Eco-nomics
One of the things that irritates me most about modern civilization is its lack of inquisitiveness and skepticism. People seem to dogmatically accept and perpetuate absurd scientific, economic and health premises that make no sense when subjected to a tiny amount of logical scrutiny. These beliefs which have little or no rational foundation are deeply and religiously held by a great many and questioning them is regarded as a new form of heresy. The science and economics of modern environmentalism is one great example.
Drawn to scale the “crust’ we inhabit would be invisibly thin, our entire planet is a giant radioactive ball of magma that has been burning for over 3.5 billion years.
174 petawatts of solar radiation hit the Earth daily
I addressed the irrational belief that fuel-efficient cars are somehow environmentally friendly in my last article, in this one I would like to examine other “alternative” forms of transportation and energy. To begin with, let’s try to establish a rational foundation for examining these issues. There are only three usable sources of energy available to us on this planet. Solar, nuclear (geothermal energy is nuclear) and gravitational (tidal). It’s easy to lose sight of this fact because energy can be stored and transported in many different forms BUT there are only THREE sources of it available to us. The first societal delusion that is widely and irrationally held is that energy is in short supply and can be consumed. The Sun blasts us with about 174 petawatts of energy per day… which will almost ALL be wasted regardless of what we do. The planet Earth which is 99.99% MAGMA heated by nuclear decay will radiate roughly 44 terawatts of heat into the atmosphere per day… which will also almost all be wasted regardless of what we do and finally gravitational tidal forces between the Earth, Sun and Moon radiate roughly 3 terawatts of energy per day. To better put this in perspective, imagine that we live on a paper thin layer of insulation (the Earth’s crust) that shields us from being broiled in an 18inch deep pot of 6000 degree hot magma under a paper thin atmosphere that shields us from being broiled by 174 petawatts of solar radiation. Without the Earth’s thick, cloudy, polluted atmosphere to protect us, we wouldn’t last a day exposed to ordinary solar activity. None of this energy is “renewable”, almost all of it will be “wasted” and it will never be in short supply to us. In other words, we can’t “consume”, “waste” or otherwise “run out” of energy. It is INFINITELY abundant to us. All economic arguments that derive from one of these assumptions are FALSE. This energy will be radiated by the Earth regardless of how human beings harness it. No human activity adds or subtracts any energy from this equation.
The next absurd premise that underlies many eco-logical arguments is that we are somehow consuming resources on Earth as though the materials we harvest from the Earth’s crust are destroyed when we make stuff out of them and when we throw them away they are ejected into outer space never to return. Obviously none of this is true. Once again, all human activity is confined to a paper thin layer of the Earth’s crust… the rest of the planet is made out of metals, rare-Earth elements, nuclear materials and resources beyond any human hope of consumption, as with energy we will never “run-out” of these materials.
The forces that actually govern the cost and availability of energy and resources to us is the RATE at which we can harvest, store and transport energy in forms usable to human activity. What is “limited” to us is the RATE and EFFECIENCY with which we can harvest the boundless volumes of energy that are wasted every day. In this respect our RATE of energy generation is NOT limited by availability or technology but by the RATE at which we can remove the waste products of energy use from our ecosystem. Waste products resulting from organic energy metabolism is called manure when we produce it internally or “pollution” when we produce it externally. Oddly we all understand that producing manure is a natural and harmless byproduct of life that is naturally and beneficially recycled by the environment but for some reason we tend to believe that “pollution” is a toxic destructive force that permanently harms it.
In the context of analyzing energy usage economically, it is important to recognize that we do not consume energy, nor is there ever a shortage of supply. There are only efficiency constraints on the rate at which we can collect, store, transport and dispose of the waste products associated with harvesting the INFINITE energy available to us. This observation is also a very valuable analytic tool because it immediately informs us that the costs associated with the value of all physical goods and services are tightly bound to the costs of the energy sources associated with their creation, storage, distribution and disposal. In this respect a car is no different from a type of battery or solar panel in economic terms. It requires a certain amount of energy to make, store, transport and dispose of. A cars monetary value is, in an indirect sense, a measure of how much economic energy it can help us collect.
In the same sense a solar panel or a windmill is not a “source” of energy. They are machines made out of matter that required energy to make them that transform solar energy from an actual energy source into a usable form for human consumption. Unlike a car who’s energy value to us is very abstract a solar panel or a windmill is very simple to analyze because directly producing electricity is its only job. At this stage I am tempted to do a brilliant and detailed mathematical analysis of how much energy it takes to mine, manufacture, transport, maintain and dispose of these devices, however that would be boring and a lot of work and the conclusion we would reach would be the same one we arrive at by simply asking… if these devices are efficient sources of energy… why don’t we make them using the energy they supply? Are wind mills and solar panels made from energy produced by windmill and solar energy farms? Why not? Clearly if they were the most efficient sources of energy, that would be the cheapest way to produce them… right?
A common counter-argument might be… we know they’re not efficient BUT they pollute less! Really? How could it be LESS polluting to use fossil fuels to mine and manufacture solar panels and windmills which are then used to generate electricity… rather than to burn the same fuel DIRECTLY for electricity without the apparently redundant intermediate step of making a solar panel or windmill? Do you think that the solar panel or windmill generates MORE power than was required for its creation? If that were true then we would have an infinite energy supply as a chain reaction of windmill and solar panel farms would explode around the world to make more windmills and solar panels at greater cost efficiency than burning fossil fuels! The fact that wind farms and solar farms don’t reproduce like errant bacteria colonies tells us exactly what we will find when we add up the energy costs associated with mining the materials necessary to making a solar panel, add up the energy cost associated with MELTING GLASS to form a solar panel, the cost of the real-estate it has to occupy to gather light, the maintenance cost over time and the disposal cost. We will find that a solar panel or wind mill consumes more energy than it ever generates… hence the reason they COST more to adopt than using the conventional fossil fuels that supplied the original energy necessary to making them, directly.
So why is it that we IMAGINE that consuming fossil fuels to make LESS efficient energy sources is LESS polluting or wasteful? Where does this societal mass-delusion come from? Obviously people with an interest in selling solar panels have an interest in having us believe that they are green and/or efficient by making arguments like the following;
http://www.care2.com/greenliving/do-solar-panels-use-more-energy-than-they-generate.html
So… they make the case that solar panels ARE net energy positive and cost saving IF you neglect to account for the cost of the real-estate they occupy, the cost of maintaining them and the cost of the government subsidies in the form of taxes dollars to support them and the costs government adds to the cost of fossil fuel alternatives through taxation and regulation? Solar Panels have in fact become SO energy efficient that the entire US market for manufacturing solar panels utterly collapsed in recent years and almost all of the solar panels we purchase today are made in China using power generated by burning fossil fuels with no costly American restrictions on polluting that would otherwise make industrial manufacturing of solar panels “Too expensive”, or costly American pollution taxes on the use of fossil fuels to also inflate the cost of manufacturing them. Thus, ironically, solar panels have indeed become more energy efficient in recent years by virtue of EXPORTING the pollution to China and thus circumventing the regulations and taxes imposed in the US that made them expensive.
