This energy bill was definitely a bad idea.
Thursday, December 20, 2007
more bad news about the energy bill
The EPA has decided that the federal energy bill overrides state emissions standards. So states like California that want to set higher regulations on car emissions are no longer allowed to. The states will be taking the argument to a federal court, but, well...
Friday, December 14, 2007
disappointed with the energy bill
Well, the energy bill passed yesterday in the Senate. Sort of. Once they got rid of several of the most important provisions. It's expected to be approved by the House now and signed by the president. But I'm disappointed.
Actually, disappointed is a bit too weak of a word.
It's not so much that they cut out the repeal of tax credits to oil and gas industries, although of course that's a problem. So far, most of the news covering it has focused on that as the real loss for environmentalists, but I'm much more concerned that the renewable electricity requirement--slight though it was (15% by 2020)--was dropped.
Worst of all, however, are the provisions that were passed. The biggest one being touted as a victory is the increase in CAFE standards to 35 mpg by 2020, which, um, I guess is nice as far as it goes. Unfortunately, that isn't very far, and if we're not all using almost entirely electric transportation by 2020, then we'll be in really bad shape. But the really awful part of the bill is the biofuels mandate.
The "Renewable Fuels Standard" passed in this bill requires that ethanol use go up to 36 billions a years by 2022, six times what we're using now. We're already depleting our soil at an unprecedented rate, driving up the price of food at a skyrocketing pace, and lining up with axes to chop down old-growth forests to use their cellulosic mass in a technology that barely even exists yet--and we want to multiply this by six in the next fourteen years? Bad idea.
And this is being described as a victory for the environment. It's enough to make me give up on political involvement altogether.
And yet, a big piece of my disappointment is connected to the fact that I didn't call my Senator yesterday to urge him to pass the bill as it was. Not that it was that great to begin with. But maybe we could have gotten the renewable electricity through. Maybe I could have educated my representative. They only needed one more vote to get it past a filibuster. And I meant to call yesterday, but I just never got around to it.
As a Christian, I've often been frustrated by the tension between individual and communal faith and action. It seems to be one of the most difficult places for the church to find balance: we always emphasize one at the expense of the other. Either we focus exclusively on faith as an individual decision granting us a "personal" relationship with Christ, or we focus so much on our connection to the "community of faith" that individual actions cease to matter very much. But I think that true Christianity is very much a balance of both, and both to the extreme: it is the actions and choices of individuals that make up the community of faith, and yet the individual cannot exist apart from the community. We are one body, but each part has to do its work. And by not calling my Senator yesterday, I feel like I failed in my work. It probably wouldn't have made a difference...but it might have. And just one vote could have passed the renewable electricity standard...!
It's eerie how often I find myself thinking of Easter Island as I watch American energy and environmental decisions. What did the Easter Islander say as he cut down the last tree, dooming himself and his people to starvation and destruction? Maybe something along the lines of what President Bush said in reference to the recent changes in the energy bill: "We're moving in the right direction."
Actually, disappointed is a bit too weak of a word.
It's not so much that they cut out the repeal of tax credits to oil and gas industries, although of course that's a problem. So far, most of the news covering it has focused on that as the real loss for environmentalists, but I'm much more concerned that the renewable electricity requirement--slight though it was (15% by 2020)--was dropped.
Worst of all, however, are the provisions that were passed. The biggest one being touted as a victory is the increase in CAFE standards to 35 mpg by 2020, which, um, I guess is nice as far as it goes. Unfortunately, that isn't very far, and if we're not all using almost entirely electric transportation by 2020, then we'll be in really bad shape. But the really awful part of the bill is the biofuels mandate.
The "Renewable Fuels Standard" passed in this bill requires that ethanol use go up to 36 billions a years by 2022, six times what we're using now. We're already depleting our soil at an unprecedented rate, driving up the price of food at a skyrocketing pace, and lining up with axes to chop down old-growth forests to use their cellulosic mass in a technology that barely even exists yet--and we want to multiply this by six in the next fourteen years? Bad idea.
And this is being described as a victory for the environment. It's enough to make me give up on political involvement altogether.
And yet, a big piece of my disappointment is connected to the fact that I didn't call my Senator yesterday to urge him to pass the bill as it was. Not that it was that great to begin with. But maybe we could have gotten the renewable electricity through. Maybe I could have educated my representative. They only needed one more vote to get it past a filibuster. And I meant to call yesterday, but I just never got around to it.
