Fantasy Land: Salazar Announces that East Coast Windmills Could Provide 100 Percent of Nation’s Electricity
The Institute for Energy Research, Apr 07, 2009
WASHINGTON, D.C. - IER President Thomas J. Pyle today issued the following statement in response to Secretary Salazar’s assertion that windmills off the East Coast, “could generate 1 million megawatts of power, roughly the equivalent of 3,000 medium coal-fired power plants, or nearly five times the number of coal plants now in the United States.”
“We were pleasantly surprised to hear Secretary Salazar announce today that East Coast windmills could not only replace the electricity we get from coal, but double it. According to his estimate, these windmills could completely replace the 1 million megawatt hours of power that coal, natural gas, nuclear, biomass, onshore wind, and other renewable sources provide.
“Unfortunately, upon closer inspection, key elements of the secretary’s claim fail to hold up to scrutiny. For starters, America doesn’t even have 3,000 coal plants in service right now—we don’t have even half of that. But even if we did, the secretary appears to be suggesting that East Coast windmills could meet well over 100 percent of our electricity needs all by themselves. Never mind that wind accounts for only 1.3 percent of our nation’s electricity today. To make the secretary’s claim accurate, we would need to install 309,587 giant 3.25 mw turbines spread over 1,800 miles of coastline (which is the entire East Coast)—or about 172 turbines per mile of coastline—and hope the wind blows 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
“Assuming the wind never stops, and assuming Americans could do without a recreational coastline, we might have a shot at meeting the secretary’s goal. But it won’t be cheap. According to the Energy Information Administration, offshore wind power—21 cents per kilowatt hour—is more than twice as costly as just about every other conventional alternative available.”
NOTE: The Cape Wind Project calls for the installation of 130 wind turbines, which have a rated capacity of 420 megawatts of energy.
More from IER:
Blog Posting: Will Renewables Become Competitive Anytime Soon?
Press Release: Hundreds Turn Out in Support of Offshore Energy Development
Fact Sheet: Offshore Energy Exploration: Myths vs. Facts
Showing posts with label environment. Show all posts
Showing posts with label environment. Show all posts
Wednesday, April 8, 2009
Monday, April 6, 2009
Trees are growing faster and could buy time to halt global warming
Trees are growing faster and could buy time to halt global warming. By Urmee Khan
The Telegraph, Apr 06. 2009, 9:01AM BST
The phenomenon has been discovered in a variety of flora, ranging from tropical rainforests to British sugar beet crops.
It means they are soaking up at least some of the billions of tons of CO2 released into the atmosphere by humans that would otherwise be accelerating the rate of climate change.Plants survive by extracting CO2 from the air and using sunlight to convert it into proteins and sugars.
Since 1750 the concentration in the air has risen from of CO2 278 parts per million (ppm) to more than 380 ppm, making it easier for plants to acquire the CO2 needed for rapid growth.
A study by the University of Leeds, published in the science journal Nature, measured the girth of 70,000 trees across 10 African countries and compared them with similar records made four decades ago.
On average, the trees were getting bigger faster and researchers found that each hectare of African forest was trapping an extra 0.6 tons of CO2 a year compared with the 1960s.
If this is replicated across the world's tropical rainforests they would be removing nearly 5 billion tons of CO2 a year from the atmosphere.
Scientists have been looking for a similar impact on crop yields and the experiments generally suggest that raised CO2 levels would boost the yields of mainstream crops, such as maize, rice and soy, by about 13 per cent.
Professor Martin Parry, head of plant science at Rothamsted Research, Britain's leading crop institute, said: "There is no doubt that the enrichment of the air with CO2 is increasing plant growth rates in many areas.
"The problem is that humans are releasing so much that plants can remove only a fraction of it," he said.
Humans are believed to generate about 50 billion tons of the gas each year.
However, scientists have warned against drawing false comfort from such findings. They point out that although levels will boost plant growth, other factors associated with climate change, such as rising temperatures and drought, are likely to have a negative effect.
Fred Pearce, environment consultant for New Scientist, said: "We know that trees do absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and about half is taken up from nature and half of that is by forests. But it doesn't change the story greenhouse gases are accumulating more than 2 per cent a year.
"It won't buy us much time as humans are releasing much more CO2 into the air, but it is useful information if it helps to protect existing forests."
The Telegraph, Apr 06. 2009, 9:01AM BST
The phenomenon has been discovered in a variety of flora, ranging from tropical rainforests to British sugar beet crops.
It means they are soaking up at least some of the billions of tons of CO2 released into the atmosphere by humans that would otherwise be accelerating the rate of climate change.Plants survive by extracting CO2 from the air and using sunlight to convert it into proteins and sugars.
Since 1750 the concentration in the air has risen from of CO2 278 parts per million (ppm) to more than 380 ppm, making it easier for plants to acquire the CO2 needed for rapid growth.
A study by the University of Leeds, published in the science journal Nature, measured the girth of 70,000 trees across 10 African countries and compared them with similar records made four decades ago.
On average, the trees were getting bigger faster and researchers found that each hectare of African forest was trapping an extra 0.6 tons of CO2 a year compared with the 1960s.
If this is replicated across the world's tropical rainforests they would be removing nearly 5 billion tons of CO2 a year from the atmosphere.
Scientists have been looking for a similar impact on crop yields and the experiments generally suggest that raised CO2 levels would boost the yields of mainstream crops, such as maize, rice and soy, by about 13 per cent.
Professor Martin Parry, head of plant science at Rothamsted Research, Britain's leading crop institute, said: "There is no doubt that the enrichment of the air with CO2 is increasing plant growth rates in many areas.
"The problem is that humans are releasing so much that plants can remove only a fraction of it," he said.
Humans are believed to generate about 50 billion tons of the gas each year.
However, scientists have warned against drawing false comfort from such findings. They point out that although levels will boost plant growth, other factors associated with climate change, such as rising temperatures and drought, are likely to have a negative effect.
Fred Pearce, environment consultant for New Scientist, said: "We know that trees do absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and about half is taken up from nature and half of that is by forests. But it doesn't change the story greenhouse gases are accumulating more than 2 per cent a year.
"It won't buy us much time as humans are releasing much more CO2 into the air, but it is useful information if it helps to protect existing forests."
Friday, April 3, 2009
Battery technology is still not good enough to jumpstart an electric car revolution
Obama's Clean Car Chimera. By Ronald Bailey
Battery technology is still not good enough to jumpstart an electric car revolution
Reason, March 31, 2009
"I am absolutely committed to working with Congress and the auto companies to meet one goal: the United States of America will lead the world in building the next generation of clean cars," declared President Barack Obama this week when he announced his administration's plan to nationalize the American automobile industry. What does he mean by "clean cars"? During the presidential campaign, candidate Obama promised to enact $7,500 tax credit for new plug-in electric hybrid (PHEV) cars, vowing to "put 1 million Plug-In Hybrid cars—cars that can get up to 150 miles per gallon—on the road by 2015, cars that we will work to make sure are built here in America." In February, the promised $7,500 PHEV tax breaks were included in President Obama's $787 billion stimulus package.
Americans are already familiar with gas electric hybrid vehicles like Toyota's Prius, which uses nickel metal hydride (NiMH) batteries to power an electric motor that assists its gasoline motor and increases its gas mileage. The batteries are recharged by both the gasoline engine and by capturing energy used during braking (regenerative braking). For example, the EPA rates the Prius at 60 miles per gallon (mpg) in the city and 51 mpg on the highway. Introduced in 1997, over 1 million have been sold worldwide, 600,000 of them in the U.S. Despite their improved gas mileage, however, current generation hybrid automobiles, including the Prius, are still essentially gasoline powered vehicles.
That's where plug-in hybrid electric vehicles come in. PHEVs flip the current hybrid formula—instead of gas-powered cars assisted by electric motors and batteries, PHEVs will be electric-powered cars assisted by gasoline motors. Ideally, PHEVs would mostly run on electricity from batteries using their gasoline motors as range-extenders to charge the batteries after they've run out of juice. In a world of PHEVs, gasoline stations would go the way of livery stables since cars would get most of their energy by plugging them in at home at night or at parking garages and meters during work hours.
If most Americans switched to driving PHEVs, imports of foreign oil would fall. So would emissions of the greenhouse gases thought to be warming the planet. But by how much? A 2007 study by the Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest Laboratory sketched out a scenario in which 84 percent of cars, light trucks, and SUVs (about 200 million vehicles) were PHEVs traveling an average of 33 miles per day on electric power. In that scenario the country would reduce its consumption of oil by 6.5 million barrels per day—which is equivalent to 52 percent of current U.S. petroleum imports. Greenhouse gas emissions would be cut by as much as 27 percent.
Will our freeways soon be clogged with high-tech cars propelled mostly by electricity? The floundering automaker, General Motors, has promised to bring its Chevy Volt PHEV to market by 2010. Not to be left out, Ford and Chrysler have also announced plans to sell PHEVs in the next couple of years. Big automakers around the world are also promising that consumers will be able to drive their plug-in hybrids and electric vehicles in the next 2 to 3 years. Among them are Nissan-Renault, Daimler-Benz, BMW, Mitsubishi, Toyota, and the Chinese manufacturer, BYD. In addition, numerous startups—including Tesla Motors, Think, Fisker, Aptera, Zenn, and Phoenix Motors—are hoping to do an end-run around the stodgy majors.
However, without a plentiful supply of reliable long-range batteries, all such promises of a glorious electrically driven future are just so much hot air. Conventional NiMH batteries are OK for the quick charge and discharge of today's gas-electric hybrids, but they can't hold enough charge to take a car very far on its own. For more distance, carmakers are looking to the same battery technology that animates our laptops and cell phones: lithium-ion batteries, which hold a much greater charge and weigh much less than NiMH or conventional lead-acid batteries.
Surveying the world, it is clear that foreign manufacturers are currently in the lead when it comes to making lithium-ion batteries. In January, GM announced that it would use lithium-ion batteries produced by the North American subsidiary of the Korean chemical giant, LG Chem, in its Chevy Volt. LG Chem beat out A123 Systems, a lithium-ion battery maker headquartered in Watertown, Massachusetts. In February, Ford announced that the batteries for its PHEV and electric vehicles would be supplied by a joint venture between Wisconsin-based Johnson Controls and the French battery producer Saft Groupe SA. The actual batteries will not be manufactured in the U.S., but in Saft's factory in Nersac, France.
To play catch up, the Obama administration's $787 billion stimulus package authorized the Department of Energy to spend $2 billion on grants for advanced battery research. In addition, would-be American battery manufacturers can partake of the $25 billion Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing (ATVM) loan program launched last September when the panic over the economic meltdown first took off.
Worldwide, this manufacturing optimistically adds up to—at most—enough to produce 1 to 2 million PHEVs per year by 2015. In 2007, automakers globally produced 70 million vehicles powered by standard internal combustion engines. The global fleet currently numbers 810 million vehicles, of which 240 million travel on American roads. Clearly, cars powered mostly by electricity will constitute a tiny proportion of the world's vehicles for some time to come.
What about further down the road? If Europe imposes stringent carbon controls on automobile emissions to address global warming, Wolfgang Bernhardt, a partner at Roland Berger Strategy Consultants in Stuttgart, Germany, told Automotive News in November, "I can see up to 3 percent of all cars being pure electrics by 2020, with a further 19 percent being plug-in hybrids." Alan L. Madian, director of consulting firm LECG, told The Washington Post that even with "heroic" assumptions that by 2030 new electric cars would only make up 50 percent of new vehicles being sold and only 8 percent of cars on the road.
The 2007 Department of Energy PHEV study found that when compared to 27.5 miles per gallon internal combustion vehicles, the break-even premium for a PHEV at $2.50 per gallon is $3,500 when electricity costs are $0.12 per kilowatt hour. At $3.50 per gallon, the premium rises to more than $6,500. Since batteries are expected to boost the average cost of each vehicle by as much $10,000, gasoline will have to cost more than $5.00 per gallon before PHEVs make economic sense to most drivers. Of course, generous federal subsidies can help overcome this financial disincentive. The government could also double or triple gasoline prices by imposing a substantial tax.
In 2006, an activist "documentary" about GM's ill-fated foray a decade ago into battery-powered cars, the EV1, asked, "Who killed the electric car?" The filmmaker offered an elaborate conspiracy theory involving oil companies, but the truth is that clunky inefficient batteries did the electric car in. And unless there is a spectacular breakthrough in electricity storage technology, clunky expensive batteries will likely kill the electric car this time, too.
Ronald Bailey is Reason magazine's science correspondent. His book Liberation Biology: The Scientific and Moral Case for the Biotech Revolution is now available from Prometheus Books.
Battery technology is still not good enough to jumpstart an electric car revolution
Reason, March 31, 2009
"I am absolutely committed to working with Congress and the auto companies to meet one goal: the United States of America will lead the world in building the next generation of clean cars," declared President Barack Obama this week when he announced his administration's plan to nationalize the American automobile industry. What does he mean by "clean cars"? During the presidential campaign, candidate Obama promised to enact $7,500 tax credit for new plug-in electric hybrid (PHEV) cars, vowing to "put 1 million Plug-In Hybrid cars—cars that can get up to 150 miles per gallon—on the road by 2015, cars that we will work to make sure are built here in America." In February, the promised $7,500 PHEV tax breaks were included in President Obama's $787 billion stimulus package.
Americans are already familiar with gas electric hybrid vehicles like Toyota's Prius, which uses nickel metal hydride (NiMH) batteries to power an electric motor that assists its gasoline motor and increases its gas mileage. The batteries are recharged by both the gasoline engine and by capturing energy used during braking (regenerative braking). For example, the EPA rates the Prius at 60 miles per gallon (mpg) in the city and 51 mpg on the highway. Introduced in 1997, over 1 million have been sold worldwide, 600,000 of them in the U.S. Despite their improved gas mileage, however, current generation hybrid automobiles, including the Prius, are still essentially gasoline powered vehicles.
That's where plug-in hybrid electric vehicles come in. PHEVs flip the current hybrid formula—instead of gas-powered cars assisted by electric motors and batteries, PHEVs will be electric-powered cars assisted by gasoline motors. Ideally, PHEVs would mostly run on electricity from batteries using their gasoline motors as range-extenders to charge the batteries after they've run out of juice. In a world of PHEVs, gasoline stations would go the way of livery stables since cars would get most of their energy by plugging them in at home at night or at parking garages and meters during work hours.
If most Americans switched to driving PHEVs, imports of foreign oil would fall. So would emissions of the greenhouse gases thought to be warming the planet. But by how much? A 2007 study by the Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest Laboratory sketched out a scenario in which 84 percent of cars, light trucks, and SUVs (about 200 million vehicles) were PHEVs traveling an average of 33 miles per day on electric power. In that scenario the country would reduce its consumption of oil by 6.5 million barrels per day—which is equivalent to 52 percent of current U.S. petroleum imports. Greenhouse gas emissions would be cut by as much as 27 percent.
Will our freeways soon be clogged with high-tech cars propelled mostly by electricity? The floundering automaker, General Motors, has promised to bring its Chevy Volt PHEV to market by 2010. Not to be left out, Ford and Chrysler have also announced plans to sell PHEVs in the next couple of years. Big automakers around the world are also promising that consumers will be able to drive their plug-in hybrids and electric vehicles in the next 2 to 3 years. Among them are Nissan-Renault, Daimler-Benz, BMW, Mitsubishi, Toyota, and the Chinese manufacturer, BYD. In addition, numerous startups—including Tesla Motors, Think, Fisker, Aptera, Zenn, and Phoenix Motors—are hoping to do an end-run around the stodgy majors.
However, without a plentiful supply of reliable long-range batteries, all such promises of a glorious electrically driven future are just so much hot air. Conventional NiMH batteries are OK for the quick charge and discharge of today's gas-electric hybrids, but they can't hold enough charge to take a car very far on its own. For more distance, carmakers are looking to the same battery technology that animates our laptops and cell phones: lithium-ion batteries, which hold a much greater charge and weigh much less than NiMH or conventional lead-acid batteries.
Surveying the world, it is clear that foreign manufacturers are currently in the lead when it comes to making lithium-ion batteries. In January, GM announced that it would use lithium-ion batteries produced by the North American subsidiary of the Korean chemical giant, LG Chem, in its Chevy Volt. LG Chem beat out A123 Systems, a lithium-ion battery maker headquartered in Watertown, Massachusetts. In February, Ford announced that the batteries for its PHEV and electric vehicles would be supplied by a joint venture between Wisconsin-based Johnson Controls and the French battery producer Saft Groupe SA. The actual batteries will not be manufactured in the U.S., but in Saft's factory in Nersac, France.
To play catch up, the Obama administration's $787 billion stimulus package authorized the Department of Energy to spend $2 billion on grants for advanced battery research. In addition, would-be American battery manufacturers can partake of the $25 billion Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing (ATVM) loan program launched last September when the panic over the economic meltdown first took off.
Worldwide, this manufacturing optimistically adds up to—at most—enough to produce 1 to 2 million PHEVs per year by 2015. In 2007, automakers globally produced 70 million vehicles powered by standard internal combustion engines. The global fleet currently numbers 810 million vehicles, of which 240 million travel on American roads. Clearly, cars powered mostly by electricity will constitute a tiny proportion of the world's vehicles for some time to come.
What about further down the road? If Europe imposes stringent carbon controls on automobile emissions to address global warming, Wolfgang Bernhardt, a partner at Roland Berger Strategy Consultants in Stuttgart, Germany, told Automotive News in November, "I can see up to 3 percent of all cars being pure electrics by 2020, with a further 19 percent being plug-in hybrids." Alan L. Madian, director of consulting firm LECG, told The Washington Post that even with "heroic" assumptions that by 2030 new electric cars would only make up 50 percent of new vehicles being sold and only 8 percent of cars on the road.
The 2007 Department of Energy PHEV study found that when compared to 27.5 miles per gallon internal combustion vehicles, the break-even premium for a PHEV at $2.50 per gallon is $3,500 when electricity costs are $0.12 per kilowatt hour. At $3.50 per gallon, the premium rises to more than $6,500. Since batteries are expected to boost the average cost of each vehicle by as much $10,000, gasoline will have to cost more than $5.00 per gallon before PHEVs make economic sense to most drivers. Of course, generous federal subsidies can help overcome this financial disincentive. The government could also double or triple gasoline prices by imposing a substantial tax.
In 2006, an activist "documentary" about GM's ill-fated foray a decade ago into battery-powered cars, the EV1, asked, "Who killed the electric car?" The filmmaker offered an elaborate conspiracy theory involving oil companies, but the truth is that clunky inefficient batteries did the electric car in. And unless there is a spectacular breakthrough in electricity storage technology, clunky expensive batteries will likely kill the electric car this time, too.
Ronald Bailey is Reason magazine's science correspondent. His book Liberation Biology: The Scientific and Moral Case for the Biotech Revolution is now available from Prometheus Books.
Thursday, April 2, 2009
Will renewables become cost-competitive anytime soon?
Will renewables become cost-competitive anytime soon?
The Siren Song of Wind and Solar Energy
IER, April 1, 2009
Despite advocates’ claims to the contrary, wind and solar continue to be the most expensive sources of electricity. The New York Times recently reported that “wind power is currently more than 50 percent more expensive than power generated from a traditional coal plant.” [1] Energy Secretary Stephen Chu told the New York Times that solar technology would have to get five times better to be competitive in today’s energy market.[2] In spite of these reports and admissions, the public relations campaign for wind and solar powered electricity marches on.
For decades, representatives and advocates of wind and solar have claimed that their technology was near a competitive tipping point—but just needed a bit more subsidies, set-asides, and government aid to succeed. But even after 30 years of massive subsidies, wind and solar continue to be more expensive and contribute only a small amount of electricity. In 2008, wind produced 1.3% of the electrical generation in America and solar produced a meager 0.02%.[3]
The quotations below highlight the errant predictions of near-term viability (with the predictions bolded for emphasis). These are just some of the examples of over 30 years of claims that wind and solar will soon be cost competitive.
Overly Optimistic Wind/Solar Claims
In 1983, Booz, Allen & Hamilton did a study for the Solar Energy Industries Association, American Wind Energy Association, and Renewable Energy Institute. It stated: “The private sector can be expected to develop improved solar and wind technologies which will begin to become competitive and self-supporting on a national level by the end of the decade [i.e. by 1990] if assisted by tax credits and augmented by federally sponsored R&D.”[4]
In 1986, Amory Lovins of the Rocky Mountain Institute lamented the untimely scale-back of tax breaks for renewable energy, since the competitive viability of wind and solar technologies was “one to three years away.”[5]
In 1990, two energy analysts at the Worldwatch Institute predicted an almost complete displacement of fossil fuels in the electric generation market within a couple decades [i.e. 2010]:
Within a few decades, a geographically diverse country such as the United States might get 30 percent of its electricity from sunshine, 20 percent from hydropower, 20 percent from wind power, 10 percent from biomass, 10 percent from geothermal energy, and 10 percent from natural-gas-fired cogeneration.[6]
Overly Optimistic Wind Power Claims
In 1986, a representative of the American Wind Energy Association testified:
The U.S. wind industry has … demonstrated reliability and performance levels that make them very competitive. It has come to the point that the California Energy Commission has predicted windpower will be that State’s lowest cost source of energy in the 1990s, beating out even large-scale hydro.