More interestingly, why would they need to actively REFUTE the argument that solar panels and windmills are net energy consumers and net polluters if it’s not true? Free market economics doesn’t need to be argued, it speaks for itself. Why don’t we turn off the government subsidies for green energy and watch the wind farms and solar farms spring up like daisies across the countryside as a result of the FLOOD of eager investment dollars vying to make billions arbitraging the growing gap in cost between fossil fuel costs and solar or wind costs? Unless there is no actual gap… You don’t need a bunch of PhD’s to research the subject when the market will do the work for you and the market “consensus” is that “green energy” sources are net consumers of energy and net polluters. The only force improving their efficiency is exporting their pollution and associated tax costs to China, where, no matter how much we improve their efficiency and manufacturing cost… they are still not made with solar or wind power for some reason.
Interestingly China does have the largest solar energy production capacity in the world… why? As I stated earlier, energy production is a rate problem NOT a supply problem. China has more empty dessert waste land owned by the state than it has fossil fuel resources it can mine itself. The Chinese government does not have to pay for land because it owns it all. It has vastly lower transportation and maintenance costs for solar power than the US by virtue of making solar panels LOCALLY and China does not have to pay for solar power with debt, it can invest interest paid on our debt to their government to build solar farms, so the economics of solar power in China are radically different from the economics in the US. Interestingly whatever those economics may actually be, China’s plan is to increase nuclear power production at 4 times the rate of solar power production by 2020, so even the brutally pragmatic Chinese with their vastly more efficient solar costs, don’t believe it is their most efficient source of energy.
“China is a large producer of polysilicon, for use in first generation solar cells around the world. A byproduct of the process is poisonous silicon tetrachloride, which is normally processed and recycled at a higher cost in the developed world, but often dumped by Chinese green startups.[citation needed] With proper recycling the polysilicon would cost $84,500 per tonne, but the Chinese companies are making it at $21,000 to $56,000 a ton.[14]“
“Zhejiang Jinko Solar Co., Ltd., founded in 2006 as a subsidiary of Hong Kong-invested JinkoSolar Holding Co, Ltd (NYSE Stock Code: JKS), produces solar panel photovoltaic cells and wafers. It employs more than 10,000 professionals in two factories in east China and has offshore offices and warehouse in the United States and Europe, according to the company website (www.jinkosolar.com). On Thursday, 15 September 2011, more than 500 people from Hongxiao Village protested over the large-scale death of fish in a nearby river. Angry protesters stormed the factory compound, overturned eight company vehicles, and destroyed the offices before police came to disperse the crowd. Protests continued on the two following nights with reports of scuffle, officials said. Chen Hongming, a deputy head of Haining’s environmental protection bureau, said the factory’s waste disposal had failed the pollution tests since April. The environmental watchdog has warned the factory but it had not effectively controlled the pollution, Chen added.[15]“
The energy consumed by people WORKING to generate income is ALSO wasted when it is consumed as tax dollars. If these folks are taxed at 20% then they must work roughly 25% more (compound taxation) to feed their families and expend proportionate additional energy.
Finally there is a massive issue which is constantly overlooked or selectively avoided in all rational dialog about the economics of energy production and efficiency, which is the role the government plays when it manipulates energy markets through taxation, regulation, debt accumulation and incentives. The same people who readily embrace the idea that driving less reduces fuel consumption don’t grasp that reducing driving through taxation of punitive regulation is also wasteful. Doing work to generate income ALSO consumes energy and the portion of that productive work that is consumed by the government in the form of taxes is “WASTED” energy or productivity. Raising the COST of transportation by taxing it doesn’t reduce overall energy consumption or pollution, it just shifts the wasted energy and pollution associated with that transportation into the government’s hands which in turn SPENDS those dollars on more energy consuming activities… like hiring bureaucrats to enforce regulations who also need cars to get to work. So EVEN if you imagine that certain economic activities involving the consumption of fossil fuels are BAD for the environment, you would be STUPID to believe that taxing or regulating them had any impact on reducing the net consumption of energy or pollution. The only ACTUAL way to REDUCE energy consumption and pollution is to have fewer people and to make them all poorer. Any growth in economic activity will result in growth in energy consumption and “pollution”, the two are intimately linked. Neither can “efficiency” be imposed on a market through any form of government intervention because government never has the power to reduce the cost of anything, it can only increase a cost through taxation or regulation. Cost reduction is the exclusive domain of free market price competition.
So if all of these beliefs about energy economics and government are obviously flawed and foolish, why do we believe them? Certainly some people are just ignorant, ideologues’ or profit from this misinformation but there is also a genuine rational reason to believe that these “alternative” forms of energy are somehow beneficial. Governments have the power to print money and run debts which is a powerful way of hiding the real cost, wasted energy and pollution associated with these energy alternatives in the future where people in the present don’t experience it. The use of debt to hide wasted energy and pollution in the future, combined with people’s inability to recognize taxation as a form of wasted energy and pollution results in many common economic misconceptions about energy efficiency.
For example, the common delusion that “public transportation” is more efficient than private or commercial transportation. Public transportation achieves this “claim” through tremendous debt and the taxation of everybody NOT using the system to subsidize the “affordable” fairs for the people who do use it. Increasingly the state and Federal government pays for public infrastructure with debt that is NEVER repaid which means that the amount of energy and pollution required to support them is effectively infinite. It is actually impossible to make the case that ANY source of energy or transportation is “efficient” as long as it is paid for with debt that does not have to be paid off entirely within a specified timeframe.
Every American citizen owes roughly $50,000 in government debt and $1,000,000 in unfunded entitlement liabilities. Paying this debt would require the confiscation of 100% of all publicly traded assets in the United States. If 100% of the wealth of all US millionaires were confiscated the debt would be reduced to 4 trillion dollars and still be accumulating at a rate of roughly 1.2 trillion dollars a year.
