vinod Khosla richer than they already are, the much-hyped green-tech bubble will do nothing to increase the welfare of those Americans lefties call "working class".
"And there's no authority in charge of naming. If you want to call it 'global warming', help yourself."
Thank goodness. "Hippy myth designed to control
the suburbanite bourgeoisie" has always been my title of choice.
Sk
"If there continues to be a competition between the poor and our cars, Chris Ford won't have to worry about sustainable population levels because Malthus will come home to roost in a big way."
One of the reasons I would vote for Hillary Clinton though I prefer Obama, is because hopefully ANY Democrat will restore sanity to our world population policies. Providing funds, education and birth control NEEDS to happen.
Surprisingly, there is even significant talk amongst the more liberal Catholic clergy (the Prada styling pontiff and his boyfriend excepted) of birth control as a poverty issue. Surely if the Catholic Church can at least consider this, we can move past or ignore our lunatic fringe that considers "every sperm" as "sacred".
The impact of bio-fuels needs to be reviewed in addition to the supposed "Farm Bill", CAFE standards, corporate welfare, taxes, etc., since food prices worldwide are as Jeffrey Davis says, "priced out of the reach of the poorest of the world's poor". I'd add that the impact to the lower middle class and middle class is beginning as they are seeing food and fuel prices become a larger portion of their total expenses.
The next president (Democratic) and congress (Democratic) will have their work cut out for them.
we can cut emissions and keep getting richer without that much trouble at all
And give everyone ponies!
Ponies for all!
One of the pastimes that provides much amusement is reading comments by the various deniers on this blog and other blogs. Here we have Mr. Robertson, Mr. Fred, Mr. Sk, and Mr. Al denying global climate change. On other blogs, one reads the deniers of HIV/AIDS, evolution, cigarette smoking/lung cancer, CFCs/ozone depletion, vaccine efficacy, etc. Most of these deniers are right wingers who deny not because they have any competence in the science behind the various theories that they deny, but because they don't like the idea of government regulation of the affected industries or they don't like some of the individuals who pontificate on the theories (e.g. Mr. Fred apparently denies global climate change because he doesn't like Al Gore), or they are religious whackjobs (i.e. the evolution deniers). The exception is the vaccine efficacy deniers, who mostly seem to be left wingers.
I would direct the attention of interested parties to the denialism blog, which is linked to below where a full discussion of the deniers views and tactics is described.
http://scienceblogs.com/denialism/
I don't deny global climate change. Global climate has always changed, from the beginning of time until the present day. In particular, global climate has been warming for approximately the past 300 years. However, I deny that we know, with sufficient certainty to spend 5% of global GDP, the extent to which such change is anthropogenic.
"I don't deny global climate change."
You know perfectly well SLC was referring to denial of anthropogenic induced climate change. And here I thought I was the one who came across as the most sanctimonious and pietistical (WOTD). Sheesh......
Re Al
"However, I deny that we know, with sufficient certainty to spend 5% of global GDP, the extent to which such change is anthropogenic."
So what does Mr. Al attribute the apparent increase in overall global temperature to? The oevewhelming preponderance of scientific opinion on the subject is that much, if not most of it is anthropogenic. The holdouts, like Fred Singer, seem to be limited to those taking handouts from Exxon and other energy companies.
It's good to see Chris Ford illustrating this post's point about the far left and far right operating from the same principles, this time in regards to population growth. But the fact of the matter is that birth rates are falling all over the world. Not just in Western Europe and Japan, but in poorer countries that have become less poor over the past few decades. The population explosion is really just an expression of the lag time between when the health care reaches a level that causes the death rate to go down and when general economic prosperity and social forces eliminates the need to have lots of children. There's no reason to believe that the world's population needs to continuously rise; it'll keep rising for a while, sure, but it could easily stagnate or even begin to drop.
We went to war in Iraq on a 1% possibility doctrine. We're going to spend over 1 trillion smackers on that. There's a 95% confidence that we're going to see increases of 1.5C-4.5C. Which means that we're at ~2.5% possibility of exceeding 4.5C which would be so calamitous that mere hyperbole fails. (The likelihood of climate change threatening civilization within the IPCC 95% confidence bars isn't negligible -- there isn't some discrete cut-off at 4.5C where everything will be hunky-dory up until that point.)