…
We are not quite there. We have hopes.[7]
Christopher Flavin of the Worldwatch Institute has been predicting competitive viability since the 1980s. In 1984 he wrote:
Tax credits have been essential to the economic viability of wind farms so far, but will not be needed within a few years.[8]
In 1985, he wrote:
Although wind farms still depend on tax credits, they are likely to be economical without this support within a few years.[9]
In 1986, he wrote:
Early evidence indicates that wind power will soon take its place as a decentralized power source that is economical in many areas…. Utility-sponsored studies show that the better windfarms can produce power at a cost of about 7¢ per kilowatt-hour, which is competitive with conventional power sources in the United States.[10]
Overly Optimistic Solar Power Claims
In 1976, solar advocate Barry Commoner stated:
Mixed solar/conventional installations could become the most economical alternative in most parts of the United States within the next few years.[11]
In 1987 the head of the Solar Energy Industries Association stated:
I think frankly, the—the consensus as far as I can see is after the year 2000, somewhere between 10 and 20 percent of our energy could come from solar technologies, quite easily.[12]
In 1988, Cynthia Shea of the Worldwatch Institute wrote:
In future decades, [photovoltaic technologies] may become standard equipment on new buildings, using the sunlight streaming through windows to generate electricity.[13]
Conclusion
Wind and solar should not be thought of as “infant industries” but as government-dependent industries that penalize consumers and/or taxpayers. “Buyer beware” should also apply to the purveyors of political energy. Self-interested consumer decisions in the energy marketplace should be respected—and false promises about inferior energies exposed—for good public policy outcomes.
The Siren Song of Wind and Solar Energy
IER, April 1, 2009
Despite advocates’ claims to the contrary, wind and solar continue to be the most expensive sources of electricity. The New York Times recently reported that “wind power is currently more than 50 percent more expensive than power generated from a traditional coal plant.” [1] Energy Secretary Stephen Chu told the New York Times that solar technology would have to get five times better to be competitive in today’s energy market.[2] In spite of these reports and admissions, the public relations campaign for wind and solar powered electricity marches on.
For decades, representatives and advocates of wind and solar have claimed that their technology was near a competitive tipping point—but just needed a bit more subsidies, set-asides, and government aid to succeed. But even after 30 years of massive subsidies, wind and solar continue to be more expensive and contribute only a small amount of electricity. In 2008, wind produced 1.3% of the electrical generation in America and solar produced a meager 0.02%.[3]
The quotations below highlight the errant predictions of near-term viability (with the predictions bolded for emphasis). These are just some of the examples of over 30 years of claims that wind and solar will soon be cost competitive.
Overly Optimistic Wind/Solar Claims
In 1983, Booz, Allen & Hamilton did a study for the Solar Energy Industries Association, American Wind Energy Association, and Renewable Energy Institute. It stated: “The private sector can be expected to develop improved solar and wind technologies which will begin to become competitive and self-supporting on a national level by the end of the decade [i.e. by 1990] if assisted by tax credits and augmented by federally sponsored R&D.”[4]
In 1986, Amory Lovins of the Rocky Mountain Institute lamented the untimely scale-back of tax breaks for renewable energy, since the competitive viability of wind and solar technologies was “one to three years away.”[5]
In 1990, two energy analysts at the Worldwatch Institute predicted an almost complete displacement of fossil fuels in the electric generation market within a couple decades [i.e. 2010]:
Within a few decades, a geographically diverse country such as the United States might get 30 percent of its electricity from sunshine, 20 percent from hydropower, 20 percent from wind power, 10 percent from biomass, 10 percent from geothermal energy, and 10 percent from natural-gas-fired cogeneration.[6]
Overly Optimistic Wind Power Claims
In 1986, a representative of the American Wind Energy Association testified:
The U.S. wind industry has … demonstrated reliability and performance levels that make them very competitive. It has come to the point that the California Energy Commission has predicted windpower will be that State’s lowest cost source of energy in the 1990s, beating out even large-scale hydro.
…
We are not quite there. We have hopes.[7]
Christopher Flavin of the Worldwatch Institute has been predicting competitive viability since the 1980s. In 1984 he wrote:
Tax credits have been essential to the economic viability of wind farms so far, but will not be needed within a few years.[8]
In 1985, he wrote:
Although wind farms still depend on tax credits, they are likely to be economical without this support within a few years.[9]
In 1986, he wrote:
Early evidence indicates that wind power will soon take its place as a decentralized power source that is economical in many areas…. Utility-sponsored studies show that the better windfarms can produce power at a cost of about 7¢ per kilowatt-hour, which is competitive with conventional power sources in the United States.[10]
Overly Optimistic Solar Power Claims
In 1976, solar advocate Barry Commoner stated:
Mixed solar/conventional installations could become the most economical alternative in most parts of the United States within the next few years.[11]
In 1987 the head of the Solar Energy Industries Association stated:
I think frankly, the—the consensus as far as I can see is after the year 2000, somewhere between 10 and 20 percent of our energy could come from solar technologies, quite easily.[12]
In 1988, Cynthia Shea of the Worldwatch Institute wrote:
In future decades, [photovoltaic technologies] may become standard equipment on new buildings, using the sunlight streaming through windows to generate electricity.[13]
Conclusion
Wind and solar should not be thought of as “infant industries” but as government-dependent industries that penalize consumers and/or taxpayers. “Buyer beware” should also apply to the purveyors of political energy. Self-interested consumer decisions in the energy marketplace should be respected—and false promises about inferior energies exposed—for good public policy outcomes.
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
How efficient are the solar panels that were inspected by President Obama?
How efficient are the solar panels that were inspected by President Obama? By Todd Shepherd
The Denver Museum of Science isn't telling. But you are helping to foot the bill for the solar array that won't pay for itself until the year 2118.
The Independence Institute, Mar 31, 2009
Before signing the $787 billion stimulus package into law on Feburary 17, 2009, President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden toured an array of solar panels on top of the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. The photo-op allowed the President to once again extol the virtues of the coming “green” economy.
According to the Denver Post's article on the event, “The sun generates enough energy on the museum rooftop to power about 30 homes.” However, that claim cannot be verified at this time, and in fact, seems to be belied by the scant information provided by the museum and other sources.[1] Laura Holtman, Public Relations Manager for the Museum said in an email, “Because the array generates less than 5 percent of the Museum's power, [the purchased energy] is not a particularly large bill.”
The Independence Institute asked the Denver Museum of Science and Nature to provide certain statistical information regarding the now-famous solar array. Specifically, the Institute asked for:
1 ) Two years worth of electric bills prior to the installation of the solar array,
2 ) All electric bills following the completion of the installation.
The Museum denied those requests.
The solar array is not owned by the Museum, however. It is owned by Hybrid Energy Group, LLC. HEG owns the solar array, sells the electricity to the Museum, and receives tax incentives from the state and federal governments, while also receiving “rebates” from Xcel Energy. The rebates are funded by a surcharge collected on the monthly bill of every Colorado Xcel customer.
A 2008 article in the Denver Business Journal sheds further light on the subject. The article notes the total price of the solar array was $720,000. And Dave Noel, VP of operations and chief technology officer for the Museum, was quoted as saying, “We looked at first installing [the solar array] ourselves, and without any of the incentive programs, it was a 110-year payout.” Noel went on to say that the Museum did not purchase the solar array because it did not “make sense financially.”
Additionally, most solar panels have an expected life-span of 20 to 25 years.
So how can Hybrid Energy Group afford to own a solar array that not even the museum would buy? In part, HEG gets “rebates” from Xcel's “Solar Rewards” program. The Solar Rewards program is a response to Colorado voters passing Amendment 37 in 2004. The Amendment mandated that Colorado utilities procure a certain percentage of their power generation from renewable resources like wind and solar.
“Amendment 37 really should have been called a tax,” said Independence Institute President Jon Caldara. “And it would have been interesting to see whether it would have passed if the ballot language had started off with the phrase, 'shall there be an increase in energy taxes?' For those of you who are Xcel customers, look at your bill and find the line that says 'Renew. Energy Std. Adj.' Then realize that you are paying this “adjustment” to buy solar panels which the museum has admitted that without any government subsidization wouldn't pay for themselves until the year 2118.”
[table]
HEG also uses state and federal tax “incentives” in order to be able to own a $720,000 solar array that produces such a minute cash flow, compared to the rest of the Museum's monthly power expenses.
The fact that solar energy may currently only be viable due to engineering of the tax code means that citizens may not have all the information when weighing the costs of “green” projects, says Barry Poulson, Professor of Economics at the University of Colorado, and Senior Fellow at the Independence Institute.
“Colorado citizens need to know that these policies will result in a significant dislocation of our industries, a fall in income and employment, and rising costs to consumers. These burdens will fall primarily on low income families. Nowhere in these proposals for a 'new Energy Economy' is there any discussion of the costs that these policies will impose on Colorado citizens.”
Notes
[1] Additionally, the claim in the Post article that “The sun generates enough energy on the museum rooftop to power about 30 homes,” is regretfully lacking a crucial time context. Does the power for 30 homes last one hour, one day, one week, one month?
The Denver Museum of Science isn't telling. But you are helping to foot the bill for the solar array that won't pay for itself until the year 2118.
The Independence Institute, Mar 31, 2009
Before signing the $787 billion stimulus package into law on Feburary 17, 2009, President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden toured an array of solar panels on top of the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. The photo-op allowed the President to once again extol the virtues of the coming “green” economy.
According to the Denver Post's article on the event, “The sun generates enough energy on the museum rooftop to power about 30 homes.” However, that claim cannot be verified at this time, and in fact, seems to be belied by the scant information provided by the museum and other sources.[1] Laura Holtman, Public Relations Manager for the Museum said in an email, “Because the array generates less than 5 percent of the Museum's power, [the purchased energy] is not a particularly large bill.”
The Independence Institute asked the Denver Museum of Science and Nature to provide certain statistical information regarding the now-famous solar array. Specifically, the Institute asked for:
1 ) Two years worth of electric bills prior to the installation of the solar array,
2 ) All electric bills following the completion of the installation.
The Museum denied those requests.
The solar array is not owned by the Museum, however. It is owned by Hybrid Energy Group, LLC. HEG owns the solar array, sells the electricity to the Museum, and receives tax incentives from the state and federal governments, while also receiving “rebates” from Xcel Energy. The rebates are funded by a surcharge collected on the monthly bill of every Colorado Xcel customer.
A 2008 article in the Denver Business Journal sheds further light on the subject. The article notes the total price of the solar array was $720,000. And Dave Noel, VP of operations and chief technology officer for the Museum, was quoted as saying, “We looked at first installing [the solar array] ourselves, and without any of the incentive programs, it was a 110-year payout.” Noel went on to say that the Museum did not purchase the solar array because it did not “make sense financially.”
Additionally, most solar panels have an expected life-span of 20 to 25 years.
So how can Hybrid Energy Group afford to own a solar array that not even the museum would buy? In part, HEG gets “rebates” from Xcel's “Solar Rewards” program. The Solar Rewards program is a response to Colorado voters passing Amendment 37 in 2004. The Amendment mandated that Colorado utilities procure a certain percentage of their power generation from renewable resources like wind and solar.
“Amendment 37 really should have been called a tax,” said Independence Institute President Jon Caldara. “And it would have been interesting to see whether it would have passed if the ballot language had started off with the phrase, 'shall there be an increase in energy taxes?' For those of you who are Xcel customers, look at your bill and find the line that says 'Renew. Energy Std. Adj.' Then realize that you are paying this “adjustment” to buy solar panels which the museum has admitted that without any government subsidization wouldn't pay for themselves until the year 2118.”
[table]
HEG also uses state and federal tax “incentives” in order to be able to own a $720,000 solar array that produces such a minute cash flow, compared to the rest of the Museum's monthly power expenses.
The fact that solar energy may currently only be viable due to engineering of the tax code means that citizens may not have all the information when weighing the costs of “green” projects, says Barry Poulson, Professor of Economics at the University of Colorado, and Senior Fellow at the Independence Institute.
“Colorado citizens need to know that these policies will result in a significant dislocation of our industries, a fall in income and employment, and rising costs to consumers. These burdens will fall primarily on low income families. Nowhere in these proposals for a 'new Energy Economy' is there any discussion of the costs that these policies will impose on Colorado citizens.”
Notes
[1] Additionally, the claim in the Post article that “The sun generates enough energy on the museum rooftop to power about 30 homes,” is regretfully lacking a crucial time context. Does the power for 30 homes last one hour, one day, one week, one month?
Monday, March 30, 2009
Industry Views: Seven Myths About Green Jobs
Seven Myths About Green Jobs. By Andrew P. Morriss, William T. Bogart, Andrew Dorchak, and Roger E. Meiners
IER, March 30, 2009
Executive Summary. [Full report here]
Overview
An aggressive push for a green economy is well underway in the United States. Policymakers now routinely assert that “green jobs” can simultaneously improve environmental quality and reduce unemployment. Our team of researchers from universities around the nation surveyed four often-cited reports (the “literature”) that were sponsored by interest groups, industry associations, and international NGOs. We analyzed their assumptions and found that the groups promoting the idea of green jobs had buried dubious assumptions and techniques within their analysis. We conclude that the massive expenditures demanded by special interest groups and politicians under the green jobs banner are not justified.
Rather than spend hundreds of billions of taxpayers’ dollars on unproven technologies chosen through a political process, we favor market processes to increase conservation of energy and other resources, a strategy proven effective by experience. New green technologies should be explored and expanded by market forces, not government mandates. Before committing massive resources to chasing the green jobs these reports suggest, the special interests advocating strategies that impose costs on every American should expose their models and calculations to peer-reviewed scrutiny, making their process transparent.
We found seven underlying myths within the literature we studied. We believe it is important that these myths be exposed so that we can debate the facts as we move forward toward investing in a more eco-friendly nation.
The Myths And The Facts
Myth 1: Everyone understands what a “green job” is.
Fact 1: No standard definition of a “green job” exists.
According to the studies most commonly quoted, green jobs pay well, are interesting to do, produce products that environmental groups prefer, and do so in a unionized workplace. Such criteria have little to do with the environmental impacts of the jobs. To build a political coalition, “green jobs” have become a mechanism to deliver something for members of many special interests in order to buy their support for a radical transformation of society. Committing hundreds of billions of dollars to promoting something lacking a transparent definition cannot be justified.
Myth 2: Creating green jobs will boost productive employment.
Fact 2: Green jobs estimates in these oft-quoted studies include huge numbers of clerical, bureaucratic, and administrative positions that do not produce goods and services for consumption.
These green jobs studies mistake any position receiving a paycheck for a position creating value. Simply hiring people to write and enforce regulations, fill-out forms, and process paperwork is not a recipe for creating wealth. Much of the promised boost in green employment turns out to be in non-productive - and expensive - positions that raise costs for consumers. These higher paying jobs that fail to create a more eco-friendly society dramatically skew the results in both number of green jobs created and salary levels of those jobs.
Myth 3: Green jobs forecasts are reliable.
Fact 3: The green jobs studies made estimates using poor economic models based on dubious assumptions.
The forecasts for green employment in these studies optimistically predict an employment boom that will take us to prosperity in a new green world. The forecasts, which are sometimes amazingly detailed, are unreliable because they are based on:
a) Questionable estimates by interest groups of tiny base numbers in employment,
b) Extrapolation of growth rates from those small base numbers, that does not take into consideration that growth rates eventually slow, plateau and even decline, and
c) A biased and highly selective optimism about which technologies will improve.
Moreover, the estimates use a technique (input-output analysis) that is inappropriate to the conditions of technological change presumed by the green jobs literature itself. This yields seemingly precise estimates that give the illusion of scientific reliability to numbers that are actually based on faulty assumptions.
Myth 4: Green jobs promote employment growth.
Fact 4: By promoting more jobs instead of more productivity, the green jobs described in the literature actually encourage low-paying jobs in less desirable conditions. Economic growth cannot be ordered by Congress or by the United Nations. Government interference in the economy - such as restricting further progress with already successful technologies in favor of speculative technologies favored by special interests - will generate stagnation.
Green jobs estimates promise greatly expanded (and pleasant and well-paid) employment. This promise is false. The green jobs model is built on promoting inefficient use of labor. The studies favor technologies that employ large numbers of people rather than those technologies that use labor efficiently. In a competitive market, the factors of production, including labor, are paid for their productivity. By focusing on low productivity jobs, the green jobs literature dooms employees to low wages in a shrinking economy. The studies also generally ignore the millions of jobs that will be destroyed by the restrictions imposed by governments on disfavored products and technologies.
Myth 5: The world economy can be remade by reducing trade and relying on local production and reduced consumption without dramatically decreasing our standard of living.
Fact 5: History shows that individual nations cannot produce everything its citizens need or desire. People and countries have talents that allow specialization in products and services that make them ever more efficient, lower-cost producers, thereby enriching all people .
The green jobs literature rejects the benefits of trade, ignores opportunity costs, specialization, and fails to include consumer surplus in its welfare calculations. This is a recipe for an economic disaster. Even the favored green technologies, such as wind turbines, require expertise and intellectual property rights largely provided by foreigners. The twentieth century saw many experiments in creating societies that did not engage in trade and did not value personal welfare. The economic and human disasters that resulted should have conclusively settled the question of whether nations can withdraw inside their borders.
Myth 6: Government mandates are a substitute for free markets.
Fact 6: Companies react more swiftly and efficiently to the demands of their customers/markets, than to cumbersome government mandates.
Green jobs supporters want to reorder society by mandating preferred technologies and expenditures through government entities. But the responses to government mandates are not the same as the responses to market incentives. We have powerful evidence that market incentives prompt the same resource conservation that green jobs advocates purport to desire. For example, the rising cost of energy is a major incentive to redesign production processes and products to use less energy. People do not want energy; they want the benefits of energy. Those who can deliver more desired goods and services by reducing the energy - and thus the cost of production - will be rewarded. On the other hand, we have no evidence to support the idea that command-and-control regimes accomplish conservation.
Myth 7: Wishing for technological progress is sufficient.
Fact 7: Some technologies preferred by the green jobs studies are not capable of efficiently reaching the scale necessary to meet today’s demands.
The green jobs literature’s preferred technologies face significant problems in scaling up to the levels they propose. These problems are well documented in readily available technical literature, yet are resolutely ignored in the green jobs reports. At the same time, existing viable technologies that fail to meet the green jobs supporters’ political criteria are simply rejected out of hand. This selective technological optimism/pessimism is not a sufficient basis for remaking society to fit the dream of planners, politicians, or special interests who think they know best, despite empirical evidence to the contrary.
Summary of Findings
As you can see in our seven myths listed above, our report finds that the analysis provided in the green jobs literature is deeply flawed. The reports rest on a series of exaggerated, inadequate, or incorrect economic, environmental, and technological assumptions. Moreover, the scale of social change that would be required to implement the proposed programs would be unprecedented.
Our key findings are:
No agreed, coherent definition of a “green job” exists in the public debate. Many of the jobs classified as “green” in these four most popular studies produce no environmental results.
Green jobs ultimately will not promote employment growth or improve production because many are concentrated by design in low productivity occupations.
Green jobs proponents rely on highly problematic assumptions about constant prices and lack of technological change that render their “multiplier effect” misleading and, therefore, useless.
Green job advocates incorrectly assume that government mandates are a substitute for free markets. Their models are based on the assumption that politicians can predict what technologies are best and what the markets will bear.
Many green jobs proposals are an effort to implement anti-trade policies and reduced consumption scenarios that would be unacceptable to most Americans.
IER, March 30, 2009
Executive Summary. [Full report here]
Overview
An aggressive push for a green economy is well underway in the United States. Policymakers now routinely assert that “green jobs” can simultaneously improve environmental quality and reduce unemployment. Our team of researchers from universities around the nation surveyed four often-cited reports (the “literature”) that were sponsored by interest groups, industry associations, and international NGOs. We analyzed their assumptions and found that the groups promoting the idea of green jobs had buried dubious assumptions and techniques within their analysis. We conclude that the massive expenditures demanded by special interest groups and politicians under the green jobs banner are not justified.
Rather than spend hundreds of billions of taxpayers’ dollars on unproven technologies chosen through a political process, we favor market processes to increase conservation of energy and other resources, a strategy proven effective by experience. New green technologies should be explored and expanded by market forces, not government mandates. Before committing massive resources to chasing the green jobs these reports suggest, the special interests advocating strategies that impose costs on every American should expose their models and calculations to peer-reviewed scrutiny, making their process transparent.