From this point of view, the interest a government pays on any debt that does not contribute towards paying it off is wasted energy and a source of pollution in the form of energy consumed and wasted by the productivity of tax payers in order to make that debt payment. Thus, anybody who is serious about their ecological concerns would advocate against the accumulation of government debt, or the use of taxation to create roads and transportation infrastructure (which also takes energy and pollutes) Why tax people’s fuel consumption to punish them for driving when the same goal could be accomplished without wasted economic activity and pollution by simply not building roads in the first place? Obviously I’m not an advocate of doing this, I’m just illustrating the absurdity of the economic and ecological premises so many of us seem to accept without question.
Ultimately any societal debt must be paid with interest in wasted economic activity or our society must eventually collapse as the Soviet Union did.
Finally, why do we care about “consuming” the Earth’s “non-renewable” energy resources? If they are evil pollutants that we are in imminent danger of using up, then it would seem that the problem was about to solve itself right? Well, it turns out that we are discovering NEW sources off “non-renewable” fossil fuels FASTER than we can consume them. In which case, we don’t really know how non-renewable they are because we aren’t actually running out of them… so therefore we must JUST be upset about the pollution they create, right? Except the “pollution” we are worried about is CO2 gas a natural byproduct of all organic metabolic activity on Earth and food for plants! Setting aside the interesting argument as to whether or not pouring trace quantities of plant food into the atmosphere is “pollution” the prescription for “solving” this serious problem is to TAX it… again as though confiscating money from people who CONSUMED ENERGY earning it and SPENDING IT on additional economic activity would have any rational impact on reducing net consumption of energy or net pollution. So we live in a strange world where we imagine that we are guilty of terrible energy waste and ecological devastation AND believe that the solution is to invest in accelerating it through taxation, debt accumulation and regulation. Thus even if you accept that human activity is having a devastating impact on the environment and that precious limited energy resources are being consumed, every prescribed solution that we widely accept for these problems does nothing but AMPLIFY them IF they actually existed.
You could say EVERYTHING is nuclear. All the elements were created by fusion process of stars. So any matter we burn, chemically react, mechanically use all stemmed from some sort of nuclear process. If we were smart, we’d be driving around Hummers with nuclear batteries. But because people irrationally hate nuclear energy, and fear nuclear waste or explosions… We will probably never see this in our lifetime.
As for oil, I would think polymer material production would be the best use. Why would you “waste” perfectly good polymers on stupid things like disposable packaging when we could use the material for building houses and more permanent structures. Why not build things that last? That would consume less energy.
I would argue that so much money and effort is wasted on making things incorrectly. For example, the ancient Romans knew concrete. Their structures are still around today as proof. Yet our roads crumble away in a few short years. What the fuck?! Does this seem like a useful expenditure? Iron rebar is used today in our concrete unlike the Romans… A very corrosive material! I would think the polymers would be a better material than this. Or at least choosing alloys that last longer or are less susceptible to corrosion. But nope. We choose to use iron because it’s cheap.
My dad always said, if you make something cheap you will make it twice! Driving around seeing all these orange barrels everywhere… It doesn’t take long to figure out why they are not made better. A steady flow of tax money is better than a once in a lifetime project!
Well, in this context we’re talking about nuclear energy as a direct or indirect result of radioactive decay. That’s a little different from the energy liberated from the catalytic destruction of chemical bonds… no atoms are harmed in chemical burning… The Earth’s magma core is actually heated by radioactive decay, it’s not “burning”… we LIVE on a giant nuclear reactor. However you would be correct in pointing out that “solar” energy is just nuclear as well, leaving only tidal forces as the alternative.
Since I know we can’t actually consume or “waste” resources, I’m not troubled by it. I just prefer it if our waste products aren’t fouling my air, food, water or scenery.
You claim a wind turbine generates less energy than it takes to produce it. The actual figures show that they generate about 15-20 times as much as they take to create on average. This is a figure produced by various organisations in various ways, and if there was a way to disprove it, then it would be done. However, its not possible to disprove it, which is why there is no such reasoned scientific proof, only rhetoric from climate sceptics.
Also, they only use the resources required to create them, unlike eg a coal power station, which uses a lot of resources to create, but then an ongoing mountain of coal, to power them (infrastructure and maintenance applies to all power generation, but its much less for wind power than for coal and oil). That maintenance is included in the 15-20 times figure. As wind power has developed (its very early days), and in particular as turbines have got bigger, that 15-20 times is growing, and is up to 35 times as much for large turbines now. Funny that you talk about LOCAL power – oil from the middle east is not local, or gas from Russia. The transportation costs are insignificant really, for all energy sources, and certainly for shipping solar panels.
The reason for subsidising green energy is to put it on a level playing field with oil and coal. Fossil fuels are subsidised in many different ways, from giant loans to giving away mining rights and not requiring polluters to clean up the mess afterwards (nuclear waste sitting around everywhere, oil spill cleanup – though BP finally copped it). In the USA, the subsidy to fossil fuel producers amounts to $10 billion annually, and that is for an extremely mature technology – it has been much higher in the past.
The biggest consideration in the cost of different energy sources though is not the raw cost to produce it. Its the total cost of generation, including any effect on the environment. That is a different debate – if you accept the scientists view that high atmospheric CO2 will cause massive economic disruption, and add that to the cost of energy, then the argument becomes extremely clear. If the scientists are correct, and you then tax energy sources according to the cost to fix up long term problems caused by them, fossil fuels suddenly become extremely uneconomic.
I know you also do not accept that science, as a very long facebook debate we had shows. But if you take the time to look at the figures yourself, you will see that most of the arguments the climate sceptics put forward against the science are invalid. Most people in the world don’t really have the ability to look at those arguments and data directly, and see what they say – but you do.
A final thought – maybe one reason the oil companies spend so much money funding climate sceptic campaigns is because they are afraid. Just like tobacco companies fought to preserve their market, and deny the problems caused by smoking, the oil companies are fighting to preserve their market. They have a LOT more money to spend on their fight than the renewable energy sector, and even with all that money, they are losing the debate, because they have no actual science to back their view. Unfortunately the truth is being treated like a football between the two sides. I feel sorry for our grandchildren, because they are going to have to sort out our mess.
It’s actually completely trivial to prove that wind turbines aren’t net energy producers, nobody builds them WITHOUT subsidies and/or debt. Do you really believe that investors are idiots who consistently miss MASSIVE economic arbitrage opportunities in the face of indisputable scientific fact? In economic terms if the COST of producing energy WITH them is greater than the cost of producing energy WITHOUT them, they are net energy consumers. When you say that they need subsidies to be put on “even footing” with fossil fuel that’s your acknowledgement that they aren’t competitive sources of energy. Nobody is allowed to leave oil spills or nuclear waste lying around in the environment in the US. Also LAND is an ongoing cost for windmills and solar panels that fossil fuels do not consume, you have to include the ongoing cost of consuming land that would otherwise be used for some other commercial purpose.
