The Quiet Road

The problem, as is so often the case, is free markets. You see, they are maybe possibly perhaps a half-decent way of handling the distribution of new computer games. For instance. But they’re an awful way of dealing with essential non-renewable resources. Seriously awful. In fact, if you had to design a system with the express purpose of bungling resource management you’d probably arrive at something a lot like free market economics.

We’ve arrived at a system which provides as motivation for the production and supply of essential non-renewable resources; the generation of profit. And it bestows the right to choose how the resource should be consumed onto those wealthy enough to purchase it.

I see it as being somewhat akin to a national blood bank / transfusion service being run exclusively for the profit of those who own the system. And to make matters worse, there’s a cabal of millionaires who get their kicks buying blood to bathe in. I mean, let’s be honest, there’s no reason at all for a defender of the free-market principle to object to that.

Certainly if millionaires are buying blood to bathe in, it’ll raise the price and – presumably – generate a greater supply. But this is a finite resource we’re talking about. Over 10% of the population has “needle phobia”. Another 10 – 15% are barred from giving blood because of various contamination issues. And health and safety recommends that nobody should donate blood more than once a month (restricted to 4 times a year in many countries). It’s a finite resource and increased demand will not generate an increased supply beyond the limits imposed by nature.

So first our hypothetical cabal raises the price beyond the capability of the NHS to pay for transfusions, then it raises it beyond the capability of most private patients to pay. Do proponents of the free market believe this is an acceptable situation? Is it OK for rich people to deliberately waste a resource vital to sustain the lives of those with less purchasing power? Is it still OK when it’s your ten-year-old daughter dying in hospital because Peter Stringfellow, Andrew Lloyd-Webber and Richard Branson want to sit in a bath of blood?

Of course, nobody bathes in blood. Leastways nobody you’d invite round for dinner. But I was drawing an analogy, not suggesting that Richard Branson actually has a blood fetish (though you do have to wonder about Lloyd-Webber… nothing would surprise me about him). And it’s an analogy that can be applied more directly than perhaps you’d imagine.

There are rather worrying reports emerging from some of the poorer African nations; Zimbabwe in particular. These reports are unconfirmed and I’ve only read them (thus far) on peak oil mailing lists (so I’m not using them as “evidence”; merely illustrative examples of how market forces will affect essential resource distribution… i.e. if this is not happening now, then it will be soon). As the recent rises in oil price kicked in, the poorest nations have been forced to cut back on the quantity they imported. This is what free markets are all about, after all.

However, in Zimbabwe this is resulting in a major curtailing of the – already decrepit – ambulance service*. People are dying right now because western consumers are willing to pay more for petrol to drive their SUVs to the hypermarket than the Zimbabwean health service can afford to pay to keep their vehicles on the road.

Bloody markets, eh?

I’m pissed off. Really really pissed off. Furious. And I have been for more than a week. I’m so pissed off in fact, that the dark cloud under which I’m living has been mentioned on the TV weather forecast… “and if we take a look at the satellite image, we can see that mad bastid in Rathcoole still hasn’t calmed down”…

Yet the world keeps turning. Funny that.

I’m not going to write about what’s pissing me off… it’s not the most interesting story to the neutral observer. Instead I’m going to cast an angry eye over recent events around the world. Because let’s face it; if there’s one way to mollify a dark and stormy mood, it’s reading the news. Right?

I’ve got a fairly long piece in the works about Israel and the rest of the Middle East, so I’ll not talk about that now… except to say: “Stop killing each other guys! It’s really not helping.” Sadly, as I try to explain in my article, that kind of advice is liable to fall on deaf ears. In my view, none of the major players in this crisis should be viewed as rational agents, and that’s a serious problem.

For now though, allow me to get distracted from the Middle East by a manufactured media frenzy close to home. Is it just me, or does this “airplane liquid bomb plot thingie” get anyone else’s disproportionate-response detector going? If they arrested the people planning to carry it out, why the need to shut down half the world’s air travel? (not that future generations won’t thank the Home Office for the brief respite in fossil fuel usage).

But is that what it takes to utterly banjax the transport infrastructure these days… getting caught planning to banjax it? Surely by that definition, our security services have guaranteed a 100% success rate for all such plans. Either you get caught and everything gets shut down. Or you don’t get caught and everything gets shut down.

I understand, of course, that from the point of view of the hypothetical victims there’s clearly a big difference… but the primary objective of the terrorist is to cause terror and disruption; the individual deaths are a byproduct. And getting caught seems to achieve the primary objective just fine. Does it strike anyone else as a weird way to wage a war… adopting a policy that guarantees your enemy succeeds in their main aims?

I think it goes without saying, though, that the ringleaders of this particular media circus are “Dr. John” Reid and the UK Home Office. Having so spectacularly ballsed-up the Forest Gate operation, a decision was taken to make the maximum public impact with the next significant anti-terrorist “success”. Fricking idiots.

I tell you what my British friends, you guys really need to organise a revolution soon. It’s just as obvious watching from outside as it was when I was huddled within.

As for you in America…? Don’t even get me started. It seems like things are going down the tubes over there faster than you can say “We have always been at war with Eurasia”. Has anyone else noticed this? Florida’s Fear of History: New Law Undermines Critical Thinking (Anyone apart from Gyrus, I mean, who sent it to me)

We don’t want knowledge. We want certainty.

I don’t know a whole lot about Florida (Plus point: Witty blogger, L. Minus points: Jeb Bush, Miami Vice). I read a few articles about the state back when everyone was talking about hanging chads, and it didn’t sound like my kind of place. But then, the USA in general isn’t my kind of place. Great to visit… but very difficult to deal with on a permanent basis.

And I guess when a state elects Jeb Bush as governor it says something about where its head’s at… i.e. roughly the same place as the nation in general. What with Dubya and The War Against Terror and all.

So, as part of an education bill signed into law by Gov. Jeb Bush, Florida has declared that “American history shall be viewed as factual, not as constructed.” That factual history, the law states, shall be viewed as “knowable, teachable, and testable.”

Florida’s lawmakers are not only prescribing a specific view of US history that must be taught (my favorite among the specific commands in the law is the one about instructing students on “the nature and importance of free enterprise to the United States economy”), but are trying to legislate out of existence any ideas to the contrary. They are not just saying that their history is the best history, but that it is beyond interpretation. In fact, the law attempts to suppress discussion of the very idea that history is interpretation.

Robert Jensen | Florida’s Fear of History

Jensen’s article does a great job of exposing the lunacy of this project, so I’ll not dwell upon it, merely point out that there’s two links to his piece, above. Use one.

Don’t mention the war

Sky News is the only news channel I get right now. Which is a bit of a pain in the arse obviously. I call it “news drink”. You know the way bottles of stuff called “juice drink” aren’t juice at all, but watered-down sugar-filled froth instead? As I say, news drink.

All the same, news drink can be informative at times. Rarely down to what’s said of course, but more how it’s said. A couple of days back I watched one of their rent-an-experts go off message and was bemused by the knots the stern anchor-woman tied herself in while trying to rubbish the man she’d introduced as an expert. “What we are seeing in Iraq right now is a civil war. The United Nations estimates that between 75 and 100 people are dying every day in the ongoing conflict…”

At which point she cut him off to remind the viewer that while Dr. Arabic Name may describe Iraq as being in a state of civil war, most experts (very much her emphasis, not mine) agree that it’s not nearly that simple. Most experts will tell you that large parts of the country are now completely stable. Of course we rarely get to hear about this…

At which point she posed a completely unrelated question to another (thankfully on-message) expert who’d just arrived on a screen over her shoulder. But it seemed to me as she trailed off that she was basically claiming that Iraq is not in a state of civil war. It may look that way, but that’s only because the news media is giving a misleading impression.