We found seven underlying myths within the literature we studied. We believe it is important that these myths be exposed so that we can debate the facts as we move forward toward investing in a more eco-friendly nation.
The Myths And The Facts
Myth 1: Everyone understands what a “green job” is.
Fact 1: No standard definition of a “green job” exists.
According to the studies most commonly quoted, green jobs pay well, are interesting to do, produce products that environmental groups prefer, and do so in a unionized workplace. Such criteria have little to do with the environmental impacts of the jobs. To build a political coalition, “green jobs” have become a mechanism to deliver something for members of many special interests in order to buy their support for a radical transformation of society. Committing hundreds of billions of dollars to promoting something lacking a transparent definition cannot be justified.
Myth 2: Creating green jobs will boost productive employment.
Fact 2: Green jobs estimates in these oft-quoted studies include huge numbers of clerical, bureaucratic, and administrative positions that do not produce goods and services for consumption.
These green jobs studies mistake any position receiving a paycheck for a position creating value. Simply hiring people to write and enforce regulations, fill-out forms, and process paperwork is not a recipe for creating wealth. Much of the promised boost in green employment turns out to be in non-productive - and expensive - positions that raise costs for consumers. These higher paying jobs that fail to create a more eco-friendly society dramatically skew the results in both number of green jobs created and salary levels of those jobs.
Myth 3: Green jobs forecasts are reliable.
Fact 3: The green jobs studies made estimates using poor economic models based on dubious assumptions.
The forecasts for green employment in these studies optimistically predict an employment boom that will take us to prosperity in a new green world. The forecasts, which are sometimes amazingly detailed, are unreliable because they are based on:
a) Questionable estimates by interest groups of tiny base numbers in employment,
b) Extrapolation of growth rates from those small base numbers, that does not take into consideration that growth rates eventually slow, plateau and even decline, and
c) A biased and highly selective optimism about which technologies will improve.
Moreover, the estimates use a technique (input-output analysis) that is inappropriate to the conditions of technological change presumed by the green jobs literature itself. This yields seemingly precise estimates that give the illusion of scientific reliability to numbers that are actually based on faulty assumptions.
Myth 4: Green jobs promote employment growth.
Fact 4: By promoting more jobs instead of more productivity, the green jobs described in the literature actually encourage low-paying jobs in less desirable conditions. Economic growth cannot be ordered by Congress or by the United Nations. Government interference in the economy - such as restricting further progress with already successful technologies in favor of speculative technologies favored by special interests - will generate stagnation.
Green jobs estimates promise greatly expanded (and pleasant and well-paid) employment. This promise is false. The green jobs model is built on promoting inefficient use of labor. The studies favor technologies that employ large numbers of people rather than those technologies that use labor efficiently. In a competitive market, the factors of production, including labor, are paid for their productivity. By focusing on low productivity jobs, the green jobs literature dooms employees to low wages in a shrinking economy. The studies also generally ignore the millions of jobs that will be destroyed by the restrictions imposed by governments on disfavored products and technologies.
Myth 5: The world economy can be remade by reducing trade and relying on local production and reduced consumption without dramatically decreasing our standard of living.
Fact 5: History shows that individual nations cannot produce everything its citizens need or desire. People and countries have talents that allow specialization in products and services that make them ever more efficient, lower-cost producers, thereby enriching all people .
The green jobs literature rejects the benefits of trade, ignores opportunity costs, specialization, and fails to include consumer surplus in its welfare calculations. This is a recipe for an economic disaster. Even the favored green technologies, such as wind turbines, require expertise and intellectual property rights largely provided by foreigners. The twentieth century saw many experiments in creating societies that did not engage in trade and did not value personal welfare. The economic and human disasters that resulted should have conclusively settled the question of whether nations can withdraw inside their borders.
Myth 6: Government mandates are a substitute for free markets.
Fact 6: Companies react more swiftly and efficiently to the demands of their customers/markets, than to cumbersome government mandates.
Green jobs supporters want to reorder society by mandating preferred technologies and expenditures through government entities. But the responses to government mandates are not the same as the responses to market incentives. We have powerful evidence that market incentives prompt the same resource conservation that green jobs advocates purport to desire. For example, the rising cost of energy is a major incentive to redesign production processes and products to use less energy. People do not want energy; they want the benefits of energy. Those who can deliver more desired goods and services by reducing the energy - and thus the cost of production - will be rewarded. On the other hand, we have no evidence to support the idea that command-and-control regimes accomplish conservation.
Myth 7: Wishing for technological progress is sufficient.
Fact 7: Some technologies preferred by the green jobs studies are not capable of efficiently reaching the scale necessary to meet today’s demands.
The green jobs literature’s preferred technologies face significant problems in scaling up to the levels they propose. These problems are well documented in readily available technical literature, yet are resolutely ignored in the green jobs reports. At the same time, existing viable technologies that fail to meet the green jobs supporters’ political criteria are simply rejected out of hand. This selective technological optimism/pessimism is not a sufficient basis for remaking society to fit the dream of planners, politicians, or special interests who think they know best, despite empirical evidence to the contrary.
Summary of Findings
As you can see in our seven myths listed above, our report finds that the analysis provided in the green jobs literature is deeply flawed. The reports rest on a series of exaggerated, inadequate, or incorrect economic, environmental, and technological assumptions. Moreover, the scale of social change that would be required to implement the proposed programs would be unprecedented.
Our key findings are:
No agreed, coherent definition of a “green job” exists in the public debate. Many of the jobs classified as “green” in these four most popular studies produce no environmental results.
Green jobs ultimately will not promote employment growth or improve production because many are concentrated by design in low productivity occupations.
Green jobs proponents rely on highly problematic assumptions about constant prices and lack of technological change that render their “multiplier effect” misleading and, therefore, useless.
Green job advocates incorrectly assume that government mandates are a substitute for free markets. Their models are based on the assumption that politicians can predict what technologies are best and what the markets will bear.
Many green jobs proposals are an effort to implement anti-trade policies and reduced consumption scenarios that would be unacceptable to most Americans.
Friday, March 27, 2009
Job Losses From Obama Green Stimulus Foreseen in Spanish Study
Job Losses From Obama Green Stimulus Foreseen in Spanish Study. By Gianluca Baratti
Bloomberg, Mar 27, 2009
Subsidizing renewable energy in the U.S. may destroy two jobs for every one created if Spain’s experience with windmills and solar farms is any guide.
For every new position that depends on energy price supports, at least 2.2 jobs in other industries will disappear, according to a study from King Juan Carlos University in Madrid.
U.S. President Barack Obama’s 2010 budget proposal contains about $20 billion in tax incentives for clean-energy programs. In Spain, where wind turbines provided 11 percent of power demand last year, generators earn rates as much as 11 times more for renewable energy compared with burning fossil fuels.
The premiums paid for solar, biomass, wave and wind power - - which are charged to consumers in their bills -- translated into a $774,000 cost for each Spanish “green job” created since 2000, said Gabriel Calzada, an economics professor at the university and author of the report.
“The loss of jobs could be greater if you account for the amount of lost industry that moves out of the country due to higher energy prices,” he said in an interview.
Spain’s Acerinox SA, the nation’s largest stainless-steel producer, blamed domestic energy costs for deciding to expand in South Africa and the U.S., according to the study.
“Microsoft and Google moved their servers up to the Canadian border because they benefited from cheaper energy there,” said the professor of applied environmental economics.
Bloomberg, Mar 27, 2009
Subsidizing renewable energy in the U.S. may destroy two jobs for every one created if Spain’s experience with windmills and solar farms is any guide.
For every new position that depends on energy price supports, at least 2.2 jobs in other industries will disappear, according to a study from King Juan Carlos University in Madrid.
U.S. President Barack Obama’s 2010 budget proposal contains about $20 billion in tax incentives for clean-energy programs. In Spain, where wind turbines provided 11 percent of power demand last year, generators earn rates as much as 11 times more for renewable energy compared with burning fossil fuels.
The premiums paid for solar, biomass, wave and wind power - - which are charged to consumers in their bills -- translated into a $774,000 cost for each Spanish “green job” created since 2000, said Gabriel Calzada, an economics professor at the university and author of the report.
“The loss of jobs could be greater if you account for the amount of lost industry that moves out of the country due to higher energy prices,” he said in an interview.
Spain’s Acerinox SA, the nation’s largest stainless-steel producer, blamed domestic energy costs for deciding to expand in South Africa and the U.S., according to the study.
“Microsoft and Google moved their servers up to the Canadian border because they benefited from cheaper energy there,” said the professor of applied environmental economics.
Thursday, March 19, 2009
Grist board member Michelle DePass appointed to EPA
Grist board member appointed to Obama administration, by Kate Sheppard
Mar 18, 2009
On Wednesday, the Obama administration officially announced that Grist board member and Ford Foundation program officer Michelle DePass has been nominated to serve as the assistant administrator for international affairs at the Environmental Protection Agency.
Michelle currently manages the Ford Foundation's initiative on Environmental Justice and Healthy Communities, concentrating on the intersections of environmental and social justice both in the United States and internationally. She has taught federal environmental law and policy at the City University of New York, and developed a workforce development training program for disadvantaged youth on Superfund waste sites. She also served as executive director of the New York City Environmental Justice Alliance and co-organized the Northeast Environmental Justice Network.
She previously served as the assistant to the city manager of San Jose, Calif., on environmental policy matters and was an Environmental Compliance Manager for the City of San Jose. She was a William Kunstler Racial Justice Fellow at the Center for Constitutional Rights in New York, and later worked as a senior policy adviser to the commissioner of the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection.
This is big news for Michelle. Congratulations!
Mar 18, 2009
On Wednesday, the Obama administration officially announced that Grist board member and Ford Foundation program officer Michelle DePass has been nominated to serve as the assistant administrator for international affairs at the Environmental Protection Agency.
Michelle currently manages the Ford Foundation's initiative on Environmental Justice and Healthy Communities, concentrating on the intersections of environmental and social justice both in the United States and internationally. She has taught federal environmental law and policy at the City University of New York, and developed a workforce development training program for disadvantaged youth on Superfund waste sites. She also served as executive director of the New York City Environmental Justice Alliance and co-organized the Northeast Environmental Justice Network.
She previously served as the assistant to the city manager of San Jose, Calif., on environmental policy matters and was an Environmental Compliance Manager for the City of San Jose. She was a William Kunstler Racial Justice Fellow at the Center for Constitutional Rights in New York, and later worked as a senior policy adviser to the commissioner of the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection.
This is big news for Michelle. Congratulations!
Monday, March 16, 2009
Are depressions “green”?
Are depressions “green”?, by Marlo Lewis
Master Resource, March 16, 2009
Cambridge University economist Dr. Terry Barker told delegates at the recent Copenhagen climate conference that if the current economic downturn persists for several years, carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions worldwide could drop by 40% to 50%, the Irish Times reports.
Dr. Barker, who is director of the Cambridge Center for Climate Research, said the Great Depression of the 1930s reduced global emissions by 35% because so many factories shut down, especially in the United States. He adds:
The depression could be worse this time because of globalization. Emissions in the U.S. fell by 3 per cent last year and could fall by 10 to 20 per cent this year because the economy is dropping like a stone with up to 600,000 a month becoming unemployed.
The former Soviet Union provides additional proof of the emission-cutting power of economic collapse. In CO2 Emissions from Fuel Combustion Highlights (2005 Edition), the International Energy Agency reports the following emission reductions during 1990-2003: Bulgaria, 38%; Estonia, 35.3%, Latvia, 52.3%, Lithuania, 43.5%, Romania, 43.3%; Russia, 24.5%, Slovak Republic, 30.2%; and Ukraine, 50.1%.
So clearly, governments do have the power to achieve deep emission cuts in in a single decade or even in a few years. However, there’s not a shred of historical evidence that they can do this without first engineering severe economic contractions.
You might suppose Dr. Barker would worry that, if depressions produce deep emission cuts, then maybe mandating deep emission cuts would produce or prolong depressions, by making energy unaffordable.
But no, Barker reportedly views the current depression as a golden opportunity to launch a “Green New Deal.” He opines that, ”Even very stringent reductions in emissions can create a macroeconomic benefit, if governments go about it the right way.” This is but a green variant of the fatal conceit that elites know better than markets how to direct economic development. Government interventions in credit and housing markets are the root cause of the ongoing financial crisis. Yet instead of humbling would-be central planners, each policy disaster just seems to feed their hubris.
You hear Barker’s message all the time. The revenues from carbon permit auctions or carbon taxes will be used to lower taxes on capital and labor, and fund R&D, making us more prosperous and competitive.
But if taxes on labor and capital are too high (they are), that’s an argument for cutting those taxes, not for imposing new or higher taxes on energy. So-called green industries and jobs were bit players even when the economy was booming. That’s because even when credit markets were flush and fossil energy prices were high, green industries were relatively unproductive. For example, as my colleague Iain Murray estimates, one coal-industry job supports seven times as much electricity as one wind-industry job.
It strains credulity to claim that diverting capital and labor from, e.g., the coal industry to the wind industry will create a macroeconomic benefit, or that economy recovery can be built on jobs and industries that depended heavily on subsidies, tax preferences, and mandates even in prosperous times.
Master Resource, March 16, 2009
Cambridge University economist Dr. Terry Barker told delegates at the recent Copenhagen climate conference that if the current economic downturn persists for several years, carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions worldwide could drop by 40% to 50%, the Irish Times reports.
Dr. Barker, who is director of the Cambridge Center for Climate Research, said the Great Depression of the 1930s reduced global emissions by 35% because so many factories shut down, especially in the United States. He adds:
The depression could be worse this time because of globalization. Emissions in the U.S. fell by 3 per cent last year and could fall by 10 to 20 per cent this year because the economy is dropping like a stone with up to 600,000 a month becoming unemployed.
The former Soviet Union provides additional proof of the emission-cutting power of economic collapse. In CO2 Emissions from Fuel Combustion Highlights (2005 Edition), the International Energy Agency reports the following emission reductions during 1990-2003: Bulgaria, 38%; Estonia, 35.3%, Latvia, 52.3%, Lithuania, 43.5%, Romania, 43.3%; Russia, 24.5%, Slovak Republic, 30.2%; and Ukraine, 50.1%.
So clearly, governments do have the power to achieve deep emission cuts in in a single decade or even in a few years. However, there’s not a shred of historical evidence that they can do this without first engineering severe economic contractions.
You might suppose Dr. Barker would worry that, if depressions produce deep emission cuts, then maybe mandating deep emission cuts would produce or prolong depressions, by making energy unaffordable.
But no, Barker reportedly views the current depression as a golden opportunity to launch a “Green New Deal.” He opines that, ”Even very stringent reductions in emissions can create a macroeconomic benefit, if governments go about it the right way.” This is but a green variant of the fatal conceit that elites know better than markets how to direct economic development. Government interventions in credit and housing markets are the root cause of the ongoing financial crisis. Yet instead of humbling would-be central planners, each policy disaster just seems to feed their hubris.
You hear Barker’s message all the time. The revenues from carbon permit auctions or carbon taxes will be used to lower taxes on capital and labor, and fund R&D, making us more prosperous and competitive.
But if taxes on labor and capital are too high (they are), that’s an argument for cutting those taxes, not for imposing new or higher taxes on energy. So-called green industries and jobs were bit players even when the economy was booming. That’s because even when credit markets were flush and fossil energy prices were high, green industries were relatively unproductive. For example, as my colleague Iain Murray estimates, one coal-industry job supports seven times as much electricity as one wind-industry job.
It strains credulity to claim that diverting capital and labor from, e.g., the coal industry to the wind industry will create a macroeconomic benefit, or that economy recovery can be built on jobs and industries that depended heavily on subsidies, tax preferences, and mandates even in prosperous times.
Sunday, March 15, 2009
Solar Energy Firms Leave Waste Behind in China
Solar Energy Firms Leave Waste Behind in China. By Ariana Eunjung Cha
Washington Post, Sunday, March 9, 2008; A01
GAOLONG, China -- The first time Li Gengxuan saw the dump trucks from the nearby factory pull into his village, he couldn't believe what happened. Stopping between the cornfields and the primary school playground, the workers dumped buckets of bubbling white liquid onto the ground. Then they turned around and drove right back through the gates of their compound without a word.
This ritual has been going on almost every day for nine months, Li and other villagers said.
In China, a country buckling with the breakneck pace of its industrial growth, such stories of environmental pollution are not uncommon. But the Luoyang Zhonggui High-Technology Co., here in the central plains of Henan Province near the Yellow River, stands out for one reason: It's a green energy company, producing polysilicon destined for solar energy panels sold around the world. But the byproduct of polysilicon production -- silicon tetrachloride -- is a highly toxic substance that poses environmental hazards.
"The land where you dump or bury it will be infertile. No grass or trees will grow in the place. . . . It is like dynamite -- it is poisonous, it is polluting. Human beings can never touch it," said Ren Bingyan, a professor at the School of Material Sciences at Hebei Industrial University.
The situation in Li's village points to the environmental trade-offs the world is making as it races to head off a dwindling supply of fossil fuels.
Forests are being cleared to grow biofuels like palm oil, but scientists argue that the disappearance of such huge swaths of forests is contributing to climate change. Hydropower dams are being constructed to replace coal-fired power plants, but they are submerging whole ecosystems under water.
Likewise in China, the push to get into the solar energy market is having unexpected consequences.
With the prices of oil and coal soaring, policymakers around the world are looking at massive solar farms to heat water and generate electricity. For the past four years, however, the world has been suffering from a shortage of polysilicon -- the key component of sunlight-capturing wafers -- driving up prices of solar energy technology and creating a barrier to its adoption.
With the price of polysilicon soaring from $20 per kilogram to $300 per kilogram in the past five years, Chinese companies are eager to fill the gap.
In China, polysilicon plants are the new dot-coms. Flush with venture capital and with generous grants and low-interest loans from a central government touting its efforts to seek clean energy alternatives, more than 20 Chinese companies are starting polysilicon manufacturing plants. The combined capacity of these new factories is estimated at 80,000 to 100,000 tons -- more than double the 40,000 tons produced in the entire world today.
But Chinese companies' methods for dealing with waste haven't been perfected.
Because of the environmental hazard, polysilicon companies in the developed world recycle the compound, putting it back into the production process. But the high investment costs and time, not to mention the enormous energy consumption required for heating the substance to more than 1800 degrees Fahrenheit for the recycling, have discouraged many factories in China from doing the same. Like Luoyang Zhonggui, other solar plants in China have not installed technology to prevent pollutants from getting into the environment or have not brought those systems fully online, industry sources say.
"The recycling technology is of course being thought about, but currently it's still not mature," said Shi Jun, a former photovoltaic technology researcher at the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
Shi, chief executive of Pro-EnerTech, a start-up polysilicon research firm in Shanghai, said that there's such a severe shortage of polysilicon that the government is willing to overlook this issue for now.
"If this happened in the United States, you'd probably be arrested," he said.
An independent, nationally accredited laboratory analyzed a sample of dirt from the dump site near the Luoyang Zhonggui plant at the request of The Washington Post. The tests show high concentrations of chlorine and hydrochloric acid, which can result from the breakdown of silicon tetrachloride and do not exist naturally in soil. "Crops cannot grow on this, and it is not suitable for people to live nearby," said Li Xiaoping, deputy director of the Shanghai Academy of Environmental Sciences.
Wang Hailong, secretary of the board of directors for Luoyang Zhonggui, said it is "impossible" to think that the company would dump large amounts of waste into a residential area. "Some of the villagers did not tell the truth," he said.
However, Wang said the company does release a "minimal amount of waste" in compliance with all environmental regulations. "We release it in a certain place in a certain way. Before it is released, it has gone through strict treatment procedures."
Yi Xusheng, the head of monitoring for the Henan Province Environmental Protection Agency, said the factory had passed a review before it opened, but that "it's possible that there are some pollutants in the production process" that inspectors were not aware of. Yi said the agency would investigate.
In 2005, when residents of Li's village, Shiniu, heard that a new solar energy company would be building a factory nearby, they celebrated.
The impoverished farming community of roughly 2,300, near the eastern end of the Silk Road, had been left behind during China's recent boom. In a country where the average wage in some areas has climbed to $200 a month, many of the village's residents make just $200 a year. They had high hopes their new neighbor would jump-start the local economy and help transform the area into an industrial hub.
The Luoyang Zhonggui factory grew out of an effort by a national research institute to improve on a 50-year-old polysilicon refining technology pioneered by Germany's Siemens. Concerned about intellectual property issues, Siemens has held off on selling its technology to the Chinese. So the Chinese have tried to create their own.
Last year, the Luoyang Zhonggui factory was estimated to have produced less than 300 tons of polysilicon, but it aims to increase that tenfold this year -- making it China's largest operating plant. It is a key supplier to Suntech Power Holdings, a solar panel company whose founder Shi Zhengrong recently topped the list of the richest people in China.