…Of course I really shouldn’t have to mention that leaving oil or radioactive material on the ground…. where it comes from… is only “pollution” when we move it to ground it didn’t originate in.
If you look at the figures, its easy to prove your assertion is false.
An example wind farm – Greater Gabbard Wind Farm – an offshore windfarm in the UK
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_Gabbard_wind_farm
Cost to build the farm: 650 million pounds (grid connection is separate, and applies to all forms of power generation – and is designed
Energy produced (at wholesale unsubsidised price – ie what power companies pay for power from gas or oil): 65 million pounds a year (subsidies are paid separately).
So if the entire cost to build the farm was energy costs, it would still break even (in energy terms) in 10 years and produce more energy than it took to make it over its 20 year life.
In practise of course, most of the costs of the wind farm are not raw energy costs, they are paying salaries, contractors, and so on, and are around 5-10% of the cost to build.
The figures generally calculate out to energy produced being about 20 times as much as taken to make the farm. As the technology improves, that 20 times is already pushing 30 times for large offshore wind. If the wind farms last longer than the 20 year plan, then that gets even better. And of course, the wind turbines are not just scrapped at the end – they re refurbished and then go for another 20 years, and the refurb cost is hugely less than the original cost.
In the USA, where you have massive areas where you can set up onshore wind, the efficiencies are greater than the offshore wind we have to use around our little island…
There is a near to live dynamic monitoring of electricity supply in the UK, showing the split between nuclear, gas, oil, wind etc, here:
http://www.bmreports.com/bsp/bsp_home.htm
As for subsidies somehow proving that they mean wind power Is not economic – why would you say that? We subsidise oil and gas by huge amounts (everyone from Bloomberg to IEA recognise this).
Land use for wind power is negligible – unless you rather bizarrely choose to not use any of the land where a wind farm is. In practise, it is all used for farming (or is at sea). The actual loss of land to wind farms is a tiny fraction of the area a wind farm occupies (1-2%). See pic here for an example:
http://barnardonwind.com/2013/03/11/wind-farms-co-exist-with-other-land-uses-debunking-the-myth-of-energy-density/
And would you rather live a mile away from a wind turbine, or a mile away from a coal power station or a nuclear power plant?
And before you mention birds and bats – air travel kills hundreds of times as many birds, and pet cats kill many thousands of times as many. Skyscrapers cause far more bird deaths than wind turbines.
Uh, again, would they have produced more or less energy than the windfarm will produce building a coal plant for the same money instead? If NOT, the windfarm was actually a waste of NET energy even if it produces more energy than was consumed making it. Building inefficient sources of energy INSTEAD of efficient ones is a WASTE of net energy.. the only rational for doing it is to imagine that there is some other value to creating a wind farm OTHER than the cost of it’s energy production.
Again, nobody subsidies OIL or GAS production, it is only taxed. Here’s a link to the dictionary definition of “Subsidy” that I rely on, just in case your Oxford English Dictionary definition is different;
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/subsidy?s=t
No mention of reduced taxation being equivalent to subsidization.
Why do satellites use solar then?
We banned nuclear ones which were much less costly to put into space and maintain.
Uh.. in the US there is no government subsidy for fossil fuel producers, you’re exhibiting that uniquely British view that any money the government doesn’t confiscate as taxes is a subsidy. All energy producers get a tax break in the US, nobody writes them a check as the government will do for windmills and solar panels.
A subsidy is something that ultimately increases the profits of an energy producer, whether its unpaid tax or paid subsidy. The reason renewables get paid that way is to make the subsidy more directly linked to the power produced. Produce little power and you don’t get much subsidy.
Noooo actually it’s not. It is not a subsidy when the government deigns not to confiscate ALL of your profits or any portion, it’s a subsidy when the government writes you a check from other tax dollars.
I’m sorry, you know I see the logic step I didn’t connect in this article. Suppose your goal is to use energy for the SOLE purpose of producing new sources of energy at the lowest cost possible. To achieve the lowest cost initially you have to determine what source of initial energy you can buy cheapest to produce a new energy source… in the case of green energy the choice is ALWAYS fossil fuels. Now you can choose to produce a NEW coal plant OR a wind farm with this energy… absent other artificial goals, you would use that energy to make ANOTHER coal plant.. why? because the windfarm you create MAY produce energy but at a cost GREATER than another coal plant. Therefore coal plants and fossil fuel based power sources ARE economically self propagating. Independent investors in free market economies will fund their development. In order to EVER choose to make a wind farm INSTEAD of another coal plant you have to add new criteria to your decision to rationalize it. “Less Pollution”, “Renewable”, “strategic”, “political”, “special geographical conditions” etc. Without adding these other arbitrary attributes you would almost NEVER create a windfarm. Therefore if your goal is to produce power, using inexpensive sources of power to create MORE expensive sources of power is a net waste of energy because the energy you consumed (fossil fuels) to make a wind farm would have produced MORE energy than the windfarm for the same money invested in building another coal plant… ergo, the Windfarm is a NET energy consumer. In order to believe that the windfarm is a net source of energy you have to assign an arbitrary value to some other attribute other than cost efficiency of generating power. In your argument you are assigning a “magic” monetary value to “not-polluting” in order to rationalize that the wind farm is net energy producing.
IF, however you chose to use wind energy to produce more wind farms the result would be exponential COST in the energy you were creating this way. The second wind farm would COST more than the first because the first one was made with fossil fuels but the second one used the same amount of energy but at greater cost to produce, that cost amplification would carry forward to the third wind farm you tried to build with power generated from the second. Each wind farm would have an accelerating accumulation of expense to recover in order to be competitive with a coal plant… therefore wind farms DON’T chain-react economically… and therefore you don’t need a PhD to understand why windfarms don’t chain-react economically… reason does the job for you much more cheaply. It also tells you everything you need to understand about “studies” that claim otherwise. You don’t need a “study” to justify something that can be understood with simple arithmetic unless you’re trying to sell something using authority figures that isn’t rational.
When you discuss wind/solar vs coal, you conflate actual cost with opportunity cost. You then use this to assert that wind/solar is a net consumer of energy – it is not (see Jez’s comment).
You suggest “we” make a distinction between (all natural!) “manure” and “pollution”. This is not true. Agriculture is well understood to be a source of undesirable CO2 (and, more importantly, methane), just as much as any other industry.
You incorrectly assert that a tax break is not equivalent to a subsidy. It is. This is simple maths: A tax is basically a negative subsidy. A subsidy is basically a negative tax. They exist on the same scale.
