One Love

I've been interested in the rise of coal production -- I've noticed a few bad signs in my readings over the last few months -- law exemptions, plant openings... the kinds of murmurings that are single lines in disparate stories from time to time.

I wrote my favorite friendly climate scientist, Dr. Andrew Dessler to ask what he'd heard of late. All he said was that "coal production is an unmitigated disaster and should be halted immediately."

Of course, that's not what's happening.

A report from the Energy Information Administration, the official energy statistic site from the US government, projected coal production for the next many years. "In the IEO2007 reference case, world coal consumption increases by 74 percent over the projection period, from 114.4 quadrillion Btu in 2004 to 199.0 quadrillion Btu in 2030 (Figure 54). Coal consumption increases by 2.6 percent per year on average from 2004 to 2015, then slows to an average increase of 1.8 percent annually from 2015 to 2030."

Furthermore, " Although coal currently is the second-largest fuel source of energy-related carbon dioxide emissions (behind oil), accounting for 39 percent of the world total in 2004, it is projected to become the largest source by 2010. The two key factors underlying the increase are a more rapid projected growth rate for world coal consumption than for oil consumption and the fact that carbon dioxide emissions per unit of energy output are higher for coal than for oil or natural gas. In 2030, coal’s share of energy-related carbon dioxide emissions is projected to be 43 percent, compared with 36 percent for oil and 21 percent for natural gas. "



I still keep thinking of Dickens -- and illustrations from his books of coal filled air. (This is one of the originals from Bleakhouse.)

One of the biggest factors right now is China -- where the country is changing so rapidly and is searching for ways to keep up with their own population.

But all over people are seeking alternatives to oil. I was reading another story in the Times today about wood heat -- it seems that all over the North East folks are dragging out their wood stoves to combat heating prices. Sounds good to me -- when I was younger, I lived with my mom in the middle of nowhere Maine -- we used an old Russian fireplace for heat -- a wood burning chimney that heated the whole house by conducting heat through bricks and tile floors.

"Air pollution is still a major concern, particularly with wood boilers. A 2006 report from the Northeast States for Coordinated Air Use Management, a nonprofit association of Northeast air quality agencies, found that average particulate emissions from one outdoor wood boiler equaled that of 22 wood stoves, 205 oil furnaces or as many as 8,000 natural gas furnaces."

That I did not know. I didn't want to know it, either.


(From A Tale of Two Cities.)

Yesterday I talked a little bit about the pitfalls of two opposing motivations finding themselves with the same goal -- I was referring to the desire to find an alternative for oil -- those who would like to find an economic relief from the price of oil and those who would like to find an environmental relief from the price of oil may both move to further the production of ethanol. Still, because their motivations are different, should something go wrong, one group may no longer find the solution palatable. What then?

My friend Debbie said the question reminded her of a protest she saw in downtown Boston a few years ago -- there, Orthodox Jews and Nazi skinheads were protesting along side each other in condemnation of Israel. The Jews believe that Israel is an error because it is the requirement of Jews to live in peace with all living things. Not so much the Nazis.

Is one group glad of the others' success? Do the ends justify the means?

For me, it made me think of a very different situation -- but one, too, where opposing motivations wind up in collaboration of sorts. If one person is pursuing love and another is pursuing sex and the two find themselves together...


(Bleakhouse: The morning.)

What we want is not the same. What we need ...

One Love, One Heart
Let's get together and feel all right
Hear the children crying (One Love)
Hear the children crying (One Heart)
Sayin' give thanks and praise to the Lord and I will feel all right
Sayin' let's get together and feel all right

Let them all pass all their dirty remarks (One Love)
There is one question I'd really like to ask (One Heart)
Is there a place for the hopeless sinner
Who has hurt all mankind just to save his own?
Believe me

One Love, One Heart
Let's get together and feel all right
As it was in the beginning (One Love)
So shall it be in the end (One Heart)
Give thanks and praise to the Lord and I will feel all right
One more thing

Let's get together to fight this Holy Armageddon (One Love)
So when the Man comes there will be no no doom (One Song)
Have pity on those whose chances grove thinner
There ain't no hiding place from the Father of Creation

Sayin' One Love, One Heart
Let's get together and feel all right
I'm pleading to mankind (One Love)
Oh Lord (One Heart)

Give thanks and praise to the Lord and I will feel all right
Let's get together and feel all right

-- Bob Marley

Back to the Future

A few days ago, the Wall Street Journal's Environmental blog "Environmental Capital" ran a post discussing a new type of vehicle featured at the 2008 Detroit Auto Show in January. "Flex-fuel." As the name would imply, these cars can run on either ethanol, petroleum or a mix, I believe. According to the blog, GM hopes to make half of its production "flex-fuel" by 2012.

2012. I find myself asking again what the future will look like...
Who will be running for re-election; will there still be snow storms like the one we had last night...

As a total aside, I was watching "Meet the Robinsons" last night with my kids. It's such a sweet movie -- one of the best parts of it is the idea of a rejected orphan looking into the future and seeing huge happy playful family. May our futures be happy... At any rate, I started wondering how much of my theory of time -- of how everything in time is linked inexorably and every tiny thing leads to the present -- a theory that gives me much peace -- I wonder how much of my philosophy of time and faith in the past has to do with growing up with shows like "Star Trek" and "The Twilight Zone" I watched with my dad when I was really little -- and later movies like "Back to the Future" and "Groundhog Day..." Charles Dickens must have really shocked people in his day.