Made from the Earth's most abundant substance -- sand -- polysilicon is tricky to manufacture. It requires huge amounts of energy, and even a small misstep in the production can introduce impurities and ruin an entire batch. The other main challenge is dealing with the waste. For each ton of polysilicon produced, the process generates at least four tons of silicon tetrachloride liquid waste.
When exposed to humid air, silicon tetrachloride transforms into acids and poisonous hydrogen chloride gas, which can make people who breathe the air dizzy and can make their chests contract.
While it typically takes companies two years to get a polysilicon factory up and running properly, many Chinese companies are trying to do it in half that time or less, said Richard Winegarner, president of Sage Concepts, a California-based consulting firm.
As a result, Ren of Hebei Industrial University said, some Chinese plants are stockpiling the hazardous substances in the hopes that they can figure out a way to dispose of it later: "I know these factories began to store silicon tetrachloride in drums two years ago."
Pro-EnerTech's Shi says other companies -- including Luoyang Zhonggui -- are just dumping wherever they can.
"Theoretically, companies should collect it all, process it to get rid of the poisonous stuff, then release it or recycle. Zhonggui currently doesn't have the technology. Now they are just releasing it directly into the air," said Shi, who recently visited the factory.
Shi estimates that Chinese companies are saving millions of dollars by not installing pollution recovery.
He said that if environmental protection technology is used, the cost to produce one ton is approximately $84,500. But Chinese companies are making it at $21,000 to $56,000a ton.
In sharp contrast to the gleaming white buildings in Zhonggui's new gated complex in Gaolong, the situation in the villages surrounding it is bleak.
About nine months ago, residents of Li's village, which begins about 50 yards from the plant, noticed that their crops were wilting under a dusting of white powder. Sometimes, there was a hazy cloud up to three feet high near the dumping site; one person tending crops there fainted, several villagers said. Small rocks began to accumulate in kettles used for boiling faucet water.
Each night, villagers said, the factory's chimneys released a loud whoosh of acrid air that stung their eyes and made it hard to breath. "It's poison air. Sometimes it gets so bad you can't sit outside. You have to close all the doors and windows," said Qiao Shi Peng, 28, a truck driver who said he worries about his 1-year-old son's health.
The villagers said most obvious evidence of the pollution is the dumping, up to 10 times a day, of the liquid waste into what was formerly a grassy field. Eventually, the whole area turned white, like snow.
The worst part, said Li, 53, who lives with his son and granddaughter in the village, is that "they go outside the gates of their own compound to dump waste."
"We didn't know how bad it was until the August harvest, until things started dying," he said.
Early this year, one of the villagers put some of the contaminated soil in a plastic bag and went to the local environmental bureau. They never got back to him.
Zhang Zhenguo, 45, a farmer and small businessman, said he has a theory as to why: "They didn't test it because the government supports the plant."
Researchers Wu Meng and Crissie Ding contributed to this report.
Washington Post, Sunday, March 9, 2008; A01
GAOLONG, China -- The first time Li Gengxuan saw the dump trucks from the nearby factory pull into his village, he couldn't believe what happened. Stopping between the cornfields and the primary school playground, the workers dumped buckets of bubbling white liquid onto the ground. Then they turned around and drove right back through the gates of their compound without a word.
This ritual has been going on almost every day for nine months, Li and other villagers said.
In China, a country buckling with the breakneck pace of its industrial growth, such stories of environmental pollution are not uncommon. But the Luoyang Zhonggui High-Technology Co., here in the central plains of Henan Province near the Yellow River, stands out for one reason: It's a green energy company, producing polysilicon destined for solar energy panels sold around the world. But the byproduct of polysilicon production -- silicon tetrachloride -- is a highly toxic substance that poses environmental hazards.
"The land where you dump or bury it will be infertile. No grass or trees will grow in the place. . . . It is like dynamite -- it is poisonous, it is polluting. Human beings can never touch it," said Ren Bingyan, a professor at the School of Material Sciences at Hebei Industrial University.
The situation in Li's village points to the environmental trade-offs the world is making as it races to head off a dwindling supply of fossil fuels.
Forests are being cleared to grow biofuels like palm oil, but scientists argue that the disappearance of such huge swaths of forests is contributing to climate change. Hydropower dams are being constructed to replace coal-fired power plants, but they are submerging whole ecosystems under water.
Likewise in China, the push to get into the solar energy market is having unexpected consequences.
With the prices of oil and coal soaring, policymakers around the world are looking at massive solar farms to heat water and generate electricity. For the past four years, however, the world has been suffering from a shortage of polysilicon -- the key component of sunlight-capturing wafers -- driving up prices of solar energy technology and creating a barrier to its adoption.
With the price of polysilicon soaring from $20 per kilogram to $300 per kilogram in the past five years, Chinese companies are eager to fill the gap.
In China, polysilicon plants are the new dot-coms. Flush with venture capital and with generous grants and low-interest loans from a central government touting its efforts to seek clean energy alternatives, more than 20 Chinese companies are starting polysilicon manufacturing plants. The combined capacity of these new factories is estimated at 80,000 to 100,000 tons -- more than double the 40,000 tons produced in the entire world today.
But Chinese companies' methods for dealing with waste haven't been perfected.
Because of the environmental hazard, polysilicon companies in the developed world recycle the compound, putting it back into the production process. But the high investment costs and time, not to mention the enormous energy consumption required for heating the substance to more than 1800 degrees Fahrenheit for the recycling, have discouraged many factories in China from doing the same. Like Luoyang Zhonggui, other solar plants in China have not installed technology to prevent pollutants from getting into the environment or have not brought those systems fully online, industry sources say.
"The recycling technology is of course being thought about, but currently it's still not mature," said Shi Jun, a former photovoltaic technology researcher at the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
Shi, chief executive of Pro-EnerTech, a start-up polysilicon research firm in Shanghai, said that there's such a severe shortage of polysilicon that the government is willing to overlook this issue for now.
"If this happened in the United States, you'd probably be arrested," he said.
An independent, nationally accredited laboratory analyzed a sample of dirt from the dump site near the Luoyang Zhonggui plant at the request of The Washington Post. The tests show high concentrations of chlorine and hydrochloric acid, which can result from the breakdown of silicon tetrachloride and do not exist naturally in soil. "Crops cannot grow on this, and it is not suitable for people to live nearby," said Li Xiaoping, deputy director of the Shanghai Academy of Environmental Sciences.
Wang Hailong, secretary of the board of directors for Luoyang Zhonggui, said it is "impossible" to think that the company would dump large amounts of waste into a residential area. "Some of the villagers did not tell the truth," he said.
However, Wang said the company does release a "minimal amount of waste" in compliance with all environmental regulations. "We release it in a certain place in a certain way. Before it is released, it has gone through strict treatment procedures."
Yi Xusheng, the head of monitoring for the Henan Province Environmental Protection Agency, said the factory had passed a review before it opened, but that "it's possible that there are some pollutants in the production process" that inspectors were not aware of. Yi said the agency would investigate.
In 2005, when residents of Li's village, Shiniu, heard that a new solar energy company would be building a factory nearby, they celebrated.
The impoverished farming community of roughly 2,300, near the eastern end of the Silk Road, had been left behind during China's recent boom. In a country where the average wage in some areas has climbed to $200 a month, many of the village's residents make just $200 a year. They had high hopes their new neighbor would jump-start the local economy and help transform the area into an industrial hub.
The Luoyang Zhonggui factory grew out of an effort by a national research institute to improve on a 50-year-old polysilicon refining technology pioneered by Germany's Siemens. Concerned about intellectual property issues, Siemens has held off on selling its technology to the Chinese. So the Chinese have tried to create their own.
Last year, the Luoyang Zhonggui factory was estimated to have produced less than 300 tons of polysilicon, but it aims to increase that tenfold this year -- making it China's largest operating plant. It is a key supplier to Suntech Power Holdings, a solar panel company whose founder Shi Zhengrong recently topped the list of the richest people in China.
Made from the Earth's most abundant substance -- sand -- polysilicon is tricky to manufacture. It requires huge amounts of energy, and even a small misstep in the production can introduce impurities and ruin an entire batch. The other main challenge is dealing with the waste. For each ton of polysilicon produced, the process generates at least four tons of silicon tetrachloride liquid waste.
When exposed to humid air, silicon tetrachloride transforms into acids and poisonous hydrogen chloride gas, which can make people who breathe the air dizzy and can make their chests contract.
While it typically takes companies two years to get a polysilicon factory up and running properly, many Chinese companies are trying to do it in half that time or less, said Richard Winegarner, president of Sage Concepts, a California-based consulting firm.
As a result, Ren of Hebei Industrial University said, some Chinese plants are stockpiling the hazardous substances in the hopes that they can figure out a way to dispose of it later: "I know these factories began to store silicon tetrachloride in drums two years ago."
Pro-EnerTech's Shi says other companies -- including Luoyang Zhonggui -- are just dumping wherever they can.
"Theoretically, companies should collect it all, process it to get rid of the poisonous stuff, then release it or recycle. Zhonggui currently doesn't have the technology. Now they are just releasing it directly into the air," said Shi, who recently visited the factory.
Shi estimates that Chinese companies are saving millions of dollars by not installing pollution recovery.
He said that if environmental protection technology is used, the cost to produce one ton is approximately $84,500. But Chinese companies are making it at $21,000 to $56,000a ton.
In sharp contrast to the gleaming white buildings in Zhonggui's new gated complex in Gaolong, the situation in the villages surrounding it is bleak.
About nine months ago, residents of Li's village, which begins about 50 yards from the plant, noticed that their crops were wilting under a dusting of white powder. Sometimes, there was a hazy cloud up to three feet high near the dumping site; one person tending crops there fainted, several villagers said. Small rocks began to accumulate in kettles used for boiling faucet water.
Each night, villagers said, the factory's chimneys released a loud whoosh of acrid air that stung their eyes and made it hard to breath. "It's poison air. Sometimes it gets so bad you can't sit outside. You have to close all the doors and windows," said Qiao Shi Peng, 28, a truck driver who said he worries about his 1-year-old son's health.
The villagers said most obvious evidence of the pollution is the dumping, up to 10 times a day, of the liquid waste into what was formerly a grassy field. Eventually, the whole area turned white, like snow.
The worst part, said Li, 53, who lives with his son and granddaughter in the village, is that "they go outside the gates of their own compound to dump waste."
"We didn't know how bad it was until the August harvest, until things started dying," he said.
Early this year, one of the villagers put some of the contaminated soil in a plastic bag and went to the local environmental bureau. They never got back to him.
Zhang Zhenguo, 45, a farmer and small businessman, said he has a theory as to why: "They didn't test it because the government supports the plant."
Researchers Wu Meng and Crissie Ding contributed to this report.
Saturday, March 7, 2009
More Doubts on “Green Jobs”
More Doubts on “Green Jobs”, by Robert Murphy
Master Resource, March 6, 2009
As time passes, the skepticism grows about the ability of government funding for “green jobs” to simultaneously (a) pull the economy out of recession and (b) reduce the risk of climate change. In the March 4 edition of Slate–hardly a bastion of reactionary conservatism–Senior Fellow Michael Levi of the Council on Foreign Relations took the greenwash off of “green jobs” in the essay, ”Barking Up the Wrong Tree: Why green jobs may not save the economy or the environment.” Levi also directs CFR’s Program on Energy Security and Climate Change.
At first it sounds as if Levi is merely echoing the thoughts of Harvard’s Robert Stavins, who has recently been pointing out that it’s not necessarily optimal to try to use a single-bullet policy to address two different objectives. (This led to criticism from the always-entertaining Joe Romm that Stavins was incapable of walking and chewing gum at the same time.) Along the same lines of Stavins’ argument, Levi writes:
But just because “green” and “jobs” are both in demand doesn’t mean that policies focused on creating “green jobs” make sense. In fact, a close look at the economics of “green jobs” suggests that if we try to find a lasting solution to these challenges with a single set of policies, we might fail to deliver on both fronts.
But Levi doesn’t stop there. He goes on to challenge the efficacy of government funding for green jobs itself:
The fundamental problem is that there’s no solid evidence that green policies—even those aimed explicitly at creating jobs—will actually lower the long-term unemployment rate. Most of the research on how these sorts of programs might build up the work force simply tallies the payrolls, current or projected, of companies in renewable energy and other sectors…This approach is a natural winner: Green policies inevitably generate jobs in green industries, so the studies inevitably deliver good news. But skeptics argue that simple windmill-counting ignores an important fact: Every unit of energy generated from alternative sources displaces a similar amount generated by traditional means, so forgoing those other energy sources means giving up whatever jobs they were providing. This doesn’t mean that greening the economy will have no net impact on jobs, but it muddies the math considerably.
Levi has done his homework; he knows that the proponents of green jobs have a good comeback to the above argument. But then Levi gives the response to that:
[In response to my objection above,] the green jobs community…points out that a dollar spent on renewable energy or higher energy efficiency will generate more U.S. jobs than a dollar spent on traditional power. That’s probably true, since many green jobs are labor-intensive and clean energy is more likely to be generated at home rather than to be imported. But this misses a critical point, too: The dollar spent on green sources also generates less energy. (Renewables will be more expensive than traditional power for the foreseeable future.) Part of the gap can be closed by energy conservation, but other money will need to be diverted from elsewhere in the economy to make up for the remaining energy shortfall. The result is a loss of jobs somewhere else.
My point in the present blog post is not to definitively settle the score; for a more comprehensive analysis, I point readers to the study I co-authored with Robert Michaels on green jobs. What I am warning about is that many of the estimates of green jobs (that allegedly will be created by government funding) commit very naive mistakes.
To give a diferent example from the ones Levi discusses: Just the other day I heard a politician at the federal level (I forget who it was) talking about the “green” provisions in the stimulus bill. And the questioner asked whether the critics were right, when they said that cap and trade would harm the economy. In response, the politician pointed out all the jobs that would be created through the need to retrofit buildings, switch to alternative energy sources, etc.
This is crazy talk. Someone like Yale’s William Nordhaus can make a plausible case (.pdf) for a carbon tax, using the climate models of the IPCC (and in my opinion a heroic faith in the governments of the world to “get it right”). But Nordhaus is a sensible economist and recognizes that you don’t help the private sector by saddling it with another set of constraints. According to the politician’s logic, if the government required that all buildings be outfitted with polka dot wallpaper, it would stimulate the economy.*
* Unfortunately, there are Nobel laureates who would say that with a straight face. These days it’s getting hard to come up with a reductio ad absurdum…
Master Resource, March 6, 2009
As time passes, the skepticism grows about the ability of government funding for “green jobs” to simultaneously (a) pull the economy out of recession and (b) reduce the risk of climate change. In the March 4 edition of Slate–hardly a bastion of reactionary conservatism–Senior Fellow Michael Levi of the Council on Foreign Relations took the greenwash off of “green jobs” in the essay, ”Barking Up the Wrong Tree: Why green jobs may not save the economy or the environment.” Levi also directs CFR’s Program on Energy Security and Climate Change.
At first it sounds as if Levi is merely echoing the thoughts of Harvard’s Robert Stavins, who has recently been pointing out that it’s not necessarily optimal to try to use a single-bullet policy to address two different objectives. (This led to criticism from the always-entertaining Joe Romm that Stavins was incapable of walking and chewing gum at the same time.) Along the same lines of Stavins’ argument, Levi writes:
But just because “green” and “jobs” are both in demand doesn’t mean that policies focused on creating “green jobs” make sense. In fact, a close look at the economics of “green jobs” suggests that if we try to find a lasting solution to these challenges with a single set of policies, we might fail to deliver on both fronts.
But Levi doesn’t stop there. He goes on to challenge the efficacy of government funding for green jobs itself:
The fundamental problem is that there’s no solid evidence that green policies—even those aimed explicitly at creating jobs—will actually lower the long-term unemployment rate. Most of the research on how these sorts of programs might build up the work force simply tallies the payrolls, current or projected, of companies in renewable energy and other sectors…This approach is a natural winner: Green policies inevitably generate jobs in green industries, so the studies inevitably deliver good news. But skeptics argue that simple windmill-counting ignores an important fact: Every unit of energy generated from alternative sources displaces a similar amount generated by traditional means, so forgoing those other energy sources means giving up whatever jobs they were providing. This doesn’t mean that greening the economy will have no net impact on jobs, but it muddies the math considerably.
Levi has done his homework; he knows that the proponents of green jobs have a good comeback to the above argument. But then Levi gives the response to that:
[In response to my objection above,] the green jobs community…points out that a dollar spent on renewable energy or higher energy efficiency will generate more U.S. jobs than a dollar spent on traditional power. That’s probably true, since many green jobs are labor-intensive and clean energy is more likely to be generated at home rather than to be imported. But this misses a critical point, too: The dollar spent on green sources also generates less energy. (Renewables will be more expensive than traditional power for the foreseeable future.) Part of the gap can be closed by energy conservation, but other money will need to be diverted from elsewhere in the economy to make up for the remaining energy shortfall. The result is a loss of jobs somewhere else.
My point in the present blog post is not to definitively settle the score; for a more comprehensive analysis, I point readers to the study I co-authored with Robert Michaels on green jobs. What I am warning about is that many of the estimates of green jobs (that allegedly will be created by government funding) commit very naive mistakes.
To give a diferent example from the ones Levi discusses: Just the other day I heard a politician at the federal level (I forget who it was) talking about the “green” provisions in the stimulus bill. And the questioner asked whether the critics were right, when they said that cap and trade would harm the economy. In response, the politician pointed out all the jobs that would be created through the need to retrofit buildings, switch to alternative energy sources, etc.
This is crazy talk. Someone like Yale’s William Nordhaus can make a plausible case (.pdf) for a carbon tax, using the climate models of the IPCC (and in my opinion a heroic faith in the governments of the world to “get it right”). But Nordhaus is a sensible economist and recognizes that you don’t help the private sector by saddling it with another set of constraints. According to the politician’s logic, if the government required that all buildings be outfitted with polka dot wallpaper, it would stimulate the economy.*
* Unfortunately, there are Nobel laureates who would say that with a straight face. These days it’s getting hard to come up with a reductio ad absurdum…
Thursday, March 5, 2009
The Anti-Green Ecologist: James Lovelock
The Anti-Green Ecologist, by Myron Ebell
CEI, March 1, 2009
James Lovelock is a creative scientist and inventor, a visionary thinker, and a fascinating individual. Not the least remarkable thing about him is that at the age of 89 he still writes clearly and beautifully. The Vanishing Face of Gaia is his second book on global warming and covers much the same ground as The Revenge of Gaia, published in 2006. However, both books, indeed all his books, contain interesting and often charming excursions into a number of topics scientific, personal, and speculative.
Lovelock believes that it is not possible to understand the looming global warming crisis and to know what to do about it without taking Gaia into account. The name Gaia, which was suggested to him 40 years ago by his country neighbour, the novelist William Golding, is the ancient Greeks’ goddess of Earth and is the etymological root of words such as geology. By Gaia, Lovelock means that the biosphere – the totality of life on Earth – regulates itself and the air, water and rocks upon which it depends so as to maintain favourable conditions for itself. Lovelock promotes Gaia as both a public religion (we humans need to realise that we are merely parts of a larger organism) and as a scientific theory (the biosphere should be studied as a self-regulating system analogous to an organism).
The current scientific consensus on global warming, as represented by the assessment reports of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, is far off the mark, according to Lovelock. Consensus has no legitimate role in science. It’s rather a way of resolving political differences than pursuing truth. Moreover, this specific consensus is based on agreeing that computer models can predict what global temperatures will be in 50 or 100 years, which Lovelock argues is preposterous. Instead of models, science must be based on observations and measurements.
What do observations and measurements tell us about the global climate? Lovelock says that the evidence is unambiguous: the rate of warming is much faster than predicted by the computer model forecasts of steady, gradual warming. The almost certain result is that the self-regulating feedbacks that maintain the climate in its current rather cool state will collapse and the climate will change suddenly to a much hotter state.
That is fine for Gaia, which looks after itself, but spells calamity for humankind. Lovelock believes that jumping to a hot climate is probably inevitable and that most of the Earth will become desert. Human beings, if they are clever enough to save themselves, will be able to survive only in the most northern and southern land masses and on a few islands, including the British Isles. This hot new world will support at most a billion people.
Thus for Lovelock the programme undertaken with the Kyoto Protocol to try to limit warming by reducing greenhouse gas emissions is catastrophically foolish. We should be concentrating on how to adapt to the hotter world. Even if it is not too late to stop global warming, Lovelock cannot contain his scorn for the promoters of wind farms and biofuels and for the silly people who adopt a green lifestyle to lower their carbon footprints. Instead of windmills and fuel from crops, which will enrich special interest groups without reducing emissions, Lovelock argues that the only effective measures are geo-engineering (that is, climate modification by means such as adding aerosols to the upper atmosphere or increasing algae growth in the oceans) and a crash programme to build nuclear reactors.