Al balks at spending 5% of GDP on > 2.5% but is gung-ho on a trillion dollar (7-8% of GDP) war set in motion on a 1% possibility which had far less menace than global climate change.
Al, you're a dope. And you've pulled that 5% of GDP number out of your back pocket's filthy neighbor. I've never seen mitigation estimates anywhere near that number except from Denialists and Obstructionists.
' seems reasonable to project price increases [for oil] of 5-10 per cent a year into the future." ...John Quiggin, August 6, 2007.
That was the day I stopped reading John Quiggin. You can do your own research on oil prices since August.'
Bob McM, if you'd continued reading for even one more sentence, it would (or at least should) have been clear that I was talking about a long-term average rate of price growth. The fact that prices have gone up a lot in the last six months doesn't invalidate it, any more than the fact that prices have fallen in earlier periods.
You know you’re a liberal fuddy-duddy if your utopian alternative to capitalism is capitalism. So long left, we hardly knew you.
So what does Mr. Al attribute the apparent increase in overall global temperature to? The oevewhelming preponderance of scientific opinion on the subject is that much, if not most of it is anthropogenic.
Well, I'll admit I'm absolutely no expert on "Global Warming", but Alex Cockburn who edits the leftist CounterPunch.org is a skeptic, and provided what seems like a very good criticism of its man-made origins.
Apparently, during the decade or so of the Great Depression, worldwide industrial production fell by about 1/3, meaning that human-generated CO2 production probably fell by roughly the same factor. However, it turns out that there was NO correspondence dip in the historical trend-line of rising atmospheric CO2 or increasing temperature.
This leads to the argument that rising atmospheric CO2 might actually be a consequence rather than a cause of rising temperature.
Like I said, I personally don't know this stuff, but perhaps some other commenter who does is aware of the explanation/refutation of this seemingly serious criticism of the "Standard Model".
RKU, this isn't too hard
1. Reliable measurements of atmospheric CO2 levels did not begin until 1957, so anyone making the claim
"that there was NO correspondence dip in the historical trend-line of rising atmospheric CO2" is clearly misinformed. In this particular debate, "misinformed" means, with very high probability "takes their facts from rightwing disinformation sites". Why Cockburn chooses to believe people he would ordinarily not trust to tell the time of day while standing in front of a clock, I don't know, but that's his problem.
2. The rise in global temperature is not steady, since lots of factors contribute to climate in the short and medium term (solar cycles, El Nino/Southern Oscillation, aerosols etc). Indeed, this point is routinely stressed by deniers. So , the effects of a reduction in the rate of growth of CO2 input (not a decline in CO2 levels) aren't going to be detectable by eyeballing. If Cockburn has a statistical analysis to point to, I'd be interested. Otherwise this kind of stuff is no better than "deaths have fallen, so teh Surge is working".
But the fact of the matter is that birth rates are falling all over the world.
It's not the density of people that matters, you can comfortably fit all the people of Earth in a medium-sized country, it's their waste and consumption. Europe's density has decreased but its waste and consumption continues to grow.
So what does Mr. Al attribute the apparent increase in overall global temperature to?
Huh? I thought I already said that some of it is anthropogenic and some of it is non-anthropogenic. Temperatures have been rising since a relative low point in the Little Ice Age in the 1600s. Temperatures rose faster in the 20th century than in the prior two centuries, to be sure. But I don't think we know with enough certainty to spend 5% of global GDP (note to Jeffrey Davis: this number taken directly from Quiggan's post, not my "back pocket's filthy neighbor") how much is anthropogenic and how much is not.
Re Al
The little ice age lasted into the 19th century with its low point being 1816, the year without a summer.
The Little Ice Age was from about 1550 to about 1850, and the temperature varied during that period with three climactic minima. The first (and most extreme, to my eyes) climactic minimum appears to be around 1650.
"The Little Ice Age was from about 1550 to about 1850, and the temperature varied during that period with three climactic minima."