You suggest that terms like “consume” and “waste” cannot be applied to energy. Then proceed to use them throughout your essay.
In your final paragraph, you fail to address the obvious: The atmosphere is a public resource. It is within reason to charge for its “use” (just as one might pay for the real-estate to set up a wind farm). Given that it is a public resource, then taxation is an appropriate mechanism with which to collect that payment.
Your overarching point seems to be some sort of statement of equivalence between energy transfer and economic value/utility (and pollution? or lack thereof??). Potentially an interesting point. But it’s so muddied by wild assertions, leaps of logic, factual inaccuracies and logical fallacies as to be incomprehensible.
Actually Andy the article is specifically dedicated to explaining the opportunity cost associated with deliberately producing less efficient sources of energy. I make it explicitly clear that IF your only goal is to produce energy efficiently it IS a net energy cost because you spent energy producing LESS than you would have by other means at the same cost. That would be an energy production deficit. As you clearly recognize, the argument is more ambiguous when you add other priorities such as assigning a cost to pollution. This argument isn’t simply debate semantics because as I also pointed out it has the REAL WORLD impact of not being economically sustainable because the result of this “nuance” to understanding energy economics is accelerating costs associated with producing energy from “green” sources. The moment you try to use the energy provided by these sources to create more energy sources, the “opportunity cost” expense becomes an ACTUAL expense that makes them even less cost efficient to build.
“This is not true. Agriculture is well understood to be a source of undesirable CO2 (and, more importantly, methane), just as much as any other industry.”
This is most certainly not “well understood” just widely promoted actually as you illustrate, just the opposite is true. Mother Earth can’t tell the difference between the C02 and methane produced by agriculture versus any of the myriad also entirely natural organic sources that have been pouring it into the atmosphere for billions of years.
“You suggest that terms like “consume” and “waste” cannot be applied to energy. Then proceed to use them throughout your essay”
That’s correct, then I explain that you can only talk about the efficiency with which it is captured, stored, delivered and disposed of for use by us, which can be discussed in terms of waste.
“You incorrectly assert that a tax break is not equivalent to a subsidy. It is. This is simple maths: A tax is basically a negative subsidy. A subsidy is basically a negative tax. They exist on the same scale”
No, I am in fact COMPLETELY CORRECT on this one. Listen and learn. The money we earn doesn’t belong to the government, it belongs to us as compensation for the WORK we did to earn it. When the government CONFISCATES any portion of the products of our labor, it is never a subsidy. A “Subsidy” is when the government confiscates somebody else’s money and gives it to you. To be a subsidy the revenue must come from another source other than your own productivity. Subsidy is not a math term, it is a term that is clearly defined in the dictionary to mean the government giving somebody or some industry money they DID NOT EARN from the market. When you go to the supermarket and buy a loaf of bread and the store gives you change we don’t call that a “subsidy”. If the store has a sale on bread and gives you MORE change, it’s still not a subsidy. If the store sells you bread at a financial loss, then the store is “subsidizing” bread sales because some portion of the cost of the bread did NOT come from the buyer. In the same sense there is NO amount of “reduced” taxation that ever becomes a “positive” subsidy using your terms.
This would be an example of an actual subsidy:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/specialreports/solyndra-scandal
“In your final paragraph, you fail to address the obvious: The atmosphere is a public resource. It is within reason to charge for its “use” (just as one might pay for the real-estate to set up a wind farm). Given that it is a public resource, then taxation is an appropriate mechanism with which to collect that payment”
It’s not an article about pollution, it’s an article about common misunderstandings about the economics of energy production. But you raise a good question. When something is a “public resource” it does not mean that the American government owns it or needs to tax it for some reason, that term generally means the resource is FREE for everyone’s use. Nor does it make taxing it’s use a good idea… who do you imagine you are collecting payment FROM for taxing it… you are the one consuming the energy and polluting the air… that tax comes from YOUR pocket. It’s also taxed at dozens of levels already, what you seem to want is to pay more taxes on it for some reason? …and do you think the government doesn’t consume energy or pollute when they spend tax dollars or that you consumed energy and polluted earning them? That’s a very circular belief people have that makes no sense. If you are concerned about pollution you would want LESS taxation of energy consumption because that would reduce the amount of energy consumed for taxes instead of productive economic output. What’s amazing is that we would tax energy production at all if we want it to be efficient and go un-wasted.
What I don’t understand with folks who believe all this stuff is WHO are you upset with and WHO do you think the government should be punishing? YOU are the polluter and energy consumer… why are you angry that the energy YOU want to consume is available to you cheaply? Why is it important to you to believe that the sky is falling because of cow flatulence? The Earth is fine, it was fine before we got here, it will be a green mossy ball of algae long after we’re gone, relax, enjoy life, you’re not hurting anything. It’s good news, nothing here to be angry about, reality in this case is a happy place to live, you don’t need to waste energy being angry about made up stuff anymore.
It seems to me that your argument basically boils down to:
The Government takes some % of your earnings in tax.
Some % of that tax is spent on things that you don’t want – presumably in both outright unwanted services, or simply unwanted inefficiency.
(You seem to imply that that percentage is 100% “don’t want” waste. Although this seems ridiculous – surely the government is providing at least some services that you would otherwise pay for yourself?)
And you state that this unwanted spending – this government waste – is (directly?) equivalent to energy waste. And this is in turn responsible for wasting non-renewable resources and for pollution.
You further state that regulation is equivalent to taxation – in that it’s an additional cost (perhaps an opportunity cost?) on businesses, enforced by the government. And similarly wastes energy.
Am I understanding you correctly?
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Say that the government ran at 100% efficiency (that is, 0% waste – not spending your personal tax dollars on anything you would not personally spend them on yourself), do you think that some of the things I mentioned would then be correct? (That tax = -subsidy and that taxing pollution is a good way to pay for the use of a shared asset). My maths says yes.
Perhaps this is the source of disagreement. People who take differing positions to you are either not accounting for the inefficiency of government, or are simply accepting that inefficiency as an inherent cost (the cost of having a government).
The problem with measuring the inefficiency of government is that a government is a monopoly that permits no competing markets for its services thereby making it impossible to measure its efficiency. We can never accurately determine how much government wastes. An honest economist would say that the best role for government is to protect a competitive free market. Any activity a government engages in, outside this role is destructive to free market competition and therefore wealth accumulation by the population. Freedom is the only “essential” service a good government should provide. From this perspective 100% of any activity the government engages in outside this role is WASTE because the cost of 100% of those activities comes at the direct expense of capital engaged in the economy. The trouble with these conversations is that they are usually very abstract and intangible, allow me to share my specific circumstances that led to this view.