It is with Lovelock’s enthusiasm for nuclear power that his fundamental disagreement with and antipathy for the Green movement becomes most apparent. The Greens have turned people against nuclear power with “a concatenation of lies”. Ironically, Lovelock acknowledges that he played a small but essential role in creating modern environmentalism. His invention of the electron capture detector in 1957 provided Rachel Carson with evidence that industrial toxins were present in everything, including human tissue. Lovelock points out that everyone knows that the dose makes the poison. Minute traces of chemicals pose no threat to human beings, nor do the low levels of radiation found in nuclear waste. The most potent carcinogen, Lovelock observes, is oxygen.
Blatantly dishonest opposition to nuclear power is not, however, the heart of Lovelock’s hatred of what he calls the “urban green ideology” and which he describes as perhaps the most deadly and most environmentally damaging of all ideologies. Lovelock has spent most of his life working as an independent scientist, that quaintest of callings, partly because it suits his quirky character, but largely because it has allowed him to live in that quaintest of locales, the English countryside. He deeply loves the landscape that has been intensively managed by people since time out of mind and that he has watched over the course of his life being destroyed by mechanised agriculture. Now, what’s left is being obliterated by hundreds of thousands of acres of crops to produce biofuels, and the views are being ruined by gigantic windmills.
Lovelock blames this destruction on “urban imperialist infiltrators” who know nothing of the beauties of plants and animals or the pleasures of country life and who have been duped by the Greens into thinking that the worst things imaginable are trace pesticides in their food, or electricity provided by politically incorrect sources. As a countryman who is passionate about the country and who sees citification as the greatest threat to what is best in being human, Lovelock draws on a much deeper stream of Western culture than is present in his Gaia theory. He partakes of the tradition represented by Henry Williamson and J. R. R. Tolkien in England in the 20th century and by Coleridge and Wordsworth in the 19th.
I recommend The Vanishing Face of Gaia as a book worth reading, despite the fact that I disagree with both Lovelock and the conventional alarmists that global warming is a crisis. I agree with Lovelock on consensus, the computer models and on the primacy of observation. But he seems unaware of the wide array of observational evidence that does not support his position. For example, he quotes one study that sea levels are now rising at a rate much faster than the models predict. That study is not supported by the scientific literature or by the satellite measurements of sea levels that have recently become available. Lovelock is not alone in this: my experience is that global warming alarmism depends on cherry-picking the evidence.
Even on the small chance that he is right that we face a much hotter world, there have been similar climate eras in Earth’s history that were times of lush vegetation and a flourishing of the biosphere rather than widespread droughts and deserts. That’s not necessarily due to temperature: plants need carbon dioxide to photosynthesise and higher carbon dioxide levels cause nearly all classes of plants to grow more vigorously and to withstand adversity better, as hundreds of agricultural experiments have demonstrated. Maybe Lovelock is right, but he pushes it much too far. He claims that humanity would have done better causing the next ice age to start “even though we would have had to abandon much of the northern temperate land to the glaciers” (including much of Britain).
I would like the chance to discuss the entire issue with Lovelock and would undoubtedly profit handsomely from listening to him. That is because he is a most unusually open and honest scientist in today’s global warming debate. Unlike most of the scientists pushing alarmism, Jim Lovelock does not mould the scientific evidence to fit a political agenda. Instead of dismissing global warming sceptics as “deniers”, he praises Nigel Lawson’s sceptical book, An Appeal To Reason: ”...I applaud his astringency and his disapproval of the trendy populism that now attaches to anything and everything seen as Green.”
And if I have serious philosophical doubts about Gaia, it goes without saying that I agree with Lovelock on windmills and biofuels, nuclear reactors, Rachel Carson and pesticides, urban green imperialist ideology and the ridiculous and futile commitments to reduce emissions.
John and Mary Gribbin’s He Knew He Was Right is advertised by the publisher Allen Lane as the “definitive, authorised biography” of Lovelock. It’s not remotely definitive, but it’s not as bad as the Trollopian title portends. The Gribbins recount many episodes large and small in Lovelock’s life based on conversations with him and on his autobiography. They also provide much historical background on climate science and on the precursors of Gaia theory.
Their aim is to show Gaia as one of the great breakthroughs in the history of science and Lovelock as Gaia’s prophet. This is bad enough, but they then shorten their book’s shelf life by tying it all up to the global warming fad.
As an uncritical look at some episodes in Lovelock’s scientific career and life, the book cannot compete with Lovelock’s own autobiography, Homage to Gaia, because it lacks Lovelock’s charm. But it does have one or two moments that reveal his remarkable character. In a chapter titled “What doesn’t kill you makes you strong”, the Gribbins recount Lovelock’s coronary problems that almost killed him because he didn’t want to have surgery in the United States in 1972 on the grounds that it would cost too much. After a decade of misdiagnoses and delay, during which he might have had a fatal heart attack at any time, the National Health Service finally operated in 1982. The bypass was “a complete success”.
Unfortunately, a catheter had not been sterilised properly due to a labour dispute that was taken out on patients by working to rule. The result has been continual urinary tract infections, at least 40 operations, and “pain and misery that persists to the present day”. The Gribbins cheerily report that Lovelock “holds no ill will towards the hospital or the National Health Service. If anything, his experiences over the next 25 years reinforced his belief in a free medical service available to all.”
CEI, March 1, 2009
James Lovelock is a creative scientist and inventor, a visionary thinker, and a fascinating individual. Not the least remarkable thing about him is that at the age of 89 he still writes clearly and beautifully. The Vanishing Face of Gaia is his second book on global warming and covers much the same ground as The Revenge of Gaia, published in 2006. However, both books, indeed all his books, contain interesting and often charming excursions into a number of topics scientific, personal, and speculative.
Lovelock believes that it is not possible to understand the looming global warming crisis and to know what to do about it without taking Gaia into account. The name Gaia, which was suggested to him 40 years ago by his country neighbour, the novelist William Golding, is the ancient Greeks’ goddess of Earth and is the etymological root of words such as geology. By Gaia, Lovelock means that the biosphere – the totality of life on Earth – regulates itself and the air, water and rocks upon which it depends so as to maintain favourable conditions for itself. Lovelock promotes Gaia as both a public religion (we humans need to realise that we are merely parts of a larger organism) and as a scientific theory (the biosphere should be studied as a self-regulating system analogous to an organism).
The current scientific consensus on global warming, as represented by the assessment reports of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, is far off the mark, according to Lovelock. Consensus has no legitimate role in science. It’s rather a way of resolving political differences than pursuing truth. Moreover, this specific consensus is based on agreeing that computer models can predict what global temperatures will be in 50 or 100 years, which Lovelock argues is preposterous. Instead of models, science must be based on observations and measurements.
What do observations and measurements tell us about the global climate? Lovelock says that the evidence is unambiguous: the rate of warming is much faster than predicted by the computer model forecasts of steady, gradual warming. The almost certain result is that the self-regulating feedbacks that maintain the climate in its current rather cool state will collapse and the climate will change suddenly to a much hotter state.
That is fine for Gaia, which looks after itself, but spells calamity for humankind. Lovelock believes that jumping to a hot climate is probably inevitable and that most of the Earth will become desert. Human beings, if they are clever enough to save themselves, will be able to survive only in the most northern and southern land masses and on a few islands, including the British Isles. This hot new world will support at most a billion people.
Thus for Lovelock the programme undertaken with the Kyoto Protocol to try to limit warming by reducing greenhouse gas emissions is catastrophically foolish. We should be concentrating on how to adapt to the hotter world. Even if it is not too late to stop global warming, Lovelock cannot contain his scorn for the promoters of wind farms and biofuels and for the silly people who adopt a green lifestyle to lower their carbon footprints. Instead of windmills and fuel from crops, which will enrich special interest groups without reducing emissions, Lovelock argues that the only effective measures are geo-engineering (that is, climate modification by means such as adding aerosols to the upper atmosphere or increasing algae growth in the oceans) and a crash programme to build nuclear reactors.
It is with Lovelock’s enthusiasm for nuclear power that his fundamental disagreement with and antipathy for the Green movement becomes most apparent. The Greens have turned people against nuclear power with “a concatenation of lies”. Ironically, Lovelock acknowledges that he played a small but essential role in creating modern environmentalism. His invention of the electron capture detector in 1957 provided Rachel Carson with evidence that industrial toxins were present in everything, including human tissue. Lovelock points out that everyone knows that the dose makes the poison. Minute traces of chemicals pose no threat to human beings, nor do the low levels of radiation found in nuclear waste. The most potent carcinogen, Lovelock observes, is oxygen.
Blatantly dishonest opposition to nuclear power is not, however, the heart of Lovelock’s hatred of what he calls the “urban green ideology” and which he describes as perhaps the most deadly and most environmentally damaging of all ideologies. Lovelock has spent most of his life working as an independent scientist, that quaintest of callings, partly because it suits his quirky character, but largely because it has allowed him to live in that quaintest of locales, the English countryside. He deeply loves the landscape that has been intensively managed by people since time out of mind and that he has watched over the course of his life being destroyed by mechanised agriculture. Now, what’s left is being obliterated by hundreds of thousands of acres of crops to produce biofuels, and the views are being ruined by gigantic windmills.
Lovelock blames this destruction on “urban imperialist infiltrators” who know nothing of the beauties of plants and animals or the pleasures of country life and who have been duped by the Greens into thinking that the worst things imaginable are trace pesticides in their food, or electricity provided by politically incorrect sources. As a countryman who is passionate about the country and who sees citification as the greatest threat to what is best in being human, Lovelock draws on a much deeper stream of Western culture than is present in his Gaia theory. He partakes of the tradition represented by Henry Williamson and J. R. R. Tolkien in England in the 20th century and by Coleridge and Wordsworth in the 19th.
I recommend The Vanishing Face of Gaia as a book worth reading, despite the fact that I disagree with both Lovelock and the conventional alarmists that global warming is a crisis. I agree with Lovelock on consensus, the computer models and on the primacy of observation. But he seems unaware of the wide array of observational evidence that does not support his position. For example, he quotes one study that sea levels are now rising at a rate much faster than the models predict. That study is not supported by the scientific literature or by the satellite measurements of sea levels that have recently become available. Lovelock is not alone in this: my experience is that global warming alarmism depends on cherry-picking the evidence.
Even on the small chance that he is right that we face a much hotter world, there have been similar climate eras in Earth’s history that were times of lush vegetation and a flourishing of the biosphere rather than widespread droughts and deserts. That’s not necessarily due to temperature: plants need carbon dioxide to photosynthesise and higher carbon dioxide levels cause nearly all classes of plants to grow more vigorously and to withstand adversity better, as hundreds of agricultural experiments have demonstrated. Maybe Lovelock is right, but he pushes it much too far. He claims that humanity would have done better causing the next ice age to start “even though we would have had to abandon much of the northern temperate land to the glaciers” (including much of Britain).
I would like the chance to discuss the entire issue with Lovelock and would undoubtedly profit handsomely from listening to him. That is because he is a most unusually open and honest scientist in today’s global warming debate. Unlike most of the scientists pushing alarmism, Jim Lovelock does not mould the scientific evidence to fit a political agenda. Instead of dismissing global warming sceptics as “deniers”, he praises Nigel Lawson’s sceptical book, An Appeal To Reason: ”...I applaud his astringency and his disapproval of the trendy populism that now attaches to anything and everything seen as Green.”
And if I have serious philosophical doubts about Gaia, it goes without saying that I agree with Lovelock on windmills and biofuels, nuclear reactors, Rachel Carson and pesticides, urban green imperialist ideology and the ridiculous and futile commitments to reduce emissions.
John and Mary Gribbin’s He Knew He Was Right is advertised by the publisher Allen Lane as the “definitive, authorised biography” of Lovelock. It’s not remotely definitive, but it’s not as bad as the Trollopian title portends. The Gribbins recount many episodes large and small in Lovelock’s life based on conversations with him and on his autobiography. They also provide much historical background on climate science and on the precursors of Gaia theory.
Their aim is to show Gaia as one of the great breakthroughs in the history of science and Lovelock as Gaia’s prophet. This is bad enough, but they then shorten their book’s shelf life by tying it all up to the global warming fad.
As an uncritical look at some episodes in Lovelock’s scientific career and life, the book cannot compete with Lovelock’s own autobiography, Homage to Gaia, because it lacks Lovelock’s charm. But it does have one or two moments that reveal his remarkable character. In a chapter titled “What doesn’t kill you makes you strong”, the Gribbins recount Lovelock’s coronary problems that almost killed him because he didn’t want to have surgery in the United States in 1972 on the grounds that it would cost too much. After a decade of misdiagnoses and delay, during which he might have had a fatal heart attack at any time, the National Health Service finally operated in 1982. The bypass was “a complete success”.
Unfortunately, a catheter had not been sterilised properly due to a labour dispute that was taken out on patients by working to rule. The result has been continual urinary tract infections, at least 40 operations, and “pain and misery that persists to the present day”. The Gribbins cheerily report that Lovelock “holds no ill will towards the hospital or the National Health Service. If anything, his experiences over the next 25 years reinforced his belief in a free medical service available to all.”
Monday, March 2, 2009
Libertarian views: The Malthusian Wing of the Party in Power
The Malthusian Wing of the Party in Power: When Will They Speak Up? By Robert Bradley
Master Resource, Mar 01, 2009
“The economic recession/depression is good, not bad. It lowers our carbon footprint in countless ways. It saves resources. It throttles back industrial society to sustainable levels that were exceeded long ago. Let the downturn continue to get us out of the growth mentality. Let rising expectations fall! Less is more!”
When will some prominent Left environmentalist slip and say something like this? No doubt the tongues are tied right now, but as time goes on it will be harder to keep the Malthusians muted.
Consider Paul Ehrlich’s advice for families, which can be extended to the economy as a whole:
Once a cooperative movement had gained momentum, it could also engage in an enormous campaign to re-educate other consumers and to change their buying habits. The pitch might be: ‘Try to live below your means! It will be good for your family’s economic situation, and may also help to save the world.’
- Paul Ehrlich and Richard Harriman, How To Be a Survivor (Rivercity, Mass: Rivercity Press, 1971, 1975), p. 149.
The literature is chock full of anti-growth, anti-industrial sentiment, including statements from John Holdren, Obama’s confirmed top science advisor, who said (with Ehrlich):
Only one rational path is open to us—simultaneous de-development of the [over developed countries or] ODC’s and semi-development of the underdeveloped countries (UDC’s), in order to approach a decent and ecologically sustainable standard of living for all in between. By de-development we mean lower per-capita energy consumption, fewer gadgets, and the abolition of planned obsolescence.
- John Holdren and Paul Ehrlich, “Introduction,” in Holdren and Ehrlich, eds., Global Ecology (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1971), p. 3.
and:
A massive campaign must be launched to restore a high-quality environment in North America and to de-develop the United States. . . . Resources and energy must be diverted from frivolous and wasteful uses in overdeveloped countries to filling the genuine needs of underdeveloped countries. This effort must be largely political.
- John Holdren, Anne Ehrlich, and Paul Ehrlich, Human Ecology: Problems and Solutions (San Francisco; W.H. Freeman and Company, 1973), p. 279.
Al Gore has blessed a “wrenching transformation of society,” which does not bode well for a future of economic prosperity:
Minor shifts in policy, marginal adjustments in ongoing programs, moderate improvements in laws and regulations, rhetoric offered in lieu of genuine change—these are all forms of appeasement, designed to satisfy the public’s desire to believe that sacrifice, struggle, and a wrenching transformation of society will not be necessary.”
- Al Gore, Earth in the Balance: Ecology and the Human Spirit (New York: Plume/Penguin, 1992, 1993), p. 274.
Lifestyle changes are required, notes Amory Lovins:
Governments and their constituencies in rich countries should begin to contemplate seriously and to decide upon the changes in lifestyles that energetic and other constraints will soon impose—changes that may well be desirable on other grounds.
- Amory Lovins, World Energy Strategies: Facts, Issues, and Options (New York: Friends of the Earth International, 1975), p. 127.
Adds Christopher Flavin of the Worldwatch Institute:
Global climate change will not be slowed with a simple law or regulation. More than any other environmental problem, climate change is woven into the very structure of today’s societies. . . . Major changes in technology, infrastructure, and even life-style are needed to slow it.
- Christopher Flavin and Odil Tunali, Climate of Hope: New Strategies for Stabilizing the World’s Atmosphere (Washington: Worldwatch Institute, 1996), p. 53.
Laws, laws, more laws
What might some of these lifestyle changes entail. Paul Ehrlich, the mentor of John Holdren, has been explicit:
Laws may well be passed strictly limiting the number of appliances a single family may possess. Learning to survive with only one TV set will, for instance, be simpler than learning to live on a planet made uninhabitable by an unending quest for material possessions.
- Paul Ehrlich and Richard Harriman, How To Be a Survivor (Rivercity, Mass: Rivercity Press, 1971, 1975), p. 69.
Many of the conservation measures temporarily undertaken when the mini-crisis was in its acute stage—lowered speed limits, car-pools, reset thermostats, etc.—should be instituted on a permanent basis. . . . In the long run, energy should be made expensive, especially for large users, as an incentive to conservation.
- Paul Ehrlich and Anne Ehrlich, The End of Affluence (Riverside, Mass: Rivercity Press, 1974, 1975), p. 48.
The large automobile should disappear entirely, except for some taxis, and these could be designed to run economically.
- Paul Ehrlich and Anne Ehrlich, The End of Affluence (Riverside, Mass: Rivercity Press, 1974, 1975), p. 223.
Except in special circumstances, all construction of power generating facilities should cease immediately. . . . Power is much too cheap. It should certainly be made more expensive and perhaps rationed, in order to reduce its frivolous use.
- Paul Ehrlich and Richard Harriman, How To Be A Survivor (Rivercity, Mass.: Rivercity Press, 1971, 1975), p. 72.
Unnecessary lighting in offices and factories should . . . be banned.
- Paul Ehrlich and Anne Ehrlich, The End of Affluence (Riverside, Mass: Rivercity Press, 1974, 1975), p. 226.
It should immediately be made illegal to construct a building with windows which cannot be opened.
- Paul Ehrlich and Richard Harriman, How To Be A Survivor (Rivercity, Mass.: Rivercity Press, 1971, 1975), pp. 73-74.
Completely frivolous uses of power, such as gas yard lamps that are permanently lit, should be outlawed altogether.
- Paul Ehrlich and Anne Ehrlich, The End of Affluence (Riverside, Mass: Rivercity Press, 1974, 1975), p. 227.
Who, for instance, benefits from the garish use of electric signs that deface the nighttime sky of our cities? Many of then, of course, carry the kind of deceptive advertising that fuels our frenzied economy. . . . Advertising signs on restaurants, motels, and the like could be shut off by law at night when the establishment was not open. If everyone had to do it there would be little, if any, competitive loss.
- Paul Ehrlich and Richard Harriman, How To Be a Survivor (Rivercity, Mass: Rivercity Press, 1971, 1975), p. 73.
Making Fun of Consumption
Somewhere shortly after the Second World War the people of the United States made a colossal blunder. . . . TVs, boats, hi-fi’s, driers, disposals, and a myriad other items appeared on the lists of ‘musts.’ Suddenly we needed two or three of everything, and a new model of each every year.
- Paul Ehrlich and Richard Harriman, How To Be a Survivor (Rivercity, Mass: Rivercity Press, 1971, 1975), pp. 58-59.
Cars are for transportation, and proper use of the media could once again persuade American men to get their sexual kicks out of sex (not reproduction) instead of a series of automotive sexual surrogates. Restriction of families to ownership of single small cars also would put some pressure against over-reproducers. Our stress on the world’s supply of nonrenewable resources would be greatly alleviated by limiting the fuel consumption of the cars and by designing them for recycling.
- Paul Ehrlich and Richard Harriman, How To Be a Survivor (Rivercity, Mass: Rivercity Press, 1971, 1975), p. 67.
First everyone had to have a small black-and-white TV set, then a large screen, then color, then a VCR, then a Dolby stereo sound system, then a VCR with a Dolby stereo sound system. Soon anyone who can’t download any of 514 European, Asian, and cable television channels into his TV’s quadraplexed digital memory over the cellular modem in his moving car, transmit it to his home while moving, and play it back for his kids later than night will probably feel deprived.
- Robert Ornstein and Paul Ehrlich, New World New Mind: Moving Toward Conscious Evolution (New York: Doubleday, 1989), p. 56.
Over the longer term, America’s transportation system could be redesigned to minimize the need for automobiles and trucks and maximize the use of feet and bicycles for local transport and trains and aircraft, i.e. public transport, for long distances.
- Paul Ehrlich and Richard Harriman, How To Be a Survivor (Rivercity, Mass: Rivercity Press, 1971, 1975), p. 68.
It is not a stretch of the imagination to think that the carbon police will be need to enforce all of the carbon laws that would be needed in an Ehrlich-Holdren-Gore-Lovins-Flavin world. Will civil libertarians catch on and turn against the “Limits to Growth” wing of today’s dominant political party?