As a Christian, I've often been frustrated by the tension between individual and communal faith and action. It seems to be one of the most difficult places for the church to find balance: we always emphasize one at the expense of the other. Either we focus exclusively on faith as an individual decision granting us a "personal" relationship with Christ, or we focus so much on our connection to the "community of faith" that individual actions cease to matter very much. But I think that true Christianity is very much a balance of both, and both to the extreme: it is the actions and choices of individuals that make up the community of faith, and yet the individual cannot exist apart from the community. We are one body, but each part has to do its work. And by not calling my Senator yesterday, I feel like I failed in my work. It probably wouldn't have made a difference...but it might have. And just one vote could have passed the renewable electricity standard...!
It's eerie how often I find myself thinking of Easter Island as I watch American energy and environmental decisions. What did the Easter Islander say as he cut down the last tree, dooming himself and his people to starvation and destruction? Maybe something along the lines of what President Bush said in reference to the recent changes in the energy bill: "We're moving in the right direction."
Tuesday, December 11, 2007
the bright side of collapse
I read a super-scary article on the Grist today about the inevitability of climate change. It's by Ross Gelbspan, the author of The Heat is On and Boiling Point. A few er, highlights (or lowlights?):
"The environmental establishment continues to peddle the notion that we can solve the climate problem. We can't. We have failed to meet nature's deadline."
"The IPCC...recently stated that it is 'very unlikely' that we will avoid the coming era of 'dangerous climate change.'"
He has little hope to offer. The closest he comes to a bright side is this:
"The key to our survival as a civil species during an era of profound natural upheaval lies in an enhanced sense of community. If we maintain the fiction that we can thrive as isolated individuals, we will find ourselves at the same emotional dead end as the current crop of survivalists: an existence marked by defensiveness, mistrust, suspicion, and fear.
As nature washes away our resources, overwhelms our infrastructures, and splinters our political alignments, our survival will depend increasingly on our willingness to join together as a global community."
Well, it's nice to imagine that we'll still have the capacity for a global community post-peak oil and post-climate change, but I'm not entirely sure we will. At the very least, though, we will always have the ability to join together as a local community. And that will always be a bright side--not just to the environmental challenges facing us, but to the societal problems we've already seen the effects of. Real community is the thing that's been missing for a long time from our society. The good part about difficulties is that they remind us how much we need each other.
"The environmental establishment continues to peddle the notion that we can solve the climate problem. We can't. We have failed to meet nature's deadline."
"The IPCC...recently stated that it is 'very unlikely' that we will avoid the coming era of 'dangerous climate change.'"
He has little hope to offer. The closest he comes to a bright side is this:
"The key to our survival as a civil species during an era of profound natural upheaval lies in an enhanced sense of community. If we maintain the fiction that we can thrive as isolated individuals, we will find ourselves at the same emotional dead end as the current crop of survivalists: an existence marked by defensiveness, mistrust, suspicion, and fear.
As nature washes away our resources, overwhelms our infrastructures, and splinters our political alignments, our survival will depend increasingly on our willingness to join together as a global community."
Well, it's nice to imagine that we'll still have the capacity for a global community post-peak oil and post-climate change, but I'm not entirely sure we will. At the very least, though, we will always have the ability to join together as a local community. And that will always be a bright side--not just to the environmental challenges facing us, but to the societal problems we've already seen the effects of. Real community is the thing that's been missing for a long time from our society. The good part about difficulties is that they remind us how much we need each other.
Monday, December 10, 2007
a religion of limits
There's a great article on the Grist today about the danger of letting economics be the deciding factor in environmental problems. I think the article summarizes the problem pretty nicely: "The whole growth thing becomes a toxic addiction." The problem with our economy is that we're addicted to growth, but unlimited, infinite growth is simply not possible in the real world. At some point, the physical laws of the universe kick in. And if we're not at that point yet, we're very close to it: peak oil, climate change, water shortages, rising food prices...and some of these are becoming obvious even to those of us insulated in comfortable middle-class American lives. How much farther do we need to sink before we can see reality?