In the late 1990’s having been completely financially wiped out by a divorce and having no high school diploma let alone a college education, Silicon Valley investors gave me millions of dollars to start a company. That money came mostly from hedge funds of millions of retired people and some from other wealthy individuals hoping to get even richer. I struggled for 12 years to finally build a very successful company but they journey was very long and painful. Without the support of wealthy investors my company wouldn’t have made it. I in turn hired hundreds of young talented kids and gave them enough equity to also make them millionaires if the company one day became a huge success. The role the government played in my companies eventual success was crippling. Each year we were not profitable and were burning millions in investor capital we would get a huge tax bill simply for existing. I would have to decide which people with homes families and children to fire in order to pay that tax bill. When we inevitably had to make hard decisions to lay people off, somebody would inevitable complain to the government that their had been something unfair or discriminatory about their termination, the government would help them mount extremely costly legal action and I would have to FIRE more employees with family’s to pay for those costs. There was a 1:1 ACTUAL correlation between toxic government interference and taxation of my business and REAL people losing their jobs and livelihoods and I had to be the “EVIL CEO” pulling the trigger. It’s not an experience I would wish on anybody. I was fortunate and survived the .dotcom crash but I witnessed many other small startups getting destroyed some by direct pointless government interference. One company of 28 employees got destroyed by the Washington State AG’s office over credit card billing policy. (That was in the era when most online services were trying to sell people subscriptions, big companies like Microsoft and AOL would get away with it, as would shady offshore operations, but small local companies would get destroyed)
So yes, the government confiscating investor capital and wasting it on bureaucracy is actually worse than inefficient, the money isn’t just wasted incompetently, it’s often ACTIVELY deployed to kill jobs and businesses which is even sicker. When I think of all the jobs that the company would have created sooner and the amount of capital the company could have returned to its investors to invest again the economic cost to everyone was staggering. I was extremely fortunate to live in a country where the free market has created an environment where wealthy people will give ANYBODY with the right stuff, millions in capital to start their own company, it makes me ill to see such a wondrous phenomena crippled by government.
Okay, let’s address your math Andy. I accept your argument that a subsidy is a negative tax… now let’s do YOUR math. EXXON mobile would be taxed at 50% BUT the government gives them a lower tax rate because evil EXXON lobbyists successfully influenced the government thus causing them to only pay a 25% tax rate. Thus their tax “subsidy” was -50% but now it’s -25%… it still hasn’t become a positive “subsidy” using your math. In order to become a “positive” subsidy, the government would have to let EXXON keep 100% of their revenue and give them another 10% from our pockets yielding a +10% subsidy instead of a negative 25% subsidy. Did I do YOUR math incorrectly?
Come on Andy think, I can tell you are close to getting this. Suppose 100% of the money the government confiscates in taxes is well spent… does ANY of that money get spent on anything that does not also consume the same sources of energy? Do you think the tens of thousands of IRS agents and postal workers the government employs are not driving cars and using air-conditioners? Taxing energy clearly doesn’t reduce its net consumption if the government just turns around and SPENDS it again. It doesn’t reduce it’s net pollution if the government just spends those taxes again… it just makes energy MORE EXPENSIVE to produce… so again I have to ask, who are you punishing with an energy tax and who is it supposed to benefit? It just punishes all of us and gives the government more money to waste… how is that a good idea? This is not a political position, it’s math as you say. Making energy artificially more costly doesn’t reduce consumption or pollution if the cost is converted into government spending via taxation. If the air is a “shared resource” then WE should be the beneficiaries of this tax… but it just comes out of our own pockets and never returns to them… how does that make any sense to you? Who do you think you are taxing?
So, yes, you did get “my” maths right. Of course when you add up all the taxes and subsidies, in most cases they will total to a net tax. To get a net subsidy, you’d probably need to be a low-income welfare recipient. Or one of these guys: http://www.ctj.org/pdf/notax2012.pdf
The thing is, though, I was not suggesting an “energy tax”. I was suggesting a “carbon tax” to account for the cost of polluting the atmosphere. This will make coal power slightly more expensive, and wind/solar relatively less expensive. Which could cause wind/solar to be cheaper in some circumstances.
If we ignore all other costs and all intermediaries: people using coal power will effectively be paying a small fee to people who are not. In practice this is realised in a difference in the overall amount of tax paid.
What you seem to be saying is that the extra tax money disappears into a black hole. But let me give you a counter-example: When Australia introduced a carbon tax, other taxes were reduced to balance it out.
This simplification relies on two “perfects”: That the government is perfectly efficient. And that the price of putting carbon into the atmosphere is set correctly.
(That price would have to account for the “yuck” factor, health effects, and the risk that climate change could cause my house to be washed/burnt/blown away – think: insurance.)
It seems to me that you’re arguing against these two “perfects”: Firstly that the government is – not just tolerably inefficient – but woefully inefficient.
And secondly, that any tax put on carbon (or an equivalent subsidy given to green energy) does not represent an actual cost, but is massively over-inflated to try and manipulate the market.
The thing that I struggle with, I think, is that you are suggesting that the government is almost 0% efficient, and that the price of polluting is almost 100% made-up. And, with these figures, I think you might be right – trying to tax an energy source will not decrease (and may increase) its usage. I’d be interested to see a flow-chart or model or something that demonstrates this clearly.
But I would also be interested to know if your conclusion still holds if you choose more reasonable inputs. What if the government is really 75% efficient? 50%? 25%? 110%? (Does getting an increase require a negative efficiency?) What if the cost of putting carbon into the air is set at 200% of its true value? 1000%? 50%?
Theoretically it’s pretty hard to tax ANYTHING without it being an energy tax especially CO2 emissions since of course, the largest producers of evil-alien-plant-killing CO2 gas all happen to be energy sources.
You do understand that the biggest producers of CO2 gas will technically be green-energy consumers right? They are the ones who will be driving coal-powered electric cars, requiring the mining of vast tracts of additional land for the rare-Earth elements necessary to make their special car batteries, requiring the clear cutting of MORE land surface to grow their “organic” food less efficiently in the absence of modern fertilizers and pesticides, raising the cost of ALL energy to everyone including themselves by demanding that efficient energy sources be re-directed to production of more expensive energy sources for their use AND demanding that they be taxed themselves for using them AND demanding that the government take those tax dollars and SPEND them on more CO2 producing economic activity… How does any of that sound like a brilliant idea to you?