Master Resource, Mar 01, 2009
“The economic recession/depression is good, not bad. It lowers our carbon footprint in countless ways. It saves resources. It throttles back industrial society to sustainable levels that were exceeded long ago. Let the downturn continue to get us out of the growth mentality. Let rising expectations fall! Less is more!”
When will some prominent Left environmentalist slip and say something like this? No doubt the tongues are tied right now, but as time goes on it will be harder to keep the Malthusians muted.
Consider Paul Ehrlich’s advice for families, which can be extended to the economy as a whole:
Once a cooperative movement had gained momentum, it could also engage in an enormous campaign to re-educate other consumers and to change their buying habits. The pitch might be: ‘Try to live below your means! It will be good for your family’s economic situation, and may also help to save the world.’
- Paul Ehrlich and Richard Harriman, How To Be a Survivor (Rivercity, Mass: Rivercity Press, 1971, 1975), p. 149.
The literature is chock full of anti-growth, anti-industrial sentiment, including statements from John Holdren, Obama’s confirmed top science advisor, who said (with Ehrlich):
Only one rational path is open to us—simultaneous de-development of the [over developed countries or] ODC’s and semi-development of the underdeveloped countries (UDC’s), in order to approach a decent and ecologically sustainable standard of living for all in between. By de-development we mean lower per-capita energy consumption, fewer gadgets, and the abolition of planned obsolescence.
- John Holdren and Paul Ehrlich, “Introduction,” in Holdren and Ehrlich, eds., Global Ecology (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1971), p. 3.
and:
A massive campaign must be launched to restore a high-quality environment in North America and to de-develop the United States. . . . Resources and energy must be diverted from frivolous and wasteful uses in overdeveloped countries to filling the genuine needs of underdeveloped countries. This effort must be largely political.
- John Holdren, Anne Ehrlich, and Paul Ehrlich, Human Ecology: Problems and Solutions (San Francisco; W.H. Freeman and Company, 1973), p. 279.
Al Gore has blessed a “wrenching transformation of society,” which does not bode well for a future of economic prosperity:
Minor shifts in policy, marginal adjustments in ongoing programs, moderate improvements in laws and regulations, rhetoric offered in lieu of genuine change—these are all forms of appeasement, designed to satisfy the public’s desire to believe that sacrifice, struggle, and a wrenching transformation of society will not be necessary.”
- Al Gore, Earth in the Balance: Ecology and the Human Spirit (New York: Plume/Penguin, 1992, 1993), p. 274.
Lifestyle changes are required, notes Amory Lovins:
Governments and their constituencies in rich countries should begin to contemplate seriously and to decide upon the changes in lifestyles that energetic and other constraints will soon impose—changes that may well be desirable on other grounds.
- Amory Lovins, World Energy Strategies: Facts, Issues, and Options (New York: Friends of the Earth International, 1975), p. 127.
Adds Christopher Flavin of the Worldwatch Institute:
Global climate change will not be slowed with a simple law or regulation. More than any other environmental problem, climate change is woven into the very structure of today’s societies. . . . Major changes in technology, infrastructure, and even life-style are needed to slow it.
- Christopher Flavin and Odil Tunali, Climate of Hope: New Strategies for Stabilizing the World’s Atmosphere (Washington: Worldwatch Institute, 1996), p. 53.
Laws, laws, more laws
What might some of these lifestyle changes entail. Paul Ehrlich, the mentor of John Holdren, has been explicit:
Laws may well be passed strictly limiting the number of appliances a single family may possess. Learning to survive with only one TV set will, for instance, be simpler than learning to live on a planet made uninhabitable by an unending quest for material possessions.
- Paul Ehrlich and Richard Harriman, How To Be a Survivor (Rivercity, Mass: Rivercity Press, 1971, 1975), p. 69.
Many of the conservation measures temporarily undertaken when the mini-crisis was in its acute stage—lowered speed limits, car-pools, reset thermostats, etc.—should be instituted on a permanent basis. . . . In the long run, energy should be made expensive, especially for large users, as an incentive to conservation.
- Paul Ehrlich and Anne Ehrlich, The End of Affluence (Riverside, Mass: Rivercity Press, 1974, 1975), p. 48.
The large automobile should disappear entirely, except for some taxis, and these could be designed to run economically.
- Paul Ehrlich and Anne Ehrlich, The End of Affluence (Riverside, Mass: Rivercity Press, 1974, 1975), p. 223.
Except in special circumstances, all construction of power generating facilities should cease immediately. . . . Power is much too cheap. It should certainly be made more expensive and perhaps rationed, in order to reduce its frivolous use.
- Paul Ehrlich and Richard Harriman, How To Be A Survivor (Rivercity, Mass.: Rivercity Press, 1971, 1975), p. 72.
Unnecessary lighting in offices and factories should . . . be banned.
- Paul Ehrlich and Anne Ehrlich, The End of Affluence (Riverside, Mass: Rivercity Press, 1974, 1975), p. 226.
It should immediately be made illegal to construct a building with windows which cannot be opened.
- Paul Ehrlich and Richard Harriman, How To Be A Survivor (Rivercity, Mass.: Rivercity Press, 1971, 1975), pp. 73-74.
Completely frivolous uses of power, such as gas yard lamps that are permanently lit, should be outlawed altogether.
- Paul Ehrlich and Anne Ehrlich, The End of Affluence (Riverside, Mass: Rivercity Press, 1974, 1975), p. 227.
Who, for instance, benefits from the garish use of electric signs that deface the nighttime sky of our cities? Many of then, of course, carry the kind of deceptive advertising that fuels our frenzied economy. . . . Advertising signs on restaurants, motels, and the like could be shut off by law at night when the establishment was not open. If everyone had to do it there would be little, if any, competitive loss.
- Paul Ehrlich and Richard Harriman, How To Be a Survivor (Rivercity, Mass: Rivercity Press, 1971, 1975), p. 73.
Making Fun of Consumption
Somewhere shortly after the Second World War the people of the United States made a colossal blunder. . . . TVs, boats, hi-fi’s, driers, disposals, and a myriad other items appeared on the lists of ‘musts.’ Suddenly we needed two or three of everything, and a new model of each every year.
- Paul Ehrlich and Richard Harriman, How To Be a Survivor (Rivercity, Mass: Rivercity Press, 1971, 1975), pp. 58-59.
Cars are for transportation, and proper use of the media could once again persuade American men to get their sexual kicks out of sex (not reproduction) instead of a series of automotive sexual surrogates. Restriction of families to ownership of single small cars also would put some pressure against over-reproducers. Our stress on the world’s supply of nonrenewable resources would be greatly alleviated by limiting the fuel consumption of the cars and by designing them for recycling.
- Paul Ehrlich and Richard Harriman, How To Be a Survivor (Rivercity, Mass: Rivercity Press, 1971, 1975), p. 67.
First everyone had to have a small black-and-white TV set, then a large screen, then color, then a VCR, then a Dolby stereo sound system, then a VCR with a Dolby stereo sound system. Soon anyone who can’t download any of 514 European, Asian, and cable television channels into his TV’s quadraplexed digital memory over the cellular modem in his moving car, transmit it to his home while moving, and play it back for his kids later than night will probably feel deprived.
- Robert Ornstein and Paul Ehrlich, New World New Mind: Moving Toward Conscious Evolution (New York: Doubleday, 1989), p. 56.
Over the longer term, America’s transportation system could be redesigned to minimize the need for automobiles and trucks and maximize the use of feet and bicycles for local transport and trains and aircraft, i.e. public transport, for long distances.
- Paul Ehrlich and Richard Harriman, How To Be a Survivor (Rivercity, Mass: Rivercity Press, 1971, 1975), p. 68.
It is not a stretch of the imagination to think that the carbon police will be need to enforce all of the carbon laws that would be needed in an Ehrlich-Holdren-Gore-Lovins-Flavin world. Will civil libertarians catch on and turn against the “Limits to Growth” wing of today’s dominant political party?
Soft Toilet Paper: Mankind’s Doom?
Soft Toilet Paper: Mankind’s Doom? By Ryan Young
Open Market/CEI, February 28, 2009 @ 5:38 pm
The kerfuffle over soft toilet paper has hit a new low. The NRDC’s Allen Hershkowitz is now saying that “People just don’t understand that softness equals ecological destruction.”
I had to chuckle after reading that last sentence (it is silly, is it not?). But then I decided to take Hershkowitz seriously. Hardcore environmentalists like the NRDC are sometimes loosey-goosey with the data; science and their religion rarely get along.
Let’s see how big the impact of softer toilet paper really is. Maybe, hyperbole aside, Hershkowitz has a point. Let’s look at the data and find out.
Despite the proliferation of tree-intensive soft toilet paper, forest area in the U.S. has remained almost unchanged over the last century. Right around 33% of total land area.
Over that same time period, U.S. population more than tripled. That’s a lot more bottoms, demanding ever softer toilet paper. And yet — no net deforestation.
That doesn’t sound like ecological destruction. To use one of the New Religion’s buzzwords, that sounds… sustainable.
Deforestation is happening on a worldwide scale, according to a handy table from the Earth Policy Institute (data from the UN). They try to make it sound scary, but it isn’t. I crunched the numbers. The decline amounts to roughly 0.2% per year. Not exactly a crisis. Even that slow rate appears to be in decline.
I’m going to go ahead and say that Hershkowitz and the NRDC are promoting a baseless scare story.
There is still a tremendous upside to all this hemming and hawing. If toilet paper is all that environmental activists have to get worked up over these days, it is a sign that, environmentally speaking, we live in good times.
Open Market/CEI, February 28, 2009 @ 5:38 pm
The kerfuffle over soft toilet paper has hit a new low. The NRDC’s Allen Hershkowitz is now saying that “People just don’t understand that softness equals ecological destruction.”
I had to chuckle after reading that last sentence (it is silly, is it not?). But then I decided to take Hershkowitz seriously. Hardcore environmentalists like the NRDC are sometimes loosey-goosey with the data; science and their religion rarely get along.
Let’s see how big the impact of softer toilet paper really is. Maybe, hyperbole aside, Hershkowitz has a point. Let’s look at the data and find out.
Despite the proliferation of tree-intensive soft toilet paper, forest area in the U.S. has remained almost unchanged over the last century. Right around 33% of total land area.
Over that same time period, U.S. population more than tripled. That’s a lot more bottoms, demanding ever softer toilet paper. And yet — no net deforestation.
That doesn’t sound like ecological destruction. To use one of the New Religion’s buzzwords, that sounds… sustainable.
Deforestation is happening on a worldwide scale, according to a handy table from the Earth Policy Institute (data from the UN). They try to make it sound scary, but it isn’t. I crunched the numbers. The decline amounts to roughly 0.2% per year. Not exactly a crisis. Even that slow rate appears to be in decline.
I’m going to go ahead and say that Hershkowitz and the NRDC are promoting a baseless scare story.
There is still a tremendous upside to all this hemming and hawing. If toilet paper is all that environmental activists have to get worked up over these days, it is a sign that, environmentally speaking, we live in good times.
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
Ethanol & Greenhouse Gas Emissions - Reconsidering the University of Nebraska Study
Ethanol & Greenhouse Gas Emissions - Reconsidering the University of Nebraska Study. By Jerry Taylor
Master Resource, February 18, 2009
The debate about the environmental impact of ethanol rages on. Last month, the most recent study on the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions associated with ethanol use was published by researchers from the University of Nebraska (Liska et al.). That analysis used the most recent data available on individual facility operations and emissions, observed corn yields, nitrogen fertilizer emissions profiles, and co-product use; all of which prove important because of improved energy efficiencies associated with ethanol production over the past several years. The authors found that the total life-cycle GHG emissions from the most common type of ethanol processing facility in operation today are 48-59 percent lower than gasoline, one of the highest savings reported in the literature. Even without subtracting-out the GHG emissions associated with ethanol cop-products (which accounted for 19-38 percent of total system emissions), ethanol would still present GHG advantages relative to gasoline. The ethanol lobby went wild.
This may be the best study on the subject, but it is not the final word. There are three fundamental problems with the analysis.
First, the study examines only a subset of corn production operations and ethanol processing facilities; dry mill ethanol processors fired by natural gas in six corn-belt states. Together, those facilities accounted for 23 percent of US ethanol production in 2006. While this approach makes the study stronger because the authors are not forced to rely as heavily on estimates and aggregated analysis, the down-side is that the study ignores a large number of older, less efficient ethanol processing facilities and thus cannot be used to assess the GHG balance of the ethanol industry as a whole. While the findings may well point to where the industry will be in the future as older, less efficient facilities lose market share and are upgraded or retired, the bankruptcies that are shutting down many newer facilities at present caution against certainty on this point.
Second, estimates regarding emissions are still relied on to some degree, and one of those estimates in particular – the estimate pertaining to the release of nitrous oxide (N2O) from fertilizer use in corn production – is problematic. While the study comports with convention in that it relies on emission estimates offered by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a recent study finds that the IPCC estimates as they pertain to N2O release from fertilizer does not comport with the observed data (Crutzen et al., 2007). That study finds that N2O emissions from fertilizers used in biofuels production are 3-5 times greater than assumed by the IPCC and that, if we plug those higher emissions into the ethanol life-cycle models, “the outcome is that the production of commonly used biofuels, such as biodiesel from rapeseed and bioethanol from corn (maize), can contribute as much or more to global warming by N2O emissions than cooling by fossil fuel savings.” Given that the lead author of the study – Paul Crutzen – is a Nobel laureate chemist who has specialized in fields related to atmospheric science, his findings cannot be lightly dismissed.
Third, the study acknowledges the importance of the impact that ethanol production has on crop prices and, thus, on global land-use patterns, but it does not account for the GHG emissions associated with those changes. Those emissions are substantial and no life-cycle analysis of ethanol can credibly ignore them.
A worldwide agricultural model constructed by Searchinger et al. (2008) finds that the increases in crop prices that follow from the increased demand for ethanol will induce a global change in the pattern of land use. Those land use changes produce a surge in GHG emissions that is only dissipated by conventional life-cycle emissions savings many decades hence. Although Searchinger et al. modeled ethanol production increases that were beyond those mandated in existing law, “the emissions from land-use change per unit of ethanol would be similar regardless of the ethanol increase analyzed.”
While critics of Searchinger et al. are right to point out that the agricultural model employed in the study was crude, that much is unknown about the factors that influence global land use decisions, that improved yields are reducing the amount of land necessary to meet global crop demands, and that any land additions to crop production do not need to come from forests or other robust carbon sequestration sinks, none of those observations is sufficient to reject the basic insight forwarded in that study. If ethanol demand increases corn and other crop prices beyond where they otherwise would have been, profit incentives will induce investors to increase crop production beyond where production would otherwise have been. If that increased production comes in part from land use changes relative to the baseline, then significant volumes of GHG will likely be released and those emissions threaten to swamp the GHG savings found elsewhere in the life-cycle analysis. Even if the upward pressure on crop prices that are a consequence of ethanol consumption is more than offset by downward price pressures following from other factors, crop acreage retirement will not be as large as might otherwise have been the case and terrestrial sequestration will be lower as a consequence. Every link in that chain of logic is unassailable.
This is but one of the many impacts that ethanol might have on hundreds of industrial sectors worldwide. Searchinger et al. is ultimately unsatisfying because it is only a crude and partial consideration of those impacts, many of which might indirectly affect global land use patterns. For instance, if ethanol consumption reduces the demand for – and thus the price of – crude oil in global markets, how much of those “booked” reductions in oil consumption will be offset by increased demand induced elsewhere by the lower global crude oil prices that follow (known as a “rebound effect” in economics)? How might that increase in global demand for crude oil in response to lower price affect all sort of GHG emissions vectors? None of these sorts of questions are asked in ethanol GHG life-cycle analyses but they are clearly crucial to the analysis.
To summarize, the narrow, conventional consideration of the GHG emissions associated with ethanol from Liska et al. suggest that it reduces climate change harms relative to gasoline. If the IPCC has underestimated N2O emissions from fertilizer – as appears to be the case – then ethanol probably is at best a wash with regards to GHG emissions. Even if that’s not the case, consideration of secondary and tertiary emissions impacts strongly suggests that most if not all of all advertised GHG gains are lost in the changes in land use patterns that follow from increases in ethanol production relative to the baseline. Other changes in anthropogenic emissions – positive and negative – would almost certainly follow as well, but existing models do not bother to search for them and thus we do not know enough to say much beyond this with confidence.
Based on what we know now, it would be hard to make a compelling case that ethanol is preferable to gasoline with regards to total greenhouse gas emissions - and last month’s study out of the University of Nebraska does not change that.
Master Resource, February 18, 2009
The debate about the environmental impact of ethanol rages on. Last month, the most recent study on the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions associated with ethanol use was published by researchers from the University of Nebraska (Liska et al.). That analysis used the most recent data available on individual facility operations and emissions, observed corn yields, nitrogen fertilizer emissions profiles, and co-product use; all of which prove important because of improved energy efficiencies associated with ethanol production over the past several years. The authors found that the total life-cycle GHG emissions from the most common type of ethanol processing facility in operation today are 48-59 percent lower than gasoline, one of the highest savings reported in the literature. Even without subtracting-out the GHG emissions associated with ethanol cop-products (which accounted for 19-38 percent of total system emissions), ethanol would still present GHG advantages relative to gasoline. The ethanol lobby went wild.
This may be the best study on the subject, but it is not the final word. There are three fundamental problems with the analysis.
First, the study examines only a subset of corn production operations and ethanol processing facilities; dry mill ethanol processors fired by natural gas in six corn-belt states. Together, those facilities accounted for 23 percent of US ethanol production in 2006. While this approach makes the study stronger because the authors are not forced to rely as heavily on estimates and aggregated analysis, the down-side is that the study ignores a large number of older, less efficient ethanol processing facilities and thus cannot be used to assess the GHG balance of the ethanol industry as a whole. While the findings may well point to where the industry will be in the future as older, less efficient facilities lose market share and are upgraded or retired, the bankruptcies that are shutting down many newer facilities at present caution against certainty on this point.
Second, estimates regarding emissions are still relied on to some degree, and one of those estimates in particular – the estimate pertaining to the release of nitrous oxide (N2O) from fertilizer use in corn production – is problematic. While the study comports with convention in that it relies on emission estimates offered by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a recent study finds that the IPCC estimates as they pertain to N2O release from fertilizer does not comport with the observed data (Crutzen et al., 2007). That study finds that N2O emissions from fertilizers used in biofuels production are 3-5 times greater than assumed by the IPCC and that, if we plug those higher emissions into the ethanol life-cycle models, “the outcome is that the production of commonly used biofuels, such as biodiesel from rapeseed and bioethanol from corn (maize), can contribute as much or more to global warming by N2O emissions than cooling by fossil fuel savings.” Given that the lead author of the study – Paul Crutzen – is a Nobel laureate chemist who has specialized in fields related to atmospheric science, his findings cannot be lightly dismissed.
Third, the study acknowledges the importance of the impact that ethanol production has on crop prices and, thus, on global land-use patterns, but it does not account for the GHG emissions associated with those changes. Those emissions are substantial and no life-cycle analysis of ethanol can credibly ignore them.
A worldwide agricultural model constructed by Searchinger et al. (2008) finds that the increases in crop prices that follow from the increased demand for ethanol will induce a global change in the pattern of land use. Those land use changes produce a surge in GHG emissions that is only dissipated by conventional life-cycle emissions savings many decades hence. Although Searchinger et al. modeled ethanol production increases that were beyond those mandated in existing law, “the emissions from land-use change per unit of ethanol would be similar regardless of the ethanol increase analyzed.”
While critics of Searchinger et al. are right to point out that the agricultural model employed in the study was crude, that much is unknown about the factors that influence global land use decisions, that improved yields are reducing the amount of land necessary to meet global crop demands, and that any land additions to crop production do not need to come from forests or other robust carbon sequestration sinks, none of those observations is sufficient to reject the basic insight forwarded in that study. If ethanol demand increases corn and other crop prices beyond where they otherwise would have been, profit incentives will induce investors to increase crop production beyond where production would otherwise have been. If that increased production comes in part from land use changes relative to the baseline, then significant volumes of GHG will likely be released and those emissions threaten to swamp the GHG savings found elsewhere in the life-cycle analysis. Even if the upward pressure on crop prices that are a consequence of ethanol consumption is more than offset by downward price pressures following from other factors, crop acreage retirement will not be as large as might otherwise have been the case and terrestrial sequestration will be lower as a consequence. Every link in that chain of logic is unassailable.
This is but one of the many impacts that ethanol might have on hundreds of industrial sectors worldwide. Searchinger et al. is ultimately unsatisfying because it is only a crude and partial consideration of those impacts, many of which might indirectly affect global land use patterns. For instance, if ethanol consumption reduces the demand for – and thus the price of – crude oil in global markets, how much of those “booked” reductions in oil consumption will be offset by increased demand induced elsewhere by the lower global crude oil prices that follow (known as a “rebound effect” in economics)? How might that increase in global demand for crude oil in response to lower price affect all sort of GHG emissions vectors? None of these sorts of questions are asked in ethanol GHG life-cycle analyses but they are clearly crucial to the analysis.