So much of the debate about these problems centers around whether the cost of mitigation surpasses the cost of letting things continue as usual. I've even heard the insane argument that paying now to mitigate future disasters is tantamount to stealing from the poor (us) to give to the rich (future generations, because GDPs in developing countries will continue to increase indefinitely). I find it absurd that anyone would find this argument compelling, but I suppose if you look at historical trends (say, the last 50 or 100 years), it might make sense. But the assumption that these trends of unlimited economic growth will continue doesn't hold water in the real world--the physical world that has real, undeniable limits.
It is this inability to recognize the reality of limitations on anything--on growth, on potential, on money, on resources--that most makes me feel that America stopped being a Christian country a long, long time ago. My husband likes to say that the true religion of America is optimism: an unbridled belief that everything always has, always does, and always will continue to get better and better, forever and ever, amen. When I talk with people about resource limits, I'm inclined to agree with him. American Christians will often say that God wouldn't allow climate change, or peak oil, or drought to destroy our way of life--as though God has never allowed His people to suffer, or to become poor, or to die. But a longer view of history will quickly abolish that notion. I do not believe that Christianity is a religion of optimism; if anything, it would be more accurate to say that it's a religion of suffering. It is, after all, perhaps the only religion in which God chose to limit himself and place himself under the physical realities of life in the physical world: hunger, thirst, exhaustion, and even death.
So much of the debate about these problems centers around whether the cost of mitigation surpasses the cost of letting things continue as usual. I've even heard the insane argument that paying now to mitigate future disasters is tantamount to stealing from the poor (us) to give to the rich (future generations, because GDPs in developing countries will continue to increase indefinitely). I find it absurd that anyone would find this argument compelling, but I suppose if you look at historical trends (say, the last 50 or 100 years), it might make sense. But the assumption that these trends of unlimited economic growth will continue doesn't hold water in the real world--the physical world that has real, undeniable limits.
It is this inability to recognize the reality of limitations on anything--on growth, on potential, on money, on resources--that most makes me feel that America stopped being a Christian country a long, long time ago. My husband likes to say that the true religion of America is optimism: an unbridled belief that everything always has, always does, and always will continue to get better and better, forever and ever, amen. When I talk with people about resource limits, I'm inclined to agree with him. American Christians will often say that God wouldn't allow climate change, or peak oil, or drought to destroy our way of life--as though God has never allowed His people to suffer, or to become poor, or to die. But a longer view of history will quickly abolish that notion. I do not believe that Christianity is a religion of optimism; if anything, it would be more accurate to say that it's a religion of suffering. It is, after all, perhaps the only religion in which God chose to limit himself and place himself under the physical realities of life in the physical world: hunger, thirst, exhaustion, and even death.
Thursday, December 6, 2007
would you have voted for the energy bill? the House did
Well, the House passed the energy bill. For the most part, I think this is a good thing. The bill includes some important points:
* a long-overdue increase of CAFE standards, requiring an industry average of 35 MPG by 2020
* a requirement for energy-efficient appliances
* tax incentives for hybrid cars
* a repeal of $13.5 billion in tax breaks for oil companies
* a requirement that utilities produce 15% of their power from renewable sources
I've heard some valid arguments against some of these. The tax break for oil companies is repealing an incentive that was put in place only two years ago, so I can see how it seems a little unfair to be offering it and then jerking it away. And yes, of course it will raise the price of gas. That's going to happen anyway. Better now than later--maybe it will be more gradual this way.
The renewable utility requirement is a controversial one, too, because utility companies say that it's unfair that places such as, say, Atlanta, that have fewer solar and wind opportunities than Texas, be required to generate the same amount of power from renewable sources. But whenever I hear utility company representatives speak on environmental issues, the theme is that they're waiting for a federal standard before they really act to develop renewable sources--it's not economically feasible for them to do it unless they have some great incentives or are forced to do it. So I have no problem with forcing it. There are so many opportunities that are not being leveraged right now. Fifteen percent isn't that much--and there's even an out: they can buy renewable credits if they really can't make it happen with local resources. (Which is another weakness of the bill, but it ought to cut short that objection.)
The one point that I really don't like in the bill, however, is the requirement that ethanol fuel increase sevenfold by 2022. That's ridiculous. And saying that two-thirds of it should be cellulosic ethanol is just...absurd. I've blogged about this before: cellulosic ethanol technology is not ready to be deployed commercially, and the chances of it being ready that soon are not great. The side effects of corn ethanol are obvious: rising food prices, high energy costs, and soil depletion, to name a few. But cellulosic ethanol avoids very few of these. It doesn't create competition for food, other than in land use, but it does require a high energy input, it uses lots of water and fertilizer, and it depletes the soil. As Roscoe Bartlett said in the debate today (quoted on The Oil Drum), "We might mine our soils of organic matter to make fuel for a little while, but I don’t think that’s sustainable."