I digress.

First of all -- "Flex-fuel" cars fulfill all requirements of being a hybrid vehicle despite the fact that they need never run on anything but petroleum. Loophole much?

Also necessary -- Right now, ethanol isn't widely available enough to count on. Jane Huckabee owns a "Flex-fuel" car -- but can't find corn oil anywhere...

Furthermore, when you do find ethanol, the $.40 or so savings per gallon is canceled out by a possible mpg reduction of over 25%, according to a December story in the Times.

Some of this argument has to do with the pursuit of ethanol as a monetary relief. $1/gallon ethanol is shimmering on the lips of the future...

And then there are the environmental warnings... in the last year many stories have been written about the environmental dangers of growing corn enough for real fuel consumption -- and the pressure on food production -- of ethanol.

Even if we give car companies the most sympathetic of motives -- that they really do want to be part of the solution and are trying to be flexible moving forward to adapt to changes as they might arise... even then we've got issues.

Maybe part of it is that groups with different motivations coming at one problem for entirely different reasons are linked in an unnatural way...

Money and the environment.

If some people are looking for an alternative to petroleum based solely on price -- and others are looking for an alternative based on the environmental situation the use of petroleum worsens -- can those people really work together without the needs of one group ultimately outweighing the other.

Does investment on future promise eliminate our being able to really look around to see what's not working as we go -- do we get into a track we can't find our way out of through momentum...

If the only real purpose of finding a new energy source is to save money we need a time machine to look at that future... the air, the water, the fields...


The Twilight Zone Gallery at SCIFI.com

A Perfect Storm

Well, I set out looking for a laugh today. And then I just thought I should check the Times...

I came across a story on the front page of the World Business section that ties together a lot of things I've been looking at for the last few weeks.

World Food Supply Is Shrinking, U.N. Agency Warns

The story cites the effects of global warming on crop production, increased fuel prices and demand surges (one has to imagine ethanol accounts for part of this) as combined causes of the crisis. Wheat prices, it says, are up 52 percent from a year ago. Transportation prices are going up, reserves are down and the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization is warning that people aren't going to be able to get food.

“We’re concerned that we are facing the perfect storm for the world’s hungry,” said Josette Sheeran, executive director of the World Food Program, in a telephone interview. She said that her agency’s food procurement costs had gone up 50 percent in the last five years and that some poor people were being “priced out of the food market.”

Priced out of the food market. According to the Word Food Programme, another UN organization, a child dies of hunger every 5 seconds. 10 million people a year from hunger and hunger related illnesses. I am not learning these numbers -- in fact, I'm hearing Sally Struthers' voice with an 80s montage as I write.

The problem with a project like this is it gets so big so quickly. All the different situations begin to come together, begin to overwhelm and overshadow... How do we internalize the numbers? What is the way to let information and circumstances both travel through us, into understanding and action and not push us into apathy, cynicism or enuii?

But that's how life feels too, sometimes, doesn't it -- especially at this time of year. My son was up with nightmares and a head cold at 3 am. Ice is coating the sidewalk and the stairs. I can't seem to listen to a Christmas song without thinking of an oil coated seal.

There are 14 days left of this year. I'm taking a break from spills until 2008. And I offer the following video - it made me laugh.

The Price of Tortillas

Yesterday the house voted to increase goals for fuel efficiency. This is the bill that many are hoping will help reduce dependence on foreign oil and reduce the emissions of greenhouse gasses.

Last week I learned a little bit about ethanol. I noted then that corn is a very difficult crop to grow in terms of land and water resources. But there is another issue: Corn is a food staple for much of the world; if prices sky rocket, the foundation of many diets, largely in rural and less developed areas of the world could suffer enormously. According to a report from the International Monetary Fund corn prices have roughly doubled over the past two years. Corn is the third most important food crop in the world after wheat and rice.

In June, China banned the use of corn for ethanol production for exactly that reason.

The Washington Post reported in March:
In recent months, soaring corn prices, sparked by demand from ethanol plants, have doubled the price of tortillas, a staple food. Tens of thousands of Mexico City's poor recently protested this "ethanol tax" in the streets.
link

There's a cool little article on "How Stuff Works" that does the math to show you'd need to plant a half an acre of corn to drive your car from Los Angeles to New York. It's just kind of clever and funny, but it's also like that experiment of how many Oreos would I have to stack to get to the moon. It offers a visual for an otherwise intangible number.
link

I also learned that corn always has an even number of rows. Nature is so amazing. The way it harmonizes and creates and breathes.

This descending god is associated with the corn worship:

Descending god from Dzibanché, Quintana Roo

It's almost, learning all of this stuff, like it doesn't quite feel like "learning" so much as hearing, because none of it feels new -- just piecing together a huge puzzle. It's a cliche, of course, but apt. You can't look at a half of a nose or the side of a tree and have any concept of what it all looks like put together. The problem with the puzzle as metaphor is that it implies control, predictability, some sort of end.

This morning, off the coast of Korea, an oil tanker spilled 66,000 barrels of crude oil.