Oooops.

Sadly though, I don’t actually think it matters what we call it. The armies of Britain and the United States have rained death upon that country and plunged it into violent chaos. It’s the kind of thing that makes me understand precisely why humanity had to invent the concept of sin.

Guess what I’m gonna talk about now?

Ahem… well, on the subject of peak oil and the energy problems we face…

As you would expect, I have much to say. But not right now. Head on over to google news and search for peak oil. My analysis can come at a later date. But when the Financial Times directly ascribes a 1 percent reduction in British economic activity to “supply-side constraints within the energy sector” then you have to wonder about OPEC’s assurances that they’ve got enough excess capacity to handle any possible crisis. I believe a tipping point has been reached. As one financial analyst puts it… “Buy on the dips”.

As for climate change… well, I’m turning off my appliances and I’m being as energy-efficient as I know how to be without entering genuine self-denial. That’s naturally a phase I’m mentally preparing for, but I’ll be blunt… I’m not going there alone; I’ll start denying myself electrical luxuries like PC usage and listening to music the very moment I’m sure I’m part of something big enough to be significant. Until then, I’ll minimise my role in the problem, but I’ll still remain part of it. Yeah, that’s selfish, but there you go… One day I may not have the luxury of a piping hot shower every morning… so I’ll damn well take advantage of the opportunity now. But that doesn’t mean I’ll run the hot-water boiler 24/7.

Of course, having done so well to live a (relatively) low-energy lifestyle, I get the feeling that I’m going to blow all my good intentions out of the water with a flight or two later in the year. Once in a while I get the urge to fly somewhere hot and spend a week sitting at a beach-front café eating freshly made bread dipped in olive oil and parmesan while sipping chilled orange juice. I read a book and watch the world go by. Theoretically I could spend a week doing that here in Dublin. But for some reason it just doesn’t work unless you’re next to the mediterranean.

Despite getting that urge quite a bit, it’s been a fair few years since I’ve actually done it… just buggered off somewhere to eat nice food for a week or two. And something tells me that a couple of weeks in Italy would be exactly what the doctor ordered for late September 2006. A few days in Naples for the mediterranean vibe, then a train northwards and ten days of exploring the finest cheapest restaurants and cafés Italy has to offer (of which there are many).

Tattoo it on my forehead kids… I flew to Naples to eat nice food. It’s my fault.

Ah, don’t worry kids, there’s a good chance I’ll have guilted myself out of the idea before I ever get round to booking the ticket.

Anyways, that’s me for now. I’m off to listen to some music. I’m currently reminding myself just how amazing Peggy Suicide is… you always remember the singles of course, but tracks like If You Loved Me At All and Pristeen are amongst the best things Copey’s ever done. If you don’t know this album, you don’t know music.

So what’s the relationship between “peak oil” and climate change? Is there one? After all, with less of the stuff to burn, there’ll be less “greenhouse gas” emissions. Right? Does fossil fuel depletion have a silver lining?

Well. No. I’m afraid not. Leastways if there is a silver lining on peak oil’s cloud, it’s not an antidote to anthropogenic climate change.

But you knew I was going to say that right? After all, I’m always soooo negative. But it’s not like I want to be a harbinger of doom. Nothing would give me greater pleasure than announcing; “hey! y’know all that peak oil malarky? Turns out it’s a bunch of arse. Magic pixie dust from space-land will sort everything out!”

One day I’ll have some good news for you. I promise. But statistically speaking it’s unlikely to be today.

Less oil = More emissions. Huh?

I know, I know. Counter-intuitive or what? But the world is a lot like that. It’s rarely as it seems. And even when it is, chances are you’re looking at it wrong. It’s a bit like Oliver Kamm walking into a room containing other people and not being punched repeatedly in the face by all present. Common sense insists it shouldn’t happen. Yet apparently it does.

The first thing that I want to stress is that there’s a fundamental sloppiness with the term “peak oil”. In reality, when I (and most informed people) use the term, we are using it as a shorthand for “peak oil and natural gas”. Even ASPO uses the shorthand… the name of the organisation is actually “Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas” but they clearly realised that ASPOaG isn’t the catchiest of acronyms.

There’s now data to suggest that conventional crude oil production peaked late last year. Dr. Colin Campbell has made it clear that total oil production will peak within 5 to 15 years of conventional crude. His analysis also suggests that we’ll reach a peak in natural gas production within a few years of peak oil production. Gas, however, has an entirely different depletion profile to crude oil (often referred to as the natural gas “cliff” to distinguish it from the relatively gentle Hubbert “curve” of oil depletion) and production rates plummet rapidly soon after hitting peak.

Unfortunately, as any free-market-economist-type person will tell you, even if oil and gas were to begin depleting (a scenario many of them will actually deny… insisting that greater demand will lead to greater investment leading to greater supply; what I refer to as “The Spoilt Child Hypothesis”), the market will merely switch to supplying alternatives. The demand isn’t for oil per se, but – more abstractly – for the uses that oil can be put to.

At this point some economists will use the phrase, “the infinite transformability of units of production”. However they’ll use it out of earshot of me as I’ve a tendency towards violence when I hear it.

Economists: Right about one thing

Well, they’re probably right about slightly more than one thing. But in this case they’re right about people not wanting oil for oil’s sake (or gas). They want something that’ll make their car go, or something that’ll generate the electricity for their homes, or something that’ll keep them warm in the winter and cook their food.

Unfortunately there are no adequate substitutes for either oil or gas. But there are plenty of inadequate ones. Which is where the carbon emissions problem raises its sooty head.

If the market is given free rein to attempt to fill the supply shortfall as demanded by consumers of the high-energy lifestyle, then we will see an inevitable return to coal-fired power plants. Replacing gas power generation with coal would see a massive increase in carbon emissions. Don’t believe that guff about “clean coal”… it’s sleight-of-hand, like the electric car; merely moving the emissions away from the end user. The atmosphere doesn’t distinguish between emissions from a “clean coal” processing plant and those from burning “dirty coal” in your fireplace.

And it doesn’t end there.

A reduction in fossil-fuel availability will inevitably result in an increase in wood-burning and consequent increase in deforestation. As any school-child will tell you, trees are the planet’s natural solar-powered carbon sequesters. With fewer trees, less of our carbon emissions will be recycled out of the atmosphere. And this is part of a particularly vicious positive-feedback loop. Less trees begets less trees. Just ask the Easter Islanders.

And then there’s the staggeringly destructive idea of automobile biofuels. People don’t demand petrol, they merely demand that their cars work. And if palm oil will make them work, then they’ll fill up with palm oil. During the past 20 years, more than 85% of the deforestation in Malaysia was carried out to clear land for palm oil plantations for the export market. Not only did this involve the displacement of indigenous peoples and mass slaughter of wildlife, but also the drainage of large areas of swampland.

Anyone paying attention in biology class knows the problems associated with draining swamp and bogs… as the peat and mosses dry out they decompose releasing huge quantities of greenhouse gasses. Palm oil, it seems, is almost as big a contributor (barrel for barrel) to anthropogenic climate change as its fossil counterpart.

Not a supply-side problem

This is the crux of the matter. And it’s something that perpetual-growth capitalists just can’t get their head around. The problem we face is not how to replace oil and gas to meet the demands of energy-hungry consumers. The problem is how we manage the demands of those consumers so that they become less energy-hungry and more responsible.

I don’t know the precise solution to that problem. But I do know that it can’t be provided by free markets.