To summarize, the narrow, conventional consideration of the GHG emissions associated with ethanol from Liska et al. suggest that it reduces climate change harms relative to gasoline. If the IPCC has underestimated N2O emissions from fertilizer – as appears to be the case – then ethanol probably is at best a wash with regards to GHG emissions. Even if that’s not the case, consideration of secondary and tertiary emissions impacts strongly suggests that most if not all of all advertised GHG gains are lost in the changes in land use patterns that follow from increases in ethanol production relative to the baseline. Other changes in anthropogenic emissions – positive and negative – would almost certainly follow as well, but existing models do not bother to search for them and thus we do not know enough to say much beyond this with confidence.
Based on what we know now, it would be hard to make a compelling case that ethanol is preferable to gasoline with regards to total greenhouse gas emissions - and last month’s study out of the University of Nebraska does not change that.
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
Bushfires and extreme heat in south-east Australia
Bushfires and extreme heat in south-east Australia. By David Karoly
Real Climate, February 16, 2009 @ 3:12 PM
Guest commentary by David Karoly, Professor of Meteorology at the University of Melbourne in Australia
On Saturday 7 February 2009, Australia experienced its worst natural disaster in more than 100 years, when catastrophic bushfires killed more than 180 people and destroyed more than 2000 homes in Victoria, Australia. These fires occurred on a day of unprecedented high temperatures in south-east Australia, part of a heat wave that started 10 days earlier, and a record dry spell.
This has been written from Melbourne, Australia, exactly one week after the fires, just enough time to pause and reflect on this tragedy and the extraordinary weather that led to it. First, I want to express my sincere sympathy to all who have lost family members or friends and all who have suffered through this disaster.
There has been very high global media coverage of this natural disaster and, of course, speculation on the possible role of climate change in these fires. So, did climate change cause these fires? The simple answer is “No!” Climate change did not start the fires. Unfortunately, it appears that one or more of the fires may have been lit by arsonists, others may have started by accident and some may have been started by fallen power lines, lightning or other natural causes.
Maybe there is a different way to phrase that question: In what way, if any, is climate change likely to have affected these bush fires?
To answer that question, we need to look at the history of fires and fire weather over the last hundred years or so. Bushfires are a regular occurrence in south-east Australia, with previous disastrous fires on Ash Wednesday, 16 February 1983, and Black Friday, 13 January 1939, both of which led to significant loss of life and property. Fortunately, a recent report “Bushfire Weather in Southeast Australia: Recent Trends and Projected Climate Change Impacts”(ref. 1) in 2007 provides a comprehensive assessment on this topic. In addition, a Special Climate Statement(ref 2) from the Australian Bureau of Meteorology describes the extraordinary heat wave and drought conditions at the time of the fires.
Following the Black Friday fires, the MacArthur Forest Fire Danger Index (FFDI) was developed in the 1960s as an empirical indicator of weather conditions associated with high and extreme fire danger and the difficulty of fire suppression. The FFDI is the product of terms related to exponentials of maximum temperature, relative humidity, wind speed, and dryness of fuel (measured using a drought factor). Each of these terms is related to environmental factors affecting the severity of bushfire conditions. The formula for FFDI is given in the report on Bushfire Weather in Southeast Australia. The FFDI scale is used for the rating of fire danger and the declaration of total fire ban days in Victoria.
Read more.
Real Climate, February 16, 2009 @ 3:12 PM
Guest commentary by David Karoly, Professor of Meteorology at the University of Melbourne in Australia
On Saturday 7 February 2009, Australia experienced its worst natural disaster in more than 100 years, when catastrophic bushfires killed more than 180 people and destroyed more than 2000 homes in Victoria, Australia. These fires occurred on a day of unprecedented high temperatures in south-east Australia, part of a heat wave that started 10 days earlier, and a record dry spell.
This has been written from Melbourne, Australia, exactly one week after the fires, just enough time to pause and reflect on this tragedy and the extraordinary weather that led to it. First, I want to express my sincere sympathy to all who have lost family members or friends and all who have suffered through this disaster.
There has been very high global media coverage of this natural disaster and, of course, speculation on the possible role of climate change in these fires. So, did climate change cause these fires? The simple answer is “No!” Climate change did not start the fires. Unfortunately, it appears that one or more of the fires may have been lit by arsonists, others may have started by accident and some may have been started by fallen power lines, lightning or other natural causes.
Maybe there is a different way to phrase that question: In what way, if any, is climate change likely to have affected these bush fires?
To answer that question, we need to look at the history of fires and fire weather over the last hundred years or so. Bushfires are a regular occurrence in south-east Australia, with previous disastrous fires on Ash Wednesday, 16 February 1983, and Black Friday, 13 January 1939, both of which led to significant loss of life and property. Fortunately, a recent report “Bushfire Weather in Southeast Australia: Recent Trends and Projected Climate Change Impacts”(ref. 1) in 2007 provides a comprehensive assessment on this topic. In addition, a Special Climate Statement(ref 2) from the Australian Bureau of Meteorology describes the extraordinary heat wave and drought conditions at the time of the fires.
Following the Black Friday fires, the MacArthur Forest Fire Danger Index (FFDI) was developed in the 1960s as an empirical indicator of weather conditions associated with high and extreme fire danger and the difficulty of fire suppression. The FFDI is the product of terms related to exponentials of maximum temperature, relative humidity, wind speed, and dryness of fuel (measured using a drought factor). Each of these terms is related to environmental factors affecting the severity of bushfire conditions. The formula for FFDI is given in the report on Bushfire Weather in Southeast Australia. The FFDI scale is used for the rating of fire danger and the declaration of total fire ban days in Victoria.
Read more.
Friday, February 13, 2009
China, Rice, and GMOs: Navigating the Global Rift on Genetic Engineering
China, Rice, and GMOs: Navigating the Global Rift on Genetic Engineering. By Ron Herring
The Asia-Pacific Journal, Jan 12, 2009
A recent article in Nature [1] asked provocatively: Is China ready for GM rice? The title reflects widely shared anxiety over genetic engineering in agriculture. The use of the term “GM” specifically conjures a politically charged object: “GMOs” or “genetically modified organisms.” Is anyone ready for FrankenFoods? Strawberries with fish genes? Human cloning? The question has an ominous overtone, though both reporter and venue are identified with science. The question derives its energy from the decision of the Chinese Government to go full speed ahead with genetically engineered rice to confront what the state constructs as a gathering Malthusian crisis of hunger. What the article does not tell the reader is that the farmers are way ahead of the government: ready and able. Transgenic rice – officially unauthorized within China – has for several years been showing up in exports from China to Europe, to Japan, to New Zealand – and probably many other places that simply are not checking.
To ask if China is “ready” for “GM” rice is then doubly loaded. The necessity of getting ready implies threat; “GM” ties a specific cultivar to global anxiety about transgenic crops. The anxiety is multi-pronged: does the spread of transgenics entail threats of corporate dominance? Environmental risk? Food safety? The anxiety is heightened because these crops are spreading faster globally than perhaps any previous agricultural innovation, both through official channels of firm and state and underground, like films on DVDs or business software on CDs.[2] The transgenic genie is out of the bottle.
Then the question of who must be “ready” becomes especially curious. Farmers are clearly ready. As in many countries, cultivators in China risk prosecution to grow unauthorized transgenic crops, including Bt rice. They do so because they are impatient with bureaucratic delays and unwilling to pay corporate technology fees. And in fact, though urban consumers of GM politics think otherwise, there is not a lot to get ready for on farm: all the technology is in the seed, typically with a few altered genes, often only one. There is no more preparation than in playing an illegal DVD of a Bollywood film, once you know how to operate a player.
But is the state ready? Here the construction of transgenic rice as a special category designated by “GM” indicates why the issue carries political freight. Being “ready” implies a state of preparation, alertness, and consequences of not being ready, all of which are bad. No one was ready for the financial meltdown of 2008, most especially pensioners and homeowners. Is China ready for democracy? Open internet? But no one has ever asked -- in Europe, or in China, or in India -- if nations were “ready” for transgenic pharmaceuticals – which have been with us, and thoroughly normalized, since successful production of human insulin via transgenic bacteria began in 1978. There are no FrankenPills on posters. Useful to urban consumers and endorsed by the authority of medical science, transgenic pharmaceuticals have not drawn protests. Agriculture is different. The category “GM” as site of risk has become so normalized in political discourse about agriculture that no one ever asks: what is especially risky about any particular cultivar? Is China ready for “GM rice” really means: is the state ready to confront the political and administrative complexities of seed surveillance contrary to farmer interests?
The answer is probably “no.”We already know that stealth transgenic rice – and unauthorized Bt cotton as well – are being grown by Chinese farmers without permission of the state. What Jane Qiu’s article highlights is why the state or farmers or anyone else should care.
The Government of China, like many governments in nations with large agricultural sectors – e.g. India, Brazil – officially promotes and invests in biotechnology as a means of responding to what are constructed as urgent crises on the land. Rice stands for the larger problematic of increasing food production. Much of the corporate propaganda for transgenic technologies evokes the Malthusian threat, but here the evocation of urgency is from the Chinese state. This is no small issue: regimes incapable of feeding their populations have not fared well historically. Nor have their citizens. Being dependent on the global economy for fuel and food runs counter to imperatives of statecraft itself, across many ideological gradients. The threat conjured in China is quite explicit: inadequate productive capacity projected into the future. Against this threat is posed a promise: technical change in plant breeding. Genetic engineering – the possibility of rearranging DNA in plants to produce traits that are not in the genome of the plant itself, such as insect resistance, virus resistance, enhanced nutrient content, and on the horizon drought and salinity resistance – has long been official policy of the Chinese government. The controversy implied by the Nature article rests on two changes in the context of biotechnology: first, rice would be the first food crop authorized officially in China, and secondly, rice as a plant raises questions of agro-ecology not presented by cotton, China’s first transgenic. But the same recombinant DNA technology that the state constructs as promise has been constructed as threat in a very powerful global discourse.[3]
What exactly is the threat that China may or may not be ready for? “GM” is a political label, but it is one that sticks: it has political effects. All plants in agriculture are genetically modified. We no longer live in the world of Gregor Mendel puttering with peas: rather, plant genomes have been for decades radically altered and re-assembled in order to get phenotypic variation that plant breeders and farmers want. Transgenic techniques came later, and may indeed cause less disruption of gene networks than alternative [non “GM”] techniques [Batista et al 2008], but are socially constructed as something one must be ready for. No other kind of plant is subjected to the level of scrutiny of a plant bred by recombinant DNA techniques. Nor do transgenic pharmaceuticals constitute a special object of regulation, surveillance and control. Recombinant DNA techniques are constructed as threats only in agriculture.
The thing China may or may not be “ready” for is the global governance regime that sets transgenic plants apart. “GM” rice constitutes a plant that must be plugged into international norms of bio-safety as laid out in the Cartagena Protocol. The Protocol itself is the product of transnational advocacy networks and EU politics; it was resisted by major transgenic crop exporters such as the United States and Argentina. The protocol reflects the fact that half the globe holds “GMOs” to require special surveillance, monitoring, and governance.[4] To be ready is to have institutions that can promise effective rural governmentality ; in this sense the question is rhetorical: China lacks that kind of state, as do most nations.
A global rift divides the planet into places that see special needs for bio-safety regulation of “GMOs” – except pharmaceuticals – and those that express no more concern with transgenic plants than with agricultural plants in general. The world is divided between an American construction of “GM” plants as “substantially equivalent” to their non-“GM” equivalents – because no difference can be found by scientific measurement – and a European view privileging the “precautionary principle” – that something truly terrible may be lurking in the new gene networks created by DNA splicing. Prince Charles refers to rDNA work on plants – but not pharmaceuticals – as “playing God,” entering “realms that belong to God and God alone.” Hubris is the culprit; genetic engineering, in this view, involves a "gigantic experiment I think with nature and the whole of humanity which has gone seriously wrong. Why else are we facing all these challenges, climate change and everything?" An empty vessel has been created into which multiple anxieties may be bundled, and its name is GM.
The European discourse of playing God does not play well in Asia; it presupposes the God of Genesis, a creator with a plan, a garden, absolute control and a stable equilibrium of species. And in general the Apocalyptic vision of European political activism has not penetrated beyond small numbers of urban professionals in Asia, where grounds of objection of transgenics have to do with consumer preference and resistance to corporate globalization. China is the case that confounds the discourse; not MNCs, but Chinese scientists have been the drivers of transgenic research and development. China showed how public sector investments in transgenics could traget specific problems in agriculture without signing away the farm.
China was the leader among non-OECD nations in responding to biotechnology as a potential growth sector. Recombinant DNA techniques first became viable in laboratories in 1973; by 1980, patents on transgenic organisms became possible in the United States, as always the first-mover in creating and strengthening property in novel fields. With potential property to be made, and valuable discoveries in medicine and pharmaceuticals, a de facto global race began. In India, which established a Department of Biotechnology early, one heard the refrain “we missed the industrial revolution, we cannot afford to miss out on the information revolution.” Much of Asia responded in similar ways, with grand plans for state backing of biotechnology in the mode of developmental statism, but China was the clear leader and only success story. Though much of the political discourse is about MNCs and patents, China represents a now-common alternative dynamic: public funding of transgenic crops by developmental states.[5]
China’s early efforts in biotechnology began with strong state backing in the 1970s, focused on both food crops and cotton. Standard techniques of tissue culture and cell fusion were involved to modify plants before the advent of advanced recombinant DNA techniques in the early 1980s. The so-called 863 plan for advancing biotechnology research started in 1986.[6] The Ministry of Agriculture reported in 1996 that more than 190 genes had been transferred to more than 100 organisms, including plants, micro-organisms and animals. Investment levels were high, and addressed an indigenous sense of the most serious agricultural problems. The Bt cotton developed in China enables insect resistance from within the plant. It was a priority not only because of the massive land investment China had in cotton, but also because of the widely recognized externalities of heavy pesticide use: deleterious environmental and health consequences. China’s Bt cotton is now growing both legally and illegally in far-flung Asian locations.
Southeast Asian states feared that that China would become hegemonic in this new information-intensive sector, and ramped up plans for autonomous development defensively [Barboza 2003]. But plans in Southeast Asia were cut back after a profound European U-turn on genetic engineering in agriculture. Like commercial firms in the United States, European states initially saw the genomics revolution in biology as a potential source of profit and national development; European firms were early leaders; they were backed, especially in France, by governments. The turn away from biotechnology came as a result of transnational social movements joining hands across the Atlantic in opposing corporate environmental irresponsibility. By the end of the 1990s, Europe had crossed over, from support for genetic engineering to attempts to protect its economy from American transgenic imports.[7] Whereas American policy moved to the USFDA conclusion of “substantial equivalence” and society followed in train, Europe moved to a “precautionary principle,” led by social activists.
But not all opposition targeted all biotechnology: food was the crux of the anti-GM campaign in Europe. “White” biotechnologies, such as biodegradable plastics and other industrial applications, as well as “red” biotechnologies in medicine and pharmaceuticals remained strongly supported in Europe [EB 64.3 2006]. In these applications of rDNA technologies, there are large human utilities, such as avoiding death. Food is different. There being no benefit to consumers in GM-food – with a few caveats about reduction of pesticide residues and externalities – European consumers were free to support campaigns to restrict agricultural biotechnology not only in Europe, but all over the world. The most successful efforts were in Africa, as Robert Paarlberg’s new book Starved for Science documents. The WTO has ruled that the European standards are contradicted by EU science, but the EU U-turn remains both politically sticky in Europe and consequential internationally. The EU declaration on “GMOs” structurally segregated world markets: GM or GM-free. It became quite clear in the late 1990s where the smart money would go in poor countries hoping to export to Europe.
China’s current interest in regulation of transgenic rice derives directly from this global regulatory rift. An early leader in state-led biotechnology development, China slowed its approach after the EU U-turn. Cotton is one thing, food another. Bt cotton from China’s public sector not only performed well, and reduced pesticide poisoning of farmers and farm workers, but was smuggled out of China and thrives as stealth seeds in other parts of Asia.[8] Bt cotton is of no concern to powerful players in the international system; national governments such as Vietnam and Pakistan prefer to look the other way in order to avoid a confrontation with both farmers as political agents and their own incapacity to build viable Cartagena-friendly bio-safety regimes. Rice is food, and thus another kettle of fish.
What China is not ready for is another assault on the integrity of its export products; that assault derives from EU regulations as to what food is acceptable and what is not. Spot checks carried out by several EU countries, including Germany, the UK, and France, have, since 2006, found Chinese shipments of rice and rice products to contain evidence of a genetically-engineered rice, specifically Bt 63. Bt63 is not authorized for commercial cultivation either in China or in the EU; its import into the EU is banned. The formal resolution of the China-EU conflict was to require all rice and rice products from China to have a certificate that there is no transgenic Bt 63 content; one predicts a strong market for certificates over time. Japan and New Zealand, which have similar EU-like restrictions, reported similar findings.[9]
The Cartagena Protocol requires that “Living Modified Organisms” be clearly identified in international trade; the criterion for an LMO is essentially the same as the GMO. This is not surprising: EU support of transnational opponents of biotechnology succeeded in crafting soft law stigmatizing transgenics and their downstream products, whether or not any DNA or trans-gene protein survives processing. Surveillance is to be “from farm to fork.” Though the reality of food systems would seem to make this level of control a dream only bureaucrats could conjure, the consequences are serious. Failure of the Chinese government to enforce the protocol indicates not only non-compliance with international soft law, but inability of the state to control transgenic organisms within its own boundaries or in its exports. China is hardly alone in failure to regulate crops -- – seed police are hard to find – but China does face strong international pressure for tighter regulation of safety in exports in general. Bt proteins have not been shown to kill pets or people, but the net effect is to undermine confidence in Chinese exports to nations with strict regulations.
Though this threat to export products is the main objective risk of growing transgenics in China – the Bt itself has not been shown to be unsafe for humans or animals, and many Bt crops are regularly consumed – the Nature article is more concerned about environmental effects. Given China’s disturbing record on environmental protection, how serious a risk is transgenic rice? In general, Bt crops present a difficult question for environmental policy: if we compare the Bt plants to traditional cultivars, cultivated in traditional ways, the transgenics reduce pesticide use and therefore seem environmentally friendly. Nevertheless, one seldom finds transgenic crops discussed in the frame of biodiversity preservation or sustainability. Rather, the environmental risk assessment of transgenic crops typically poses questions about the potential for gene flow in the environment.
Here the Chinese official caution regarding Bt rice raises the importance of disaggregating transgenic crops. Bt rice raises more and more serious questions of agro-ecology than does Bt cotton, China’s most successful biotechnology venture. Gene flow from Bt cotton presents little if any potential risk; like many cultivated crops, cotton is highly specialized, with no evidence of crossing with wild relatives. Without crossing, there is no gene flow. If genes flow, there is a question of fitness: will the wild and weedy relatives of the cultivated plant now gain an advantage in fitness in the environment from addition of the trait from the transgene [eg insect resistance]? Will this fitness advantage be such that they begin to dominate, thus upsetting agro-ecologies in new ways? This is the “super-weed” scenario stressed by opponents of rDNA technology: FrankenPlants. With cotton, the answer to these questions is almost certainly not; with rice, there is a much greater possibility of agro-ecological risk. Rice is first of all a grass – a more promiscuous kind of plant than cotton – and secondly has wild and weedy relatives in and around cultivated fields.
The bureaucratically sensible resolution would seem to be to test the crops under Chinese conditions. But testing itself comes under attack when the object is “GM.” Uncertainties abound: how long a testing period is long enough to determine safety? For proponents of the precautionary principle, the answer is “forever.” For the US FDA, the answer is “not much”: if composition tests show the same range of variation in transgenic plants as in comparable non-transgenic cultivars [i.e. comparing apples to apples, rather than to oranges], there is no reason for special regulation or labels. The American position risks riding on the side of hubris: we know what we know. The European position imposes nearly impossible[10] standards: how can you prove that something will not happen? Do you check your brakes every time you take your car out to drive? Do you avoid any airplane that could conceivably crash and burn? Do you demand demonstration that your cell phone safe cannot cause cancer?
Of course we all – Europeans and middle-class activists of transnational advocacy networks in poorer countries – dismiss as alarmist “risks” from cell phones. But there has been a recent upsurge in caution concerning cell phones in regard to brain damage from a presumably authoritative source: the Director of the University of Pittsburgh’s University Medical Center Cancer Center.[11] Why do we disregard such warnings – and seldom check our car’s brakes or inquire into the maintenance record of our next flight’s plane? Because the disutility of ascertaining certainty far outweighs a subjective assessment of risk. Moreover, negatives are impossible to prove: how could there be even in principle decisive proof that no critical system on any given 747 will fail? No one can live with the precautionary principle; not only are there innumerable known unknowns, but – and here Donald Rumsfeld for once got something right – the sheer number of unknown unknowns is everywhere daunting. Farmers in China, like those in India, Pakistan, Brazil, Vietnam and much of the world grow Bt transgenics because they make life marginally easier, slightly more profitable, and slightly less destructive of their very local environments. If there are distal and uncertain risks, they pale by comparison to the real risks of pesticide poisoning and crop failure. Farmers make this calculation whether governments approve or not, just as desperate Americans try remedies not yet approved by the Food and Drug Administration.
