We discussed hydraulic fracturing or "fracking" at some length in this semester's Environmental Sustainability sections. Students were generally not in favor, or at least highly questioning, especially those from the states of Pennsylvania and New York. I think this is an appropriate approach.
But fracking isn't all bad. It's only partly bad. How bad it is depends on the alternatives. It's better, for instance, than coal.
The technique, which is causing a natural gas boom in the US and increasing jobs in both the energy and manufacturing industries -- cheap energy luring manufacturing jobs back from the east for the first time in a generation -- has probably helped reduce current carbon emissions, but fugitive methane natural gas operations may be partly or wholly cancelling out that benefit.
Geopolitically, fracking is weakening the Russian "mafia state." The price of gas on world markets is still high, but markets are beginning to realize that there is an alternative in the form of US and European gas, and so are adjusting, reducing the power of the Kremlin.
Now there's a proposal to export US gas to Europe.
Again, there are mixed costs and benefits: US gas prices will go up, reducing the growth effects in manufacturing industry. European prices will go down, benefiting European consumers. The Russians will be additionally weakened, disallowing the nasty games they've played in recent winters where they held European countries hostage to gas supplies. Climate emissions from coal in Europe will go down to begin, but may increase again later if growth continues. Fugitive emissions and environmental damage in the US will go up.
The heart of a policy analysis education, and the heart of critical thinking in the liberal arts, is training to frame decisions in circumstances where there isn't one good answer.
Ideally, I'd like to see us move very much more aggressively on renewable energy and energy efficiency. And I think it will be cheaper in the long run to do so. Fossil fuel is a dead-end.
And I want to see Russia and China democratize. I think this is essential to the future of the planet, and without it there's no hope for a long-term climate solution. The Russian and the Chinese kleptocracies will continue to use the dirtiest