Throughout the 20th Century, the United States has been a profligate energy consumer. The rapid and expansive growth of the economy was based on cheap and abundant energy. Little thought and planning have been given to how to transition to the realities of the 21st Century when petroleum and natural gas resources will become depleted. The U.S. economy uses 50 percent more energy per unit of GDP than the other developed nations of the world. The fossil fuel-based, automobile-centered, throw-away economy is not a viable model for the United States or the rest of the world over the long term. It is not sustainable.

But listen, you don’t have to take my word for it. Here’s what a recent United States Army strategic planning document had to say…

Throughout the 20th Century, the United States has been a profligate energy consumer. The rapid and expansive growth of the economy was based on cheap and abundant energy. Little thought and planning have been given to how to transition to the realities of the 21st Century when petroleum and natural gas resources will become depleted. The U.S. economy uses 50 percent more energy per unit of GDP than the other developed nations of the world. The fossil fuel-based, automobile-centered, throw-away economy is not a viable model for the United States or the rest of the world over the long term. It is not sustainable.

Energy Trends and Their Implications for U.S. Army Installations | Download PDF

Ireland, like everywhere else on the planet, is staring down the barrel of an energy crisis. Petrol prices at the pumps hit an all-time high in Dublin this week. Adjusted for inflation, there were brief periods during the political instability of the 1970s when they spiked higher, but there seems little doubt that crude oil will be trading at above $80 per barrel before long, which outstrips even those earlier spikes.

Dr. Colin Campbell, of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas (ASPO), speculated on Irish radio a couple of weeks ago that we could easily witness a fivefold increase on current prices by the end of the decade. When I mentioned this to someone, they told me it was impossible.

“That would mean I’d be paying €400 to fill my car. I can’t afford that.”

I pointed out that didn’t make it impossible. Merely extremely inconvenient for them. But consumerism has somehow – bizarrely – conflated those two distinct ideas in the minds of millions. Which is more than a little unsettling.

I’ve remarked on this many times, but it’s difficult not to find it remarkable. You see, watching “peak oil” develop from being a prediction shared by myself and a few hundred other people into one of the four greatest problems our civilisation will face (the others being climate change, nuclear weapons and Barry Manilow), has just been a remarkable experience. This conspiracy theory possessed by the lunatic fringe – the very premise of which was openly mocked by authorities and experts – has evolved so quickly and dramatically.

If you dig around the various political and corporate websites of the world, you can begin to see references to ‘peak oil’ emerging. But I believe the statement from Irish Green Party energy spokesman Eamon Ryan TD is the first time I’ve heard the phrase uttered in public by an Irish politician…

The only answer to the rising price spiral was to consume less, he said.

“Oil prices may spike above $100 a barrel within the year, but calls for a cut in taxes instead of moving to reduce our oil dependency were missing the point.”

“Prices may fall in the short term, before soaring when the long-term problems with peak oil really start to kick in.”

OK, so it is only the Greens. But it’s a start. And I’m delighted to see the words “consume less” appearing. People should get used to the idea of consuming less, before they have to get used to having less to consume.

What, I guess, sets Ireland a little apart from other nations is the fact that the government (Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment) have commissioned a report into the issue of Ireland’s dependence on oil. The Forfás report will be remembered as the Buzz Aldrin of peak oil studies. The second official document (after the US Department of Energy’s Hirsch Report – download PDF) to highlight the approaching crisis.

The key findings of the Forfás report are as follows:

• There is growing evidence to suggest that the era of a plentiful supply of conventional oil is approaching an end. Various experts and groups have developed projections for when peak oil will occur. While there is a wide variation of estimates about the likely timing, most expert commentators believe that 10-15 years from now, conventional oil supply will no longer be capable of satisfying world demand at current prices. While this subject is clouded by a low level of quality data, there is near global consensus that the potential consequences of peak oil for governments, economies, businesses and indeed individual consumers should be considered now as it will take at least ten years to prepare for its onset.
• Ireland consumed nine million tonnes of oil in 2004, an amount that has doubled since 1990. In 2002, Ireland ranked 3rd highest among the EU-25 countries in terms of oil consumed per capita.
• Electricity generation and transportation are the two main factors for Ireland’s high oil dependence. Ireland has relied considerably more on oil for electricity generation than most other EU countries and, as of 2002, had the 6th most oil dependent electricity generation system of the EU-25 countries. The amount of oil used for transportation in Ireland tripled between 1972 and 2002, leaving Ireland consuming at least 50 per cent more per capita than the average of the EU-25 by the end of the period.
• Taking into account the Irish economy’s relative dependence on imported oil and the relative share of oil in total Irish energy consumption, Ireland is among the most sensitive to rising oil prices and therefore among the most vulnerable to a peak oil scenario.

And the key recommendations are as follows:

• Ireland should undertake a number of initiatives to reduce the usage of oil in transportation, for example, by bringing about the replacement over time of the existing stock of vehicles with more fuel-efficient vehicles and the provision of alternative modes of transport, particularly public transport, that run on electricity rather than petroleum related fuels (e.g. electrified trams, trains and buses). The potential of using biofuels for transportation should also be investigated.
• Ireland should assess options to address security of supply concerns that may arise in the context of peak oil. Options should include expanding domestic oil storage capabilities and contracting bilaterally with oil-producing countries that continue to have a surplus of production relative to their domestic requirements. Accelerating plans to develop more East-West electricity interconnection with the UK would also provide a significant degree of energy security, subject to the UK resolving its own security of energy supply problems.
• Ireland should consider increasing the use of renewable energy sources for electricity generation (such as wind, wave, tidal energy etc), maintaining the continued operation of Moneypoint (Ireland’s only coal fired power station). Although not economically feasible in the short to medium term, Ireland should consider the possibility of developing nuclear energy as a more long-term solution.
• Ireland should adopt a proactive approach to energy efficiency, seeking to place Ireland at the leading edge of energy efficiency practices. The EU Energy Performance Building Directive (EPBD), which came into effect in January 2006 will provide a basis for assessing and improving energy usage in commercial and residential buildings that is intended to result in a more efficient use of electrical energy.
• Ireland should accelerate the implementation of the National Spatial Strategy in preparation for peak oil. Current spatial patterns in Ireland militate against the development of an efficient and effective public transport system. The development of regional gateways and hubs will play a key part in enabling urban communities to respond to the challenges of peak oil. Those communities that are adequately resourced in terms of public transport infrastructure will have greater choice in relation to how they respond.

Amazingly enough, this is all pretty sensible stuff for a government report. The clear emphasis is on energy efficiency, demand-reduction and replacing private car use with public transport. And for those who haven’t read it, that is in fact the general view taken by the report. I’m not selectively quoting, those are the conclusions in full. Which is why I’m so incredibly pissed off at the Irish Green Party’s response, and any respect I had for Eamon Ryan TD (their energy spokesman who made the “peak oil” remark) has been taken out back and given a good kicking.

You’re aware, of course, why the Greens responded with such mindless aggression (and believe me, “mindless” was a word chosen very very carefully). It was the word “nuclear” that did it.

No Nukes

Back when I was a teenage conspiracy theorist and UFO crashes were being covered up at a rate of knots, I would have been convinced that Big Business had paid off the Irish Green Party to rubbish the first sensible policy document to emerge in decades.

My mind is no longer clouded by the excitablity of youth. Now I just figure they’re a bunch of fricking idiots.

Let’s be clear about one thing… building a nuclear power station in Ireland would be deeply idiotic. Relative to our size, we probably have better access to renewable energy resources for electricity generation than almost anywhere else on the planet. The decision to use a non-renewable, horrendously expensive and deeply unpopular alternative could only be taken by the quality of moron that even mainstream politics would reject (hard though it may be to believe).