Tax money does worse than disappear into a black hole, it is invested in producing more pollution (in your terms) and creates drag on the efficient allocation of economic resources. It is the role of government to impose inefficiency on a free market in order to prevent too much “freedom” resulting in violent competition for resources. Like everyone else, I appreciate the governments role in protecting us from invaders and from each other and regard the cost of government doing this as a necessary market inefficiency to prevent people from competing with one another by violence, intimidation and/or theft. Yes, government is always a TAX on a free market, I concede that a certain amount of government results in a peaceful free market instead of a violent one.
The models that describe the economics of energy like climate models are self-referential differential equations, most people presented with such models, would simply not understand them because their ramifications are so complex and they are generally so incomputable that they have no predictive power in the real-world. Look at how much silliness people engage in over a simple IPCC graph showing what appears to be a steep growth in global temperature over 50 years. If people can be convinced the sky is falling by being shown a graph that has been selectively scaled to look dramatic, what hope is there of explaining something actually complex to them? Would it make any difference if you told most people that if you actually graphed the Earth’s temperature variations to scale it would look like a flat line for the duration of human history because .06 degrees is a rounding error?
Of course I believe in ACTUAL pollution, I don’t want garbage in my street, I don’t want industrial toxins in my water, I don’t want a miasma of hydrogen sulfides in my air. CO2 a pollution? You’ve all lost your damn minds if you can be sold on that. Here’s a fun science question: What highly toxic green-house gas ( can kill a human within minutes if inhaled ) represents 4% of our atmosphere, that is 10,000X more concentrated than CO2, has 4X the heat retaining green-house properties of CO2 and is spewed into the sky by human activity at a much higher rate than CO2 is released? Hint, it’s also a chemical byproduct of burning fossil fuels? Need another hint? It’s chemical name is di-hydrogen oxide….
http://www.thinkglobalgreen.org/WATERVAPOR.html
Shall we tax that too? Guess what, CO2 even precipitates out of the atmosphere by being consumed by bacteria and other life forms… what do you think coal is made of? Think of it as carbon snow and maybe it won’t sound so dangerous.
The actual energy produced by a modern turbine is already more than 20 times that used to build it. So 1 turbine can create 20, in just energy terms.
Your assumption that the energy from wind turbines is more expensive than that from oil and coal is already dubious, and in 10 years time, it will be the cheapest form of energy. The efficiency of wind turbines is increasing year on year, as its a very new technology, and development is fast. Without any subsidy, on shore wind power is already on a par with everything except gas. Offshore is extremely new (in large scale) so there is a lot of up front investment, and it will become much cheaper over the next 20 years).
The reason for subsidising wind and solar is for exactly the same reason that oil and coal have been subsidised, to develop the technology (your government repeatedly tries to repeal laws that enshrine these subsidies, and they call them subsidies, as do Bloomberg, the IEA, and just about everyone, which is good enough for me). Subsidies to nuclear power have been particularly generous, as it include vast amounts of R&D that is paid for out of taxes.
You can not consider such investment subsidy as a part of the operating cost, any more than is done with fossil fuels. The subsidy is to jump start the increase in wind power capacity, by making it easier to get toe up front capital to build them at a rapid rate. Again, the same has been done with oil and gas production, to get it going quickly.
You talk about how the earth does not care where CO2 and methane come from, and you refer to the fact that these have been spewing into the atmosphere for billions of years. But you fail to do the sums that show the problem.
its like a bath, being filled by a tap and drained through a plug. If there are 100 litres an hour going into the bath, and 100 litres an hour going out, its all in balance. As soon as its 101 litres an hour going in, and 100 litres an hour going out, it starts to fill up and overflow. The evidence that this is happening with CO2 is clearly there, as we have been measuring the CO2 concentration for a long time, and before that, we know fairly accurately what it has been for the last million years or so. It is by far at its highest point right now. So its irrelevant that there are 100 litres going in and 100 litres going out – the important thing is that its 1 litre out of balance. Imagine you drank 1 teaspoon of water more each day than you lost in pee, pooh, sweat and breathing – you would very soon be in a bad way…
Your argument for not taxing energy production because it will reduce efficient use of energy – the inverse is true. The more expensive a resource, for no matter what reason, the more people try to reduce their use of it.
The earth will be fine, but the human population is a different question. Yes, we could all go jump off the nearest cliff, and that would reduce energy consumption. But the reality is the human race is here, in all its billions, and much as I wish it was a smaller population, the reality is otherwise. Of course, the earth will eventually fix this, by killing us all, one way or another.
But in the much more likely short term (1000s of years) scenarios, we will be here, the earth will be here, and we will need to be able to survive on the surface of the earth, dependent on the atmosphere and usability of the surface. We have a strong dependence on the sea level being what it is today, with minimal variation. Apart from the very unscientific climate sceptics (pick almost any argument they make, and even high school science is enough to refute it – partly because most of them are simple mis-statement of facts), the rest of the scientific world recognises that climate change is real and happening fast. Its not OK for us to ignore the impact we have on the habitability of the surface of the earth for our children and their children.
Actually my assertion is not dubious at all, if wind turbines were a cost effective source of energy they would proliferate without government subsidy’s. Do they? NO? I must be correct and any studies that you have saying otherwise must be WRONG because if they were RIGHT it wouldn’t be necessary to make the claim the market would be rushing to crank out wind farms to profit from the collapse of the fossil fuel industry. So the discussion actually starts from the footing that my claim is empirically TRUE and then explores WHY this is probably the case despite the misperception that these fossil fuel alternatives are cost or energy efficient.
Now you are just looping again Jez. There’s no point in responding to you that a third time that fossil fuel production is NOT subsidized. You can’t win the argument by repeating a claim that has been refuted. I know that the term subsidy is deliberately distorted for political purposes, I’m NOT participating. Yes governments screw up rational market behaviors in lots of ways that make it impossible to discuss, which is why the empirical observation that green energy sources don’t self proliferate is SO useful. I understand that their are strategic, political and other rationales for building inefficient energy sources… that’s not the point of the article.
Uh.. actually the Earth’s CO2 levels are at historic lows and have been climbing rapidly for 12,000 years since the beginning of the last inter-glacial period. We’ve experienced EXACTLY this level and rate of global warming roughly every 80,000 years when the ice sheets that ordinarily bury most of this planet briefly withdraw for an 12,000 – 20,000 year interglacial period. We are enjoying the END of one now. Atmospheric CO2 levels during the age of dinosaurs were 7x-12x higher than today… probably due to human activity… and the temperature was about the same as it is today. The geologic evidence only shows that the Earth’s atmospheric CO2 levels are generally much higher during warm periods due to increased exposure of biologically active surface area (ocean and land not covered by ice) Since we are nearing the end of a brief inter-glacial period and your native Britain will shortly be consumed by a 2 mile deep layer of ice, you had better pray that I’m wrong and that man-made pollution will actually cause “global warming” and save us all from being buried again. Contrary to nutty modern view that humans are some new extraterrestrial invader WE are also natural, part of the environment and part of the “biologically” active surface area that got exposed during this interglacial period.