Thus causing the death of the Little Mermaid. Oh, Al, you heartless fiend!
RKU: "Actually, since CPU/server performance is growing exponentially, along with memory and storage, the number of servers required for running today's internet should be dropping like a stone."
No. the Internet is still growing - and the media content mix is changing to heavily video. That alone is going to require heavier duty servers to push that bandwidth.
Check Cringely's articles on this - it really is a problem and it's not going away until the telcos get their head out of their ass and light up all that dark fiber and get fiber to the home. And that's just the bandwidth side.
Google (and others) are creating "data centers in a box" - a bunch of blade servers and routers in racks with a cooling element thrown into what is essentially a deliverable cargo container. They intend to drop these all over the country. But in the meantime, they are building huge data centers all over the place - data centers that cost a couple hundred million dollars to build and require one hell of a lot of energy.
For instance, Google Iowa data center cost $600 million. Their energy needs were described as follows:
"The electricity powering Google's Iowa data centers will come from MidAmerican Energy Holdings Co. Primarily a coal burning energy provider, MidAmerican does have a number of different generation sources on its grid, including renewable energy, Schnitt said.
MidAmerican owns wind-powered electric generation sources and has 695.5 megawatts of wind energy facilities in operation, under construction and under contract in Iowa. Also, pending approvals, MidAmerican Energy plans to add another 540 MW of wind energy in Iowa, equivalent to removing emissions from more than 682,000 vehicles, or 43%, of all the registered automobiles on the road in Iowa.
Google has also set out its strategy to help build a cleaner energy future. Last week, the company announced that it plans to be completely carbon neutral by 2008. "That's going to be tough, especially with this (Iowa) facility, since MidAmerican burns coal," Reeves said."
Another blog post about The Dalles Google center says this:
"In its March issue, Harper's publishes one section of the official blueprints of the site plan for Google's giant The Dalles data center on the banks of the Columbia River in Oregon. (The project goes by the codename 02 on the plan.) Some stats: The warehouses holding the computers are each 68,680 square feet, while the attached cooling stations are 18,800 square feet. The blueprint also shows an administration building and a sizable "transient employee dormitory."
In comments on the plan, Harper's estimates, roughly, that once all three server buildings are operating in 2011 the plant "can be expected to demand about 103 megawatts of electricity - enough to power 82,000 homes, or a city the size of Tacoma, Washington." The Web, the magazine says, "is no ethereal store of ideas, shimmering over our heads like the aurora borealis. It is a new heavy industry, an energy glutton that is only growing hungrier."
Someone posted in response to the blog post the point that although Google utilizes its own PC power supply design to reduce waste heat on its own PCs, the downstream consumers of Google's services do not - we have hundreds of millions of PC's sitting on our desks that consume power even in low standby mode - and that this dwarfs the Google data center power needs.
According to Climate Savers Computing Initiative Web site, the average PC wastes fifty percent of the power it consumes. Data centers tend to be more efficient because they tune their systems to make the servers do work more of the time. This is the driving force behind virtualization - to make more servers do work with less actual hardware, since the average non-virtual server is idle at least 25% of the time.
See "What Is Green IT?"
http://energypriorities.com/entries/2007/06/what_is_green_it_data_centers.php
And "Greener Computing":
http://www.greenercomputing.com/
As I said, I personally don't care, but it is a known, high priority problem for the industry, mostly to reduce operational costs more than any real "environmental concern".
A further point on crude oil prices. A substantial part of the recent increase in reported prices is due to the outdated convention of stating prices in US dollars. As the US dollar has depreciated against all major currencies, the stated price of oil has risen.
But for most consumers, the actual price has not risen nearly so much. For example, the increase in the euro price of oil over the past three years has been only about 30 per cent.
Comments closed April 27, 2008.
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Heads in the Sand
Glad he included the "deep green" eco-apocalypo-onanists in his condemnation. By irresponsible blanket opposition to nuclear power, Greenpeace has done nearly as much damage as an oil company to efforts to reduce carbon omissions.
Posted by sunsin | April 13, 2008 5:18 PM