The nuclear debate is actually a very simple one. Far less complicated than the pro-nuclear side would have you believe and, I suspect, far simpler than they’re aware. According to the Australian government – who possess the world’s largest reserves of uranium ore – we have less than fifty years of the stuff remaining at current consumption rates. This fact will become more apparent as consumption increases when – inevitably – some countries do use nukes to mitigate oil and gas depletion.

I also have grave concerns regarding the safety of nuclear reactors and the waste they generate. However, I have no interest in discussing those as objections to a nuclear power policy. The sustainability issue speaks for itself and until that can be adequately addressed I don’t see the need to complicate the debate (note: In the comments, I’m willing to discuss the logistics of “uranium from seawater” and will even speculate on currently unproven technologies like fast-breeder reactors and nuclear fusion… but the last time I had those debates I came away convinced that they don’t – as of now – make nuclear energy sustainable). And replacing one source of energy with another experiencing identical supply constraints is not a sane policy.

People’s Front of Judea

Is it the mindlessness of the mob that leads institutions (such as the Green Party of Ireland) to shoot themselves in the foot so effectively? Or is it something to do with being a pressure group “in opposition” for so long, so that when someone finally starts to agree with them, they launch a fullscale attack?

And the sheer dishonesty of elements of that attack leave an unpleasant taste in the mouth.

In particular I want to address Eamon Ryan’s response. As the party spokesman on energy, I would expect him to be best informed on both his own party policies in the area, as well as on the issues involved. So I can’t make up my mind whether he failed to read the report he’s responding to, failed to understand it, or has a vested interest in misrepresenting it.

Ignorance, stupidity or dishonesty? Frankly I find none of them to be attractive qualities in a member of parliament.

We welcome the debate on nuclear power and are confident that a proper economic and scientific analysis of the option will show nuclear is not the right solution for Ireland. We regret that the Forfás report on oil dependency turned in the end into a call for nuclear power. Remarkably there was no economic or scientific analysis in the report to back up such a call.

First of all, they clearly don’t “welcome” the debate. The report they line up to “challenge”… the one the energy spokesman “regrets” simply calls for nuclear power to be “considered” as one of a number of options. That’s the word that’s used. It’s one paragraph in the report. It reads…

Another option for Ireland to secure its long run energy security, especially in relation to electricity generation, will be to consider developing the use of nuclear energy. Although this is explicitly not part of Ireland’s policy preferences at present, the revived interest in redeveloping a nuclear electricity sector in the UK will provide an important context for Ireland’s electricity options in the next 5-15 years. The Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) suggest that, due to the large size of nuclear plant and the small size of the Irish electricity system, a nuclear facility would require so much back-up conventional plant as to substantially raise its overall costs, reducing any potential attraction for investors. The economically feasible scale of a nuclear power station would exceed the capacity of the Irish market to absorb its output. Therefore, Ireland is currently not an attractive location for building a nuclear power station. However, if smaller scale power stations were to come on stream and Ireland’s level of interconnection with the UK market was significantly increased, nuclear energy could become a more realistic energy option for Ireland.

Y’know, in the dictionary, under “equivocal” it says “See that one paragraph about Irish nuclear power potential in the Forfás oil dependency report”. Seriously, if that’s not a call for a debate, then what the hell is it?

Here you have a potentially influential report emerging from within government channels (also with potential for international significance… Dr. Robert Hirsch was a consultant on the report, so you can be sure it’s getting picked up by researchers googling for info); a report filled to the brim with sensible energy policy ideas; and yet the Greens seize on the one ambiguous paragraph that may, in a certain light, give them pause for thought. They’re not just throwing the baby out with the bathwater by painting this report as “a call for nuclear power”, they’re throwing a big sack of handgrenades out after it.

I don’t know what upsets me more… the diabolical nature of capitalism or the incompetence of those we elect to keep it in check. The most plausible explanation that I’ve come up with for Eamon Ryan TD’s response is that he heard an interview or had a discussion with one of the authors of the report. The author was pro-nuclear (i.e. someone on the opposite side of the debate to me and the Greens) and put forward a pro-nuke argument in the context of the report. Ryan didn’t read the report; merely presumed it reflected the opinions of the person he heard talking. Because except for one other mention (non-policy related) nuclear power is not mentioned anywhere else in the report. If you have read this whole article, you have read every relevant word it had to say on the subject.

If the Green Party are rejecting an important set of policy recommendations, and putting their weight behind discrediting them, based upon Eamon Ryan TD’s interpretation of some hearsay, then he needs to resign his brief.

We are now challenging Forfás to present their analysis. The authors of the report argue that we need nuclear power to provide for new electric transport systems. However, only 0.1 per cent of our current electricity goes to power electrified rail lines such as the Dart and the Luas. We could provide a hundred new Dart systems and still have little problem in meeting the increase in electricity demand through the use of renewable resources.

This also pisses me off. Notice the screengrab above, and lovely juxtaposition between the image promoting their biofuels policy and the line: “Remarkably there was no economic or scientific analysis in the report to back up such a call.” It’s pots and kettles all over the place. Except it’s not. Here it’s the pot calling something that’s not black, black.

The reason the Forfás report doesn’t present the “analysis” Eamon Ryan demands, is that it readily admits that the analysis has not been done. In fact, the report is very much a call for precisely that kind of analysis to be done. It urgently calls for assessment of all possible energy resources. This report was an investigation into oil dependency (the title gives it away: A Baseline Assessment of Ireland’s Oil Dependence). What it discovered was that there’s a big problem approaching. In response it calls for research into the best way of solving that problem. Yet the Greens jump up and try to discredit it.

This report calls for an open and honest assessment of our options. Furthermore, it lists several serious difficulties with the nuclear option – highlighting more cons than pros – while doing nothing of the sort when discussing renewables or demand reduction. Taken at face value, this report appears vaguely biased against nuclear power in Ireland. However, if some of the people who compiled it wish to argue in favour of nukes then they’re more than entitled to do so… that’s the nature of the debate that the Greens claim to welcome.

And in case it’s unclear as to why I found such irony in the juxtaposition of that challenge “to present analysis” with the ‘Biofuels’ image, let me direct you to my previous article (Biofuels – The fuel of the future) where I question the rationale behind viewing biofuels as a substitute for fossil fuels. It is my contention that by putting their modest weight behind Biofuels, the Greens are guilty of exactly the failure to provide analysis they wrongly accuse the Forfás report of.

Biofuels, if viewed as a serious contender to plug our liquid fuel shortfall, will result in catastrophic ecological destruction. George Monbiot – in his article, Worse Than Fossil Fuel – states that “Biodiesel enthusiasts have accidentally invented the most carbon-intensive fuel on earth”. He’s not wrong. HT Odum’s quip that ‘modern agriculture is merely an inefficient method of converting fossil fuel into food’ can be equally applied to biofuels. And quite aside from the energy inefficiency involved, the effects on biodiversity would inevitably be disastrous.

Is the Green Party of Ireland suggesting that arable land currently devoted to food production be switched to biofuel production? Or do they suggest we appropriate land from currently untouched ecologies? Either way, have they examined the effects that such an expansion of largescale monoculture policy would have on the environment they’ve selected to grow the fuel stock? My back of the napkin calculation suggested that Ireland would need to devote its entire arable land surface area to growing high-yield fuel crops, while still importing almost half its liquid fuel needs, just to drive the current private automobile fleet (i.e. not addressing freight, power generation, aviation, heating, etc.)

Let me make the same challenge to Eamon Ryan TD… present the analysis which suggests that biofuel is the fuel of the future. And that doesn’t mean a photoshoot next to a van running on used cooking oil.

The authors’ proposal that we contract for a lifetime extension of the Wylfa nuclear plant in North Wales, to feed nuclear power back across an Irish sea interconnector also makes little sense. The reality is that the British Government is never going to agree to this. They themselves are running short of generating power and having a heated debate about whether they should build new nuclear plants. There is no way they will not give up options such as extending existing plant lifetimes which could meet their own needs.

I have no idea whether the authors of the report recommend importing more electricity generated at the Wyfla plant in North Wales. Perhaps they do, but they don’t do it in the report. Unless the search facility in my copy of Adobe Reader isn’t working; neither the word “Wyfla” nor the word “Wales” appear in the text of “A Baseline Assessment of Ireland’s Oil Dependence”.

The report does indeed recommend a greater integration of the UK and Irish electricity grids. This is a staggeringly obvious recommendation, and anyone seriously examining energy security in Ireland would make it. I suspect that Eamon Ryan TD is correct when he suggests that the British government, when examining its own energy security needs, will refuse to increase exports to Ireland.

But that’s no reason not to examine the option and perhaps put out feelers… with a major investment in Irish windpower, it could well be beneficial to both the UK and Ireland to increase transmission capacity between the countries; with the British grid taking advantage of Irish spare capacity during periods of peak wind power and Ireland drawing on British spare capacity on calm days. I’m not suggesting it would work, but I fail to see why the Greens are challenging a call to examine the possibility.

There are many environmental reasons why nuclear power makes no sense but it will be ruled out here first and foremost on simple economic and energy policy grounds. The large size of nuclear plants within a small electricity grid such as our own means the cost of reserve power to cover plant breakdowns, makes it prohibitively expensive.

As I mentioned earlier, my objection to nuclear power rests on its unsustainable nature. And when I speak of “sustainability”, I’m speaking of physical systems sustainability; environmental sustainability. I see all matters of policy through that particular prism. Economics is never a consideration, and I despair when the Greens of all people place it “first and foremost”. My fundamental question is this: “Given a baseline requirement for a 100% sustainable civilisation, how can humanity organise itself and its available resources in such a way as to achieve this with the least suffering?”

Of course some of those terms need defining, but that can wait for another day. One thing that should be recognised, though, is that my insistence on “sustainability” is a philosophical / ethical / moral stance. And one I’m willing to discuss. I believe that through the use of military force and the ruthless exploitation of the remaining resources of the planet, we in the West could probably sustain our way of life for a while longer. However I consider that a morally repugnant option. We have a moral responsibility to those who are physically weaker than us, not to use our superior might to take advantage of that disparity. And we have a moral responsibility to future generations to provide them with a world that is at least no worse than the one we inherited.

Modern western civilisation is failing in both those moral duties. The Forfás report, by placing so much emphasis on demand reduction and energy efficiency, is proposing policies which will – indirectly – begin to redress that. I’m still confounded by the Greens failure to embrace the “all-but-one” paragraphs of the report that don’t mention nukes.

The Green Party is already putting in place real measures to solve the energy crisis we face far more effectively. In Fingal and Dun Laoghaire Councils we have put new energy efficient building standards into local area development plans which will cut in half the power used in our buildings, saving householders thousands of euro each year.

Excellent stuff. This is precisely the kind of activity recommended by the Forfás report.

Switching our car fleet to fuel efficient engines would save as much energy as a nuclear power plant would provide. Switching off our televisions and radios from standby could save the equivalent power produced by two of our peat fired power stations.

Both statements may well be true even though they sound so trite… where’s the analysis Eamon? Eh? But it’s the language of “business as usual”. And guess what…?

All these measures save the Irish public hard cash with no loss of the services energy provides.

See it? The “vote for me” line? The Forfás report implies that the future may well require sacrifice. That it won’t be business as usual. That our society faces significant problems.

The Green message – from the mouth of their energy spokesman – is that a vote for him will save you money, let you buy a shiny new space car and require no greater change in your lifestyle than switching off your telly before you go to bed.

Sleep tight.

I watched the weekly political debate show, Questions & Answers, last night. It confirmed all my worst fears about the corporatisation of politics. You’ve no idea how much it annoys me that the field of debate has been so narrowed; that mainstream politics has been reduced to a few ever-so-slightly differentiated shades of capitalist grey. The politicos on the panel were a Labour TD (TD = MP) representing the left, a government minister representing the centre, and an independent Senator representing the right.

The first question asked whether or not the privatisation of Aer Lingus “represents a good deal”. Now, it’s only since I’ve returned to Dublin that I realised Aer Lingus (Ireland’s national airline) was still state-owned. Not only that, but it is currently – relative to its size – an extremely profitable airline. In the past, during downturns in air travel or during periods of mismanagement, the company has required government / taxpayer support. Now that it is doing well, the current government (plus the main opposition party) think it’s a good idea to sell it off.

Presumably the idea is to make some quick cash on the deal before peak oil wipes out the airline industry. And regular readers might think I’d be in favour of that… offload an asset soon to become damn near worthless into the hands of a bunch of market speculators. Use the money to build a few hospitals. What could be wrong with that? Well. Quite a lot actually.

Am I never happy?

Well, yes. But not when a bunch of centre-right oafs are blundering around the country, selling off any public asset that isn’t nailed down. I once wrote that I believed Britain could still be defined, loosely, as a socialist nation up until Thatcher sold off the energy and communications infrastructure. By doing that she made a bunch of money for the already wealthy and ended the ability of the British public to control their own economy.

Recently this Irish government has flogged the telecommunications system, converting its legal status from “service provider” to “profit engine”. It’s interesting to note that investors are very happy with the deal, but the Irish citizen is less so. Leastways that’s the portrait painted by the media. Thankfully it looks as though energy production will remain public at least until capitalism begins to visibly decay (and hence, indefinitely). So Ireland is – in a specific, but very real sense – still socialist to a degree. As of right now, the public still owns significant assets, significant elements of the economic infrastructure and can exercise control over those assets through their democratic representation.

Few things piss me off more than watching politicians; the peoples representatives; shake their heads and meekly (or even worse, condescendingly) state that they can’t do anything about a social problem because it’s in the hands of private enterprise. For years successive British transport ministers agreed that the rail system was deteriorating, but told the public that they had no control over the way private companies are run. It makes me want to wring some necks.

Which brings me back to Questions & Answers and the subject of privatising Aer Lingus. The very first thing that should be pointed out is that this is a godawful deal. Even if I dust off that capitalist hat I tried on for size back in the 90s, the fact is – if you were going to privatise an airline, you really wouldn’t do it this way. The government intends to retain a significant, but minority shareholding in the company. This means there’s a siginificant reduction in the amount of shares being sold, and a consequent loss of income. On top of that, by retaining an influence on the company board of directors, it makes the whole airline less attractive to private investors who will worry about “government meddling” and fear that they won’t be able to make the business as profitable as they would like if it was required to go against the policy of the government of the day in order to do so (a government that could be Green or Leftist or anything in 10 years).

So essentially; from the point of view of the taxpayer, the government is nigh guaranteeing the lowest possible price while at the same time ceding control over the asset. And from the point of view of the capitalist, the government is retaining the right to interfere with how a private company is run, and thus making the whole venture far less likely to succeed commercially. On top of all that, the newly privatised company intends to borrow at least as much as it earned from the floatation as soon as privatisation is completed. Possibly significantly more. All of which reduces the price that investors are willing to pay for those shares that are made available.

Given the likely direction to be taken by the airline industry in the face of peak oil, this will result in the collapse of the privatised Aer Lingus within about 10 years. Probably less given how deeply in debt they will be. And there’ll be very little the government will be able to do about it, except wait until the company runs itself into a massive mountain of debt and bail them out at an absurd cost to the exchequer. Far, far more than was gained in the sell-off.