And if it's not sustainable, then what's the point?
So would I have voted for the bill? Probably, yes. There are more good points than bad, and in my opinion, it's better to take some action in a positive direction than to do nothing. The frustration of having to vote in favor of some really bad ideas in order to get the good ones passed is, well, just politics.
Which is why I will never be a politician.
* a long-overdue increase of CAFE standards, requiring an industry average of 35 MPG by 2020
* a requirement for energy-efficient appliances
* tax incentives for hybrid cars
* a repeal of $13.5 billion in tax breaks for oil companies
* a requirement that utilities produce 15% of their power from renewable sources
I've heard some valid arguments against some of these. The tax break for oil companies is repealing an incentive that was put in place only two years ago, so I can see how it seems a little unfair to be offering it and then jerking it away. And yes, of course it will raise the price of gas. That's going to happen anyway. Better now than later--maybe it will be more gradual this way.
The renewable utility requirement is a controversial one, too, because utility companies say that it's unfair that places such as, say, Atlanta, that have fewer solar and wind opportunities than Texas, be required to generate the same amount of power from renewable sources. But whenever I hear utility company representatives speak on environmental issues, the theme is that they're waiting for a federal standard before they really act to develop renewable sources--it's not economically feasible for them to do it unless they have some great incentives or are forced to do it. So I have no problem with forcing it. There are so many opportunities that are not being leveraged right now. Fifteen percent isn't that much--and there's even an out: they can buy renewable credits if they really can't make it happen with local resources. (Which is another weakness of the bill, but it ought to cut short that objection.)
The one point that I really don't like in the bill, however, is the requirement that ethanol fuel increase sevenfold by 2022. That's ridiculous. And saying that two-thirds of it should be cellulosic ethanol is just...absurd. I've blogged about this before: cellulosic ethanol technology is not ready to be deployed commercially, and the chances of it being ready that soon are not great. The side effects of corn ethanol are obvious: rising food prices, high energy costs, and soil depletion, to name a few. But cellulosic ethanol avoids very few of these. It doesn't create competition for food, other than in land use, but it does require a high energy input, it uses lots of water and fertilizer, and it depletes the soil. As Roscoe Bartlett said in the debate today (quoted on The Oil Drum), "We might mine our soils of organic matter to make fuel for a little while, but I don’t think that’s sustainable."
And if it's not sustainable, then what's the point?
So would I have voted for the bill? Probably, yes. There are more good points than bad, and in my opinion, it's better to take some action in a positive direction than to do nothing. The frustration of having to vote in favor of some really bad ideas in order to get the good ones passed is, well, just politics.
Which is why I will never be a politician.
Tuesday, December 4, 2007
atlanta hung out to dry
Apparently Georgia has finally made a water contingency plan. According to the AP, the state "has lined up contracts with vendors to bring in bottled water and tanker trucks that could dispense water into jugs, jars and buckets." Whew. I feel better now. Not really.
Seriously--and I'm sorry to keep harping on this--but does anyone really believe that we're not, at some point, going to run out of water? Does this city even have a chance? I think not. We've grown too much, too fast, and we've gone too far to turn back. And at this point, it seems more and more likely that what we're experiencing is not actually a drought but a permanent shift to a drier climate. And if that's the case, then even if we did get rain, it would only be staving off the inevitable. We've got too many people here for our current water resources.
And I've said this before, but I don't intend to stick around for the lines to get water from a truck. I'll do my part to decrease the region's population issues and move somewhere farther north--and right on the bank of a nice, big river.
Seriously--and I'm sorry to keep harping on this--but does anyone really believe that we're not, at some point, going to run out of water? Does this city even have a chance? I think not. We've grown too much, too fast, and we've gone too far to turn back. And at this point, it seems more and more likely that what we're experiencing is not actually a drought but a permanent shift to a drier climate. And if that's the case, then even if we did get rain, it would only be staving off the inevitable. We've got too many people here for our current water resources.
And I've said this before, but I don't intend to stick around for the lines to get water from a truck. I'll do my part to decrease the region's population issues and move somewhere farther north--and right on the bank of a nice, big river.
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