Actually the rest of the scientific world NOW recognizes that there is no “Global Warming” taking place which is why you just called it “Climate change”. The new term was quickly substituted when it became clear that no “warming” has been occurring. Even the latest IPCC report which started this foolishness admits that the planet has not warmed in over a decade so I’m afraid the consensus is now on the side of us crazy “Global Warming” deniers. We can’t argue that the climate “changes” now can we?
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/politics/chi-nsc-the-true-global-warming-crisis-is-the-fibs-20131015,0,791749.story
Not sure I follow. Are you suggesting that if x is the amount of energy it takes to extract the resources needed to build a windmill; build it; transport it; install it; and maintain it over its lifetime, and y is the amount of energy that windmill will produce over its lifetime, that x > y?
I am suggesting that if your only goal is to create energy and x is the COST of the energy it takes to extract the resources needed to build a windmill; build it; transport it; install it; and maintain it over its lifetime, and y is the COST of the energy that windmill will produce over its lifetime, that x > y!
Do you see the difference? The COST includes the difference in value between the cheaper source of energy that was used to build the windmill and the more expensive energy produced… in this context every watt of power produced from a more costly energy source accumulates negative savings vs having spent the same energy to produce a less costly source of energy. I’m attempting to illustrate why it is irrelevant to the economics of “green energy” to be net energy producers if they do so at a greater cost than their alternatives. Try this thought exercise.
You are given two sources of “magic”, source A will produce 2 units of “Mana” per mana spent on it and source B will produce 1 units of “Mana” for every mana spent on it. Building a mana factory for source A costs 400 mana, building a mana factory for source B costs 100 mana… Given an initial budget of 500 mana what to you build to maximize your mana production? *Note that you need to reserve some mana to convert with your mana factories.
Would you EVER build a source B factory for any efficiency value IF the source A was always guaranteed to be more efficient?
Obviously I tweaked the parameters to make it an exercise you can do in your head but if you try other parameters you get the exponential COST growth curve I explained earlier. Also note that money drops out of the discussion because energy is its own currency for buying production of itself.
The point is that there is never a point when “green energy” sources become self-sustaining. It’s a fallacy. They must ACTUALLY be cheaper than fossil fuels to ever stand on the their own as a source of energy.
Historically, it has been shown to be better to steal than build. The net input of military energy pays off in the long run as long as you are prepared to accept the impoverishment of the colonized.
Yeah, look what we did to the Japanese… er… the Germans… er… well okay, I’ve got one.. Iraq! no wait their GDP grew 10.2% last year, you’d think that this would be an easier argument to lose? The trouble is we don’t steal enough after we colonize… we should make more of a point of doing that going forward… 🙂
Germans were a threat and were defanged. But no one wanted a repeat of Treaty of Versailles. The Japanese had no resources. By the way, I wonder who won all the oil deals in Iraq?
For what we spent over there? It had better have been us! You know 95% of the US oil supply comes from Mexico and Canada… mostly collected off our own coasts.
By the way, this is no criticism of the US. In many cases, the US has been a generous benefactor. Furthermore, we need to assume all actors are rational, and the US is not any different from superpowers of the past.
There were parallels in Malaya, when the British returned. They reestablished schools, civil service and their legal system, supported fights against communist insurgency. It led to years of continued growth. Of course, Malaya contributed to 1/3 of the postwar British GDP.
I was just teasing you Chui, usually wars devastate the losers… America has managed an interesting and creepy mental feat, WE have GOOD wars that benefit the people we invade supported by some strong examples of it being true. This has resulted in a strange sort of sanitization of warfare in which we don’t believe that the only good rational for engaging in war is self-preservation. We think we have the luxury of engaging in wars for more abstract reasons than survival and can point to how humane we are as victors to justify it… and it wastes oil which as you know REALLY drives me nuts.
It’s a bad idea to criticize someone else’s country. I apologize.
The Romans had a similar system. Post invasion, it assembles a government that is friendly and aligned to Rome. The gains that Rome makes are usually in post-war trade growth for all.
God I wished Microsoft gets it act together again. It was a great time for all.
I’m not offended Chui, it’s good discussion. At least the Roman slaves got fed right! 🙂
I like how you point out that “certainly some people are just ignorant”, and that a big part of our problems are that a ” lack of inquisitiveness and skepticism” by the masses is what’s really costing us. Have you played the new Civilization 5 out the endgame? When your civilization starts to cause global warming, you can fix it by building solar plants that, get this, reduce global warming by–wait, can you guess?
—> Civilization 5 solar plants will “reduce global warming by absorbing solar heat”.
What hope do we have when people are letting themselves being suckered into this kind of feel-good physics? Perhaps the only hope we really have is to somehow make average people a little less average. Better education? Eugenics?
No! You’re killing me Dennis, I used to love civilization, I couldn’t stand to play it now! You’ve ruined it for me!
Hey Eugenics was a popular movement in the US until Hitler ruined it for everybody. Personally I choose to believe that there is something rare and special about the evolution of humanity and that evolving life forms that consume their host worlds to leave for the stars IS the natural way that life re-produces in the Universe. It may actually take the ENTIRE resources of a planet to travel between stars. An overpopulation of humans may just be the Earth’s way of building up sperm count for reproduction. 🙂
“The only ACTUAL way to REDUCE energy consumption and pollution is to have fewer people and to make them all poorer.”
The US and Canada are some of the most energy consuming nations on Earth. No other major industrialized country comes close. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_energy_consumption_per_capita.
But that’s probably because the people in those other countries are so poor that they just can’t afford to use more energy. No doubt the Dutch would love nothing more than to throw their lowly bicycles into the canal and drive a car instead, if only they could afford it. And the Japanese then, I’m sure they’d exchange their subways and trains for brand new SUVs any day. And what about all those other countries where people not only have to use public transportation, but actually WALK to get to places? If God wanted us to walk, he’d have given us four legs, right?
So you are one of those CRAZY people who think that rich people don’t like to breath shitty air and free market forces in those economies will clean up pollution without needing MASSIVE taxes or phony government energy initiatives? You obviously didn’t get the memo that CO2 is a terrible pollutant and we are one of the largest producers of it! We are selfishly COSNUMING ALL of the worlds energy supplies! Nope… killing ourselves is the ONLY solution! 🙂