But hey, I’ve no doubt a bunch of already-wealthy speculators will make a small fortune in the immediate aftermath of the privatisation. So that’s alright then. Once the government looks after them, the average citizen can rest easy knowing he or she only has to become a millionaire and they too will be represented by the people they vote for.

Market disengagement instead of privatisation

What should be done is obvious. Market disengagement. And what annoyed me about Questions & Answers was the fact that not a single member of the panel even hinted at having thought in these terms, let alone giving them the headspace to examine seriously. The Labour TD was opposed to privatisation, as are her party. Credit where it’s due. However her objections were all about practical issues. It’s as though the notion that there may be an ideological debate to be had was somehow quaint. Faintly embarrassing. You got the feeling that perhaps she had convictions, but wouldn’t dream of admitting that in public… so if you could demonstrate that “the deal was good” for the taxpayer that all would be well.

She even resorted to the bland buzzwords of doomed capitalism. About how “everyone wants to see” Aer Lingus compete well in the marketplace. About how “of course” we want to see the company grow and expand into new routes and markets. Sheesh… doesn’t anyone actually believe anything anymore? I mean aside from The Race For Profit Is A Race That Must Be Won.

I was reminded of Douglas Adams’ wonderful observation about the BBC…

Television companies are not in the business of delivering television programs to their audience, they’re in the business of delivering audiences to their advertisers. (This is why the BBC has such a schizophrenic time – it’s actually in a different business from all its competitors)

Douglas Adams | What have we got to lose?

You see, it is my belief that a state airline should not be trying to “compete” at all. In the marketplace or anywhere else. It should be run, like any other state asset, in a manner that can best serve the Irish public. Everyone on the panel, and – it seems – everyone in the Irish media, believes that Aer Lingus needs significant new investment to buy more planes so that it can expand. But that’s complete nonsense. It is not the best way to serve the Irish public. The last thing Aer Lingus should be planning is expansion.

Small is beautiful

Look, the airline business is at its peak right now. Maybe another two years… maybe three tops. After that, it’s permanently downhill for jet-engined passenger flight. But I accept that whatever commercial flight does still exist during the next 10 or 15 years will look something like its present form. There’ll just be a lot less of it, and it’ll be much more expensive. Eventually it’ll die completely and all international flight will be done in slow solar-powered dirigibles, and the enterprise will become rather sedate and civilised, with dining rooms and cool observation decks and everything (that’s the optimist talking… I usually keep him locked in the cellar).

But until then, and while modern air travel is gasping its last, there will remain a need for scheduled flights to and from this country. It is the job of a state airline to provide that service as effectively as possible. It is not its job to compete with other airlines in the lucrative low-cost short-haul market. Nor its job to expand into another five US destinations and provide the Irish consumer with more choice. Its job is to ensure that Irish people can get to and from wherever they need to go, whenever they need to go there. That this island does not become isolated before anywhere else. Climate change activists may not like this job, but all the same, that’s what it is.

And to this end, the best strategy is to begin reducing the size of the company and securing its ability to do two things very very well. Getting people to and from Heathrow efficiently. And getting people to and from New York efficiently. From Heathrow there are connecting flights to every major city in the world. From New York, to everywhere in America.

Over a period of a couple of years, Aer Lingus should sell off its entire fleet with the exception of those aircraft required to service New York and London. This would almost certainly (bizarrely) net the government more than the sale of the company as a whole. Of course, the workforce and the unions won’t like that very much. And that’s where the traditional left is really coming from with its desire for expansion.

But look, these are well-trained professionals by-and-large and they’ll be beating the rush. The entire industry is going to be shedding jobs before too long; let the Aer Lingus staff get that particular skillset into the job market before the others. And by losing their jobs because of a deliberate scale-down and asset sale, they can get very generous redundancy cheques; unlike those who lose their jobs through bankruptcy. The rest of the money from the asset sale (planes cost a lot of money, I’m sure there’ll be some left over) can make up the current pensions deficit in the company.

Those two routes alone may not make a profitable company. I honestly don’t know. But even if it didn’t, I’m certain it could be done efficiently enough so that the shortfall in the running costs won’t cost the taxpayer too much. And in return for that small tax burden, Irish people know that they are securely connected to the rest of the world via a service they themselves own and control. At least until either Heathrow or New York cease fulfilling their function due to peak oil… but I guarantee you that a privatised Aer Lingus will go under before that happens.

Capitalists will complain of course. Blah blah blah government subsidies blah blah blah restrictive practices unfair competition blah. And yes. It’s all those things. Even the blahs. What part of “anti-capitalist” don’t you understand? But hey, just think of all the fun the other airlines will have fighting for scraps… expanding into the routes abandoned by Aer Lingus… after all, if Aer Lingus is selling the planes, someone is buying (and it’s a little known fact that there’s a shortage of commercial jet aircraft in the market at the moment… airlines are placing big orders and having to wait years for delivery… right now, it’s a sellers market).

Many on my side of the barbed wire may be looking at me a little askew also. Am I trying to put forward some kind of sustainable jet airline industry idea here? Preaching business as usual? Isn’t that precisely what I criticise the mainstream environmental movement for doing? Well yes, that is what I criticise the Greens for, but no that’s not what I’m doing.

If tomorrow I were ordained God Emperor, then it’d be solar-powered dirigibles or nothing. So get those thinking caps on over at JPL, you folks are very very smart, I’ve no doubt you can adapt to a new specification and come up with some wild new ideas. The reality is, whatever way you cut it, the airline industry – in its current form – will not survive.

However, what would I do in the unlikely event that I’m not made God Emperor, but instead merely put in charge of Aer Lingus and given a specific brief… “Turn this profitable company into a public service and ensure that Ireland is connected to the international transport network so long as that network exists”.

And well, that’s what I’d do.

Energy Futures is an organisation which describes its primary objective as “raising public awareness regarding the scale of our fossil fuel dependency and the impact of a possible global energy shortage on the Irish economy”.

It is due to be launched on Wednesday this week (April 5th 2006) at two events; a business forum and a public seminar. I plan to attend the public seminar and will doubtlessly have something to report later in the week. One of the speakers is Dr. Colin J. Campbell, founder of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas (ASPO), and one of the main drivers of the peak oil debate.

I’d recommend anyone who might be in Dublin on the evening of April 5th to attend what will undoubtedly be a fascinating seminar. It takes place at:
The Round Room,
The Mansion House,
Dawson St.,
Dublin 2.

It starts at 7:30pm, runs until 10pm, and costs €25 on the door. Maybe see you there?

Biofuels are the fuel of the future claims the Green Party of Ireland. Let’s hope they’re wrong.

I was heartened to see that the Greens are an influential force in Irish politics. While the latest polls suggest they’ll only get 7% of the vote in the next General Election (probably next year, though theoretically it could be called early), Ireland’s proportional representation system means that they could very well – given current party alliances – find themselves holding the balance of power. Whichever of the major blocs wishes to form a government for the next five years will have to offer the Greens something significant in order to do so. A genuine bidding war between the two major centrist parties over who can offer the most environmentally sound policies would be nice to see.

Hardly revolutionary I grant you. But it’s a step in the right direction.

I just hope the Greens don’t squander the opportunity by demanding support for the biofuels strategy. Environmental organisations in Ireland, and throughout the world, need to be attacking private car use as the absurd and obscene waste of resources that it is. What they shouldn’t be doing is reassuring people that the future can be business as usual, just by different means. It may be a less popular message, but it has the advantage of being the truth.

Though perhaps it’s foolish to believe that should count for anything.