Do farmers then worry about biodiversity, as the Nature article clearly thinks they should? Yes and no: they worry about destruction of helpful predators on the pests of their crops, but they recognize that spraying poisons across the fields kills friends and foes alike, including some farmers and farm workers. Bt plants, in contrast, are targeted to a class of pests, and contained in the plant tissues. Bt plants represent a kind of poetic justice: if a pest leaves the plant alone, it will not be harmed; if it attacks the plant, it will die. The advantage to the farmer is that the pro-toxin stays in plant tissues, instead of rivers, soils, lungs, birds, toads, ladybugs.
In this one incidence of conflicting pressures on the state in China is contained the global cognitive rift around transgenic organisms, much as the history of imperialism can be drawn from a single cup of tea. The discourse is one of threat and promise, of state responsibilities and international norms. The dichotomous—threat/promise—construction of technical change in agriculture resonates with previous attempts to promote or stop technical change; the “green revolution” of nitrogen-responsive grain varieties still launches many pages of paper. Agriculture is symbolic terrain on which much larger conflicts are joined.
The lessons from China’s consideration of Bt rice then illustrate larger points about transnational politics of “GMOs.”First, disaggregation is necessary to make sense. China’s development and deployment of an indigenous Bt cotton raised no real controversy; rice is a food crop, and the politics around food differ fundamentally from those around purely utilitarian technologies, whether cotton or insulin. Second, rice is not cotton in terms of gene flow: careful science is necessary to sort out risks and benefits to farmers; risks to farmers and agro-ecological systems are much greater in rice than cotton. Third, there is no reason to assume, as is often done instrumentally, that biotechnology entails corporate dominance of either farmers or national governments. China is the giant exception, but not the only one. Finally, nothing in the battle for the formal-legal high ground makes much difference on the real ground. Though the EU battles the US and WTO over whether or not transgenic crops should be allowed, the decision will ultimately be made by farmers.[12] It is the agency of people close to the seeds that will settle the question; in China, that decision leans toward transgenic rice, just as it previously did to transgenic cotton. It is hard to conjure the kind of state that could regulate the seed choices of millions of farmers across dozens of crops; but even if such surveillance and control could be imagined, it is hard not to think that there are better things to do.
Ron Herring teaches political economy and political ecology in the political science department at Cornell. He is the author most recently of Transgenics and the Poor: Biotechnology in Development Studies and coeditor with Rina Agarwal of Whatever Happened to Class?: Reflections from South Asia.
Full article w/notes and references here.
The Asia-Pacific Journal, Jan 12, 2009
A recent article in Nature [1] asked provocatively: Is China ready for GM rice? The title reflects widely shared anxiety over genetic engineering in agriculture. The use of the term “GM” specifically conjures a politically charged object: “GMOs” or “genetically modified organisms.” Is anyone ready for FrankenFoods? Strawberries with fish genes? Human cloning? The question has an ominous overtone, though both reporter and venue are identified with science. The question derives its energy from the decision of the Chinese Government to go full speed ahead with genetically engineered rice to confront what the state constructs as a gathering Malthusian crisis of hunger. What the article does not tell the reader is that the farmers are way ahead of the government: ready and able. Transgenic rice – officially unauthorized within China – has for several years been showing up in exports from China to Europe, to Japan, to New Zealand – and probably many other places that simply are not checking.
To ask if China is “ready” for “GM” rice is then doubly loaded. The necessity of getting ready implies threat; “GM” ties a specific cultivar to global anxiety about transgenic crops. The anxiety is multi-pronged: does the spread of transgenics entail threats of corporate dominance? Environmental risk? Food safety? The anxiety is heightened because these crops are spreading faster globally than perhaps any previous agricultural innovation, both through official channels of firm and state and underground, like films on DVDs or business software on CDs.[2] The transgenic genie is out of the bottle.
Then the question of who must be “ready” becomes especially curious. Farmers are clearly ready. As in many countries, cultivators in China risk prosecution to grow unauthorized transgenic crops, including Bt rice. They do so because they are impatient with bureaucratic delays and unwilling to pay corporate technology fees. And in fact, though urban consumers of GM politics think otherwise, there is not a lot to get ready for on farm: all the technology is in the seed, typically with a few altered genes, often only one. There is no more preparation than in playing an illegal DVD of a Bollywood film, once you know how to operate a player.
But is the state ready? Here the construction of transgenic rice as a special category designated by “GM” indicates why the issue carries political freight. Being “ready” implies a state of preparation, alertness, and consequences of not being ready, all of which are bad. No one was ready for the financial meltdown of 2008, most especially pensioners and homeowners. Is China ready for democracy? Open internet? But no one has ever asked -- in Europe, or in China, or in India -- if nations were “ready” for transgenic pharmaceuticals – which have been with us, and thoroughly normalized, since successful production of human insulin via transgenic bacteria began in 1978. There are no FrankenPills on posters. Useful to urban consumers and endorsed by the authority of medical science, transgenic pharmaceuticals have not drawn protests. Agriculture is different. The category “GM” as site of risk has become so normalized in political discourse about agriculture that no one ever asks: what is especially risky about any particular cultivar? Is China ready for “GM rice” really means: is the state ready to confront the political and administrative complexities of seed surveillance contrary to farmer interests?
The answer is probably “no.”We already know that stealth transgenic rice – and unauthorized Bt cotton as well – are being grown by Chinese farmers without permission of the state. What Jane Qiu’s article highlights is why the state or farmers or anyone else should care.
The Government of China, like many governments in nations with large agricultural sectors – e.g. India, Brazil – officially promotes and invests in biotechnology as a means of responding to what are constructed as urgent crises on the land. Rice stands for the larger problematic of increasing food production. Much of the corporate propaganda for transgenic technologies evokes the Malthusian threat, but here the evocation of urgency is from the Chinese state. This is no small issue: regimes incapable of feeding their populations have not fared well historically. Nor have their citizens. Being dependent on the global economy for fuel and food runs counter to imperatives of statecraft itself, across many ideological gradients. The threat conjured in China is quite explicit: inadequate productive capacity projected into the future. Against this threat is posed a promise: technical change in plant breeding. Genetic engineering – the possibility of rearranging DNA in plants to produce traits that are not in the genome of the plant itself, such as insect resistance, virus resistance, enhanced nutrient content, and on the horizon drought and salinity resistance – has long been official policy of the Chinese government. The controversy implied by the Nature article rests on two changes in the context of biotechnology: first, rice would be the first food crop authorized officially in China, and secondly, rice as a plant raises questions of agro-ecology not presented by cotton, China’s first transgenic. But the same recombinant DNA technology that the state constructs as promise has been constructed as threat in a very powerful global discourse.[3]
What exactly is the threat that China may or may not be ready for? “GM” is a political label, but it is one that sticks: it has political effects. All plants in agriculture are genetically modified. We no longer live in the world of Gregor Mendel puttering with peas: rather, plant genomes have been for decades radically altered and re-assembled in order to get phenotypic variation that plant breeders and farmers want. Transgenic techniques came later, and may indeed cause less disruption of gene networks than alternative [non “GM”] techniques [Batista et al 2008], but are socially constructed as something one must be ready for. No other kind of plant is subjected to the level of scrutiny of a plant bred by recombinant DNA techniques. Nor do transgenic pharmaceuticals constitute a special object of regulation, surveillance and control. Recombinant DNA techniques are constructed as threats only in agriculture.
The thing China may or may not be “ready” for is the global governance regime that sets transgenic plants apart. “GM” rice constitutes a plant that must be plugged into international norms of bio-safety as laid out in the Cartagena Protocol. The Protocol itself is the product of transnational advocacy networks and EU politics; it was resisted by major transgenic crop exporters such as the United States and Argentina. The protocol reflects the fact that half the globe holds “GMOs” to require special surveillance, monitoring, and governance.[4] To be ready is to have institutions that can promise effective rural governmentality ; in this sense the question is rhetorical: China lacks that kind of state, as do most nations.
A global rift divides the planet into places that see special needs for bio-safety regulation of “GMOs” – except pharmaceuticals – and those that express no more concern with transgenic plants than with agricultural plants in general. The world is divided between an American construction of “GM” plants as “substantially equivalent” to their non-“GM” equivalents – because no difference can be found by scientific measurement – and a European view privileging the “precautionary principle” – that something truly terrible may be lurking in the new gene networks created by DNA splicing. Prince Charles refers to rDNA work on plants – but not pharmaceuticals – as “playing God,” entering “realms that belong to God and God alone.” Hubris is the culprit; genetic engineering, in this view, involves a "gigantic experiment I think with nature and the whole of humanity which has gone seriously wrong. Why else are we facing all these challenges, climate change and everything?" An empty vessel has been created into which multiple anxieties may be bundled, and its name is GM.
The European discourse of playing God does not play well in Asia; it presupposes the God of Genesis, a creator with a plan, a garden, absolute control and a stable equilibrium of species. And in general the Apocalyptic vision of European political activism has not penetrated beyond small numbers of urban professionals in Asia, where grounds of objection of transgenics have to do with consumer preference and resistance to corporate globalization. China is the case that confounds the discourse; not MNCs, but Chinese scientists have been the drivers of transgenic research and development. China showed how public sector investments in transgenics could traget specific problems in agriculture without signing away the farm.
China was the leader among non-OECD nations in responding to biotechnology as a potential growth sector. Recombinant DNA techniques first became viable in laboratories in 1973; by 1980, patents on transgenic organisms became possible in the United States, as always the first-mover in creating and strengthening property in novel fields. With potential property to be made, and valuable discoveries in medicine and pharmaceuticals, a de facto global race began. In India, which established a Department of Biotechnology early, one heard the refrain “we missed the industrial revolution, we cannot afford to miss out on the information revolution.” Much of Asia responded in similar ways, with grand plans for state backing of biotechnology in the mode of developmental statism, but China was the clear leader and only success story. Though much of the political discourse is about MNCs and patents, China represents a now-common alternative dynamic: public funding of transgenic crops by developmental states.[5]
China’s early efforts in biotechnology began with strong state backing in the 1970s, focused on both food crops and cotton. Standard techniques of tissue culture and cell fusion were involved to modify plants before the advent of advanced recombinant DNA techniques in the early 1980s. The so-called 863 plan for advancing biotechnology research started in 1986.[6] The Ministry of Agriculture reported in 1996 that more than 190 genes had been transferred to more than 100 organisms, including plants, micro-organisms and animals. Investment levels were high, and addressed an indigenous sense of the most serious agricultural problems. The Bt cotton developed in China enables insect resistance from within the plant. It was a priority not only because of the massive land investment China had in cotton, but also because of the widely recognized externalities of heavy pesticide use: deleterious environmental and health consequences. China’s Bt cotton is now growing both legally and illegally in far-flung Asian locations.
Southeast Asian states feared that that China would become hegemonic in this new information-intensive sector, and ramped up plans for autonomous development defensively [Barboza 2003]. But plans in Southeast Asia were cut back after a profound European U-turn on genetic engineering in agriculture. Like commercial firms in the United States, European states initially saw the genomics revolution in biology as a potential source of profit and national development; European firms were early leaders; they were backed, especially in France, by governments. The turn away from biotechnology came as a result of transnational social movements joining hands across the Atlantic in opposing corporate environmental irresponsibility. By the end of the 1990s, Europe had crossed over, from support for genetic engineering to attempts to protect its economy from American transgenic imports.[7] Whereas American policy moved to the USFDA conclusion of “substantial equivalence” and society followed in train, Europe moved to a “precautionary principle,” led by social activists.
But not all opposition targeted all biotechnology: food was the crux of the anti-GM campaign in Europe. “White” biotechnologies, such as biodegradable plastics and other industrial applications, as well as “red” biotechnologies in medicine and pharmaceuticals remained strongly supported in Europe [EB 64.3 2006]. In these applications of rDNA technologies, there are large human utilities, such as avoiding death. Food is different. There being no benefit to consumers in GM-food – with a few caveats about reduction of pesticide residues and externalities – European consumers were free to support campaigns to restrict agricultural biotechnology not only in Europe, but all over the world. The most successful efforts were in Africa, as Robert Paarlberg’s new book Starved for Science documents. The WTO has ruled that the European standards are contradicted by EU science, but the EU U-turn remains both politically sticky in Europe and consequential internationally. The EU declaration on “GMOs” structurally segregated world markets: GM or GM-free. It became quite clear in the late 1990s where the smart money would go in poor countries hoping to export to Europe.
China’s current interest in regulation of transgenic rice derives directly from this global regulatory rift. An early leader in state-led biotechnology development, China slowed its approach after the EU U-turn. Cotton is one thing, food another. Bt cotton from China’s public sector not only performed well, and reduced pesticide poisoning of farmers and farm workers, but was smuggled out of China and thrives as stealth seeds in other parts of Asia.[8] Bt cotton is of no concern to powerful players in the international system; national governments such as Vietnam and Pakistan prefer to look the other way in order to avoid a confrontation with both farmers as political agents and their own incapacity to build viable Cartagena-friendly bio-safety regimes. Rice is food, and thus another kettle of fish.
What China is not ready for is another assault on the integrity of its export products; that assault derives from EU regulations as to what food is acceptable and what is not. Spot checks carried out by several EU countries, including Germany, the UK, and France, have, since 2006, found Chinese shipments of rice and rice products to contain evidence of a genetically-engineered rice, specifically Bt 63. Bt63 is not authorized for commercial cultivation either in China or in the EU; its import into the EU is banned. The formal resolution of the China-EU conflict was to require all rice and rice products from China to have a certificate that there is no transgenic Bt 63 content; one predicts a strong market for certificates over time. Japan and New Zealand, which have similar EU-like restrictions, reported similar findings.[9]
The Cartagena Protocol requires that “Living Modified Organisms” be clearly identified in international trade; the criterion for an LMO is essentially the same as the GMO. This is not surprising: EU support of transnational opponents of biotechnology succeeded in crafting soft law stigmatizing transgenics and their downstream products, whether or not any DNA or trans-gene protein survives processing. Surveillance is to be “from farm to fork.” Though the reality of food systems would seem to make this level of control a dream only bureaucrats could conjure, the consequences are serious. Failure of the Chinese government to enforce the protocol indicates not only non-compliance with international soft law, but inability of the state to control transgenic organisms within its own boundaries or in its exports. China is hardly alone in failure to regulate crops -- – seed police are hard to find – but China does face strong international pressure for tighter regulation of safety in exports in general. Bt proteins have not been shown to kill pets or people, but the net effect is to undermine confidence in Chinese exports to nations with strict regulations.
Though this threat to export products is the main objective risk of growing transgenics in China – the Bt itself has not been shown to be unsafe for humans or animals, and many Bt crops are regularly consumed – the Nature article is more concerned about environmental effects. Given China’s disturbing record on environmental protection, how serious a risk is transgenic rice? In general, Bt crops present a difficult question for environmental policy: if we compare the Bt plants to traditional cultivars, cultivated in traditional ways, the transgenics reduce pesticide use and therefore seem environmentally friendly. Nevertheless, one seldom finds transgenic crops discussed in the frame of biodiversity preservation or sustainability. Rather, the environmental risk assessment of transgenic crops typically poses questions about the potential for gene flow in the environment.
Here the Chinese official caution regarding Bt rice raises the importance of disaggregating transgenic crops. Bt rice raises more and more serious questions of agro-ecology than does Bt cotton, China’s most successful biotechnology venture. Gene flow from Bt cotton presents little if any potential risk; like many cultivated crops, cotton is highly specialized, with no evidence of crossing with wild relatives. Without crossing, there is no gene flow. If genes flow, there is a question of fitness: will the wild and weedy relatives of the cultivated plant now gain an advantage in fitness in the environment from addition of the trait from the transgene [eg insect resistance]? Will this fitness advantage be such that they begin to dominate, thus upsetting agro-ecologies in new ways? This is the “super-weed” scenario stressed by opponents of rDNA technology: FrankenPlants. With cotton, the answer to these questions is almost certainly not; with rice, there is a much greater possibility of agro-ecological risk. Rice is first of all a grass – a more promiscuous kind of plant than cotton – and secondly has wild and weedy relatives in and around cultivated fields.
The bureaucratically sensible resolution would seem to be to test the crops under Chinese conditions. But testing itself comes under attack when the object is “GM.” Uncertainties abound: how long a testing period is long enough to determine safety? For proponents of the precautionary principle, the answer is “forever.” For the US FDA, the answer is “not much”: if composition tests show the same range of variation in transgenic plants as in comparable non-transgenic cultivars [i.e. comparing apples to apples, rather than to oranges], there is no reason for special regulation or labels. The American position risks riding on the side of hubris: we know what we know. The European position imposes nearly impossible[10] standards: how can you prove that something will not happen? Do you check your brakes every time you take your car out to drive? Do you avoid any airplane that could conceivably crash and burn? Do you demand demonstration that your cell phone safe cannot cause cancer?
Of course we all – Europeans and middle-class activists of transnational advocacy networks in poorer countries – dismiss as alarmist “risks” from cell phones. But there has been a recent upsurge in caution concerning cell phones in regard to brain damage from a presumably authoritative source: the Director of the University of Pittsburgh’s University Medical Center Cancer Center.[11] Why do we disregard such warnings – and seldom check our car’s brakes or inquire into the maintenance record of our next flight’s plane? Because the disutility of ascertaining certainty far outweighs a subjective assessment of risk. Moreover, negatives are impossible to prove: how could there be even in principle decisive proof that no critical system on any given 747 will fail? No one can live with the precautionary principle; not only are there innumerable known unknowns, but – and here Donald Rumsfeld for once got something right – the sheer number of unknown unknowns is everywhere daunting. Farmers in China, like those in India, Pakistan, Brazil, Vietnam and much of the world grow Bt transgenics because they make life marginally easier, slightly more profitable, and slightly less destructive of their very local environments. If there are distal and uncertain risks, they pale by comparison to the real risks of pesticide poisoning and crop failure. Farmers make this calculation whether governments approve or not, just as desperate Americans try remedies not yet approved by the Food and Drug Administration.
Do farmers then worry about biodiversity, as the Nature article clearly thinks they should? Yes and no: they worry about destruction of helpful predators on the pests of their crops, but they recognize that spraying poisons across the fields kills friends and foes alike, including some farmers and farm workers. Bt plants, in contrast, are targeted to a class of pests, and contained in the plant tissues. Bt plants represent a kind of poetic justice: if a pest leaves the plant alone, it will not be harmed; if it attacks the plant, it will die. The advantage to the farmer is that the pro-toxin stays in plant tissues, instead of rivers, soils, lungs, birds, toads, ladybugs.
In this one incidence of conflicting pressures on the state in China is contained the global cognitive rift around transgenic organisms, much as the history of imperialism can be drawn from a single cup of tea. The discourse is one of threat and promise, of state responsibilities and international norms. The dichotomous—threat/promise—construction of technical change in agriculture resonates with previous attempts to promote or stop technical change; the “green revolution” of nitrogen-responsive grain varieties still launches many pages of paper. Agriculture is symbolic terrain on which much larger conflicts are joined.
The lessons from China’s consideration of Bt rice then illustrate larger points about transnational politics of “GMOs.”First, disaggregation is necessary to make sense. China’s development and deployment of an indigenous Bt cotton raised no real controversy; rice is a food crop, and the politics around food differ fundamentally from those around purely utilitarian technologies, whether cotton or insulin. Second, rice is not cotton in terms of gene flow: careful science is necessary to sort out risks and benefits to farmers; risks to farmers and agro-ecological systems are much greater in rice than cotton. Third, there is no reason to assume, as is often done instrumentally, that biotechnology entails corporate dominance of either farmers or national governments. China is the giant exception, but not the only one. Finally, nothing in the battle for the formal-legal high ground makes much difference on the real ground. Though the EU battles the US and WTO over whether or not transgenic crops should be allowed, the decision will ultimately be made by farmers.[12] It is the agency of people close to the seeds that will settle the question; in China, that decision leans toward transgenic rice, just as it previously did to transgenic cotton. It is hard to conjure the kind of state that could regulate the seed choices of millions of farmers across dozens of crops; but even if such surveillance and control could be imagined, it is hard not to think that there are better things to do.
Ron Herring teaches political economy and political ecology in the political science department at Cornell. He is the author most recently of Transgenics and the Poor: Biotechnology in Development Studies and coeditor with Rina Agarwal of Whatever Happened to Class?: Reflections from South Asia.
Full article w/notes and references here.
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