According to Nationmaster (a godsend for those of us who habitually like to pepper our writing with statistics) who cite a 2002 World Bank report, Ireland comes 18th in a survey of car-ownership in developed nations. There are 272 cars per 1,000 people in Ireland which is significantly below the developed nation average of 437.3 per 1,000.

However 272 cars per 1,000 people still amounts to almost 1.1 million cars in a nation of 4 million people. And it’s a pretty small island.

Now, if we are to believe the RAC, the average distance travelled per car per annum in Ireland is 16,000km, with an average engine efficiency of 10.55km per litre. So Ireland’s private automobile fleet gets through – back of the napkin calculation – 1,650,000,000 litres of petrol per year. 1.65 billion litres. Which is a lot of fuel for a pretty small island. And that’s private automobiles (Ireland has 359 motor vehicles per 1,000 people; I’m concentrating only on cars here).

How many litres of biofuels would be required to replace 1.65 billion litres of petrol? And how much arable land would be required to grow all that biomass? Have the Green Party worked out these numbers? I suspect not. Certainly they don’t publish them on their rose-tinted website. And where do the Greens stand on the subject of biodiversity Vs monocultures? Championing biofuels would suggest a side of the fence I’m not comfortable on.

Plus, rather importantly, the ERoEI of biofuels isn’t well-established. There’s been few studies, and fewer still large-scale experiments. David Pimentel (a professor at Cornell) published a study in the Encyclopedia of Physical Sciences and Technology (a peer-reviewed journal) which created significant controversy by claiming that ethanol from corn (one of the most widespread biofuels) has an ERoEI of less than 100%. In other words, claims Pimentel, the planting, harvesting and conversion of corn into ethanol uses more energy than gets generated by burning the end product.

Note: Energy Returned on Energy Invested (ERoEI) is sometimes referred to as Net Energy Ratio (NER). Although the two have slightly different definitions, with one being expressed as a percentage, the other as a decimal ratio; they are nonetheless similar enough to consider them the same thing in all but the most technical of discussions. I’m pointing this out because I’ve noticed both terms beginning to crop up in the mainstream media for the first time, and I figured some of you might want to know that they’re near-as-dammit interchangeable (though I’ve encountered pedantic scientists who fly into quite colourful rages for suggesting such a thing).

Anyways, quite apart from Pimentel’s study – which is still causing some consternation and throws the averages right out the window – I’ve read a few papers on the subject, and even contributed my number-crunching skills to one of them. It wouldn’t be out of order to suggest that ethanol can be generated with an NER of between 1.38:1 and 2.62:1. Plus the US government has a new study underway which it believes will give a return of 5:1 (though it concedes in that case “much of the energy gain comes from generating electricity by burning the co-product lignin, rather than from the ethanol itself”, so it should be discounted as a great leap forward in liquid fuel production).

But let’s say we pretend to be optimists for a moment and take that 2.62 and roll it in a little bit of the US government’s 5.0. Let’s say, given optimum conditions and efficiency, you can regain 3.5 units of energy from ethanol for each unit you input into growing and producing it. That’s still a long way off crude oil’s 40:1 to 100:1 (depending on the well). So far off that I’d hesitate to suggest one as a substitute for the other even without calculating the arable land required. You just know it’s not going to be good, right?

Pimentel’s study suggested that 97% of all of America’s arable land would be required to fuel the private automobile fleet of that country (again leaving aside freight, air travel, military and government usage, etc etc). And while America has a lot of cars… it’s also got a lot of arable land. What would it be like for Ireland?

Well, if you were to do a genuine like-for-like comparison, and insist that the biofuel industry pay for itself energy-wise in the same way as the fossil fuel industry does, then we should scale up the number of litres of fuel required by the same amount as the NER is scaled down, even though the energy contained in the ethanol isn’t necessarily quite that much less than that contained in petrol. In which case, let’s use the government 5:1 (as we can assume that the electricity generated by the co-product can be channelled into biofuel production in some way).

So using the optimistic biofuel NER of 5:1 and the most pessimistic crude oil NER of 40:1, it suggests that Ireland would require the production of 13.2 billion litres of bioethanol to fuel the current private automobile fleet. I’ll also use the most optimistic litres per hectare number I can find (an Indian company, Ammana Bio, has claimed 7,000 litres per hectare from sorghum; far more than the 1,500 litres / hectare that is often quoted when discussing UK / Northern Europe biofuel production) in order to get a highly conservative estimate of 1.88 million hectares.

Again using Nationmaster we discover that Ireland has a total of 1.05 million hectares of arable and permanent cropland. This suggests that if Ireland were to make the transition to biofuels without a significant parallel reduction in car usage, we’d need to dedicate the entire arable surface of the nation to growing high-yield stock for bioethanol, and still import 45% of our fuel. Quite how this squares with the Green Party’s insistence that “the poverty of two-thirds of the world’s family demands a redistribution of the world’s resources” is anyone’s guess.

Let’s stop talking about biofuels. Start talking about fewer cars.

Hallo folks. Sorry I’ve been a bit quiet this week (I promise, by the way, never to use this blog’s title as a jokey excuse for lackadaisical productivity… y’know, some kind of crass remark like “Well what did you expect from the QUIET road, eh? eh?”). I’ve had one of those weeks where you think to yourself on Friday afternoon, “Haaaang on a second; wasn’t it Sunday just now? What in the name of god happened to the week?”

My great fear is that I’ll be lying on my deathbed and I’ll think “Haaaang on a second; wasn’t I sixteen years old just now? What in the name of god happened to the last fifty years?” Something tells me though, just as the light finally fades forever, we all think that.

So what have I been thinking about this week?

Well, I was going to write something about how publicly listed corporations, through having a legal obligation to maximise the return for their investors, are forces for evil in the world. It’s a common theme in my writing, and this week the thought was sparked off by reading about Body Shop being taken over by L’Oreal. However the impetus was mollified (for this week) by reading Merrick’s excellent piece on the subject. So on that subject… “what he said!”

And talking about Merrick, you should probably read Iceland: Greenpeace’s Shameful Silence for news of a new spin on an old environmental issue… hydroelectricity and the uses to which we put this so-called, self-styled “green” energy.

Which brings me onto the topic of today’s sermon… wind power. Y’know, I’m scared witless that someone’s going to discover some great environmental problem with wind power. Turns out that wind-turbines slow down the earth’s rotation… killing all the bees or something. In my view, that’ll be the final message from this planet that we’re just not wanted anymore.

Oh, and those of you who object to the things on aesthetic grounds can piss off. Sorry, but there you have it. I think they look lovely. But then, I think power pylons look lovely too… and I don’t hear anyone objecting to them as long as they can watch Big Fricking Brother on Satellite Television! So when the wind-farm protesters start demanding the removal of the pylons (starting with the ones connecting up their towns), I’ll start listening to their objections about aesthetics.

And no, the “bird deaths” thing doesn’t wash either. Clearly there will be certain areas where a wind farm would be particularly destructive to migrating birds (Altamont in San Francisco turned out to be one such area), and they should be avoided. But then you hear about a wind farm located – many would say foolishly –

… at the San Gorgonio Pass […] near Palm Springs. A 1986 study found that 69 million birds flew though the San Gorgonio Pass during the Spring and Fall migrations. During both migrating seasons, only 38 dead birds were found during that typical year, representing only 0.00006% of the migrating population.

Mike Sagrillo | Putting Wind Power’s effect on birds into perspective

There will be those who say that 38 dead birds is 38 too many. But when you do put that number into perspective, it becomes a no-brainer. I have to wonder where the people who say “38 is too many” stand on the issue of the 130 million killed by power lines in the US alone each year? Or the estimated 1 billion globally that die simply from colliding with glass windows? Do they still drive cars despite the 70 million or so birds that are killed by US automobiles each year?

And let’s not forget the toll from those oil spills and other fossil-fuel pollutants that gets replaced by the wind farms. Mike Sagrillo (from whom I stole all the stats, read his article) points out that even the heavily criticised Altamont farm would need to operate for up to 1,000 years to kill as many birds as one oil tanker spillage.

There are huge issues with wind power of course. It’s inefficient when compared with fossil fuels (but it does pass all the ERoEI tests… in simple terms, wind farms produce more energy than it takes to manufacture and maintain them). It’s not an “always-on” energy source. But frankly, we’re going to have to start understanding that the way we treat energy usage has to change.

And here’s my proposition (or part of it)… I’m concentrating here on Ireland and Northern Europe… other parts of the world will need other solutions. It’s all about localisation.

Simply put; we need a two-tier electricity grid.

The first tier is for essential services. Hospitals obviously. Plus public transportation. Also I propose some kind of facility which would provide – among other things – refrigeration for the local community, plus other non-essential but useful electricity services (charge points for mobile phones and laptop computers; that sort of thing). This tier will be kept going – using a combination of tidal, existing hydro, sustainable biomass, and batteries charged during times of “wind surplus”. Which in northwest Europe will be pretty frequently.

The second tier is for the rest of us. Once there’s more electricity in the system than is required for essentials, then – for those not in a position to have their own small home wind-turbine (tens of thousands of which will be feeding their own surplus into the grid during windy days) – lights and televisions can start coming on across the country.

It will require a huge investment in infrastructure, but we’ve probably still got a few years of cheap oil left if we decide to manage it sensibly. And it will require a huge shift in attitude, a huge change in lifestyle, a revolutionary approach to the next two decades. Maybe I’ve been reading too much Orwell of late, but as he would say; there’s no question that we have the physical tools at our disposal… all it requires – and I use the word ‘political’ in its broadest sense here – is the political will.

Thanks in large part to Oliver Kamm (see previous post) I’ve spent the last few hours thinking about the Iraq war and the various justifications put forward by those in favour of it. My ex-flatmate, Gyrus, and I used to play a game whenever we watched the news… each time a politician or authority figure (police chief, army general, etc.) made a statement; we would imagine that they meant the exact opposite of what they said. The number of times this little thought-experiment would result in the news bulletin making far more sense became really quite frightening.

Anyways, I have no doubt that there are many people out there (for example Jarndyce… see his comment on my last post) who are not “pro-War” per se, but who feel there were valid reasons for us to invade Iraq. Jarndyce’s position (and correct me if I’m wrong on this) is essentially the “humanitarian interventionist” one. In the case of Iraq, the ongoing humanitarian crisis could be attributed to the historical actions of Western imperialist policies (starting with our division of the region into administrative zones / nations that suited us, rather than the people living there; all the way up to our installation and support of undemocratic royal families and dictators). It was our meddling in the region that brought the situation in Iraq to a crisis-point. Therefore we had a moral obligation to set things right. This could never be achieved with Saddam Hussein or his sons in power, and we were the only ones who could remove them.

I fundamentally agree with the assessment that our historical involvement in the region is in no small part to blame for the hardships faced by the Iraqi people under Saddam Hussein (even ignoring the issue of economic sanctions). I also agree that this fact does indeed place upon us an “obligation going back decades at least” (to quote Jarndyce). Where I disagree is in the belief that this obligation would best be served by an invasion of the country.

I am also convinced that those who planned and executed the invasion did not have our obligation to the Iraqi people fixed foremost in their mind. Indeed, I’d go so far as to say that their only interest in the Iraqi people was ensuring that they didn’t kill so many of them that it became a Public Relations disaster as well as a humanitarian one. To those who call me cynical, I have just two words to say… “cluster bombs”.

No invasion of a country which involves the use of cluster munitions has got the interests of the general populace at heart. And that’s not being simplistic. No matter what the benefits of cluster bombs may be from a military standpoint, if you are planning an operation aimed primarily at the liberation of a people; i.e. one with a large humanitarian component; then the very first thing that gets said at the very first meeting must be “Well, put your heads together folks, we need to find a way of doing this without cluster bombs.” If that isn’t the first decision, then please don’t stink up my air with bullshit about humanitarian intervention. Er, not you Jarndyce… the people who decided that cluster bombs (or even that wonderful neo-napalm they’ve got that’s absolutely not napalm) were OK.

Y’know there was talk – in the interests of accuracy – of renaming “cluster munitions” as “child killers”. Apparently someone in the marketing department of Bombs Inc. vetoed the idea though.

War against change

This war, like so much of what gets done by those in power, happened for exactly the opposite reason than was claimed. It was not carried out to rid Saddam Hussein of WMD. It was not carried out to free the Iraqi people from tyranny and deliver them unto democracy. It was not carried out for any reason that had anything to do with Iraqi people or the Iraqi leadership at all. It was carried out entirely because of Iraqi geology.

In other words, the war that was billed as “bringing change to Iraq” was neither about “bringing change” nor “Iraq”. It was actually about “preventing change in America”. It was a war to ensure free-market (read: US) access to Iraqi oil reserves. A war to keep Americans in their SUVs for an extra half decade or so. A war to maintain the status quo in the last major oil basin on the planet.

Shifting US bases out of Saudi Arabia and into Iraq and Afghanistan is precisely what I would do if I believed the world’s oil reserves needed to be secured by military force. Afghanistan though not itself oil rich, presents a convenient buffer between China (the great military competitor when it comes to oil) and the Gulf States. Also, US bases in Afghanistan have a tactical sphere of influence that includes much of the Central Asian gas fields.

Saudi Arabia will remain pro-American so long as the House of Saud is in power. And pulling US troops out of Saudi was a necessary step towards ensuring that occurs. Pouring them into Iraq on the pretence of self-defence / spreading democracy (hang on a second, weren’t we spreading democracy from bases in non-democratic regimes? How does that work?) was an obvious move. It removes an antagonist from the area, places the troops on top of the second largest oil reserves (but remaining next-door to the largest), while also putting the squeeze on Iran… another antagonist and oil-rich nation.

Is it just me, or is it wildly coincidental that the precise strategic moves that are required to bring Gulf oil almost totally under US military dominance happen to be the same moves that we need to take in order to spread democracy to those poor downtrodden Arabs?

We Western oil consumers are just lucky that way I guess.

And yes, I’m aware that the market economists will jump in and insist that these ideas are fanciful… after all, why seize the oil when we can just buy it? To them, let me point out that this essay is written – as is everything here – based upon my belief that the theory of an imminent or recent peak in global oil production is correct. But perhaps more importantly, I’m not the only one who believes it.

In September 2005, the US Army produced a report entitled Energy Trends and Their Implications for U.S. Army Installations (PDF – 1.2mb). One of their conclusions was “The days of inexpensive, convenient, abundant energy sources are quickly drawing to a close.”

In summary, the outlook for petroleum is not good. This especially applies to conventional oil, which has been the lowest cost resource. Production peaks for non-OPEC conventional oil are at hand; many nations have already past their peak, or are now producing at peak capacity.

Energy Trends and Their Implications for U.S. Army Installations

The same report points out that “there is no viable substitute for petroleum” on the horizon.

So can it really be a coincidence that the US military (the single largest consumer of global crude oil products) which believes that a time is imminent when energy supplies will need to be secured by means other than economic, just happens to be implementing a policy in the Gulf which appears designed to secure those very reserves by force of occupation; yet is really all about improving the lives of the locals?

All this despite singularly failing to improve the lives of the locals, yet oddly spending a huge amount of time securing the oil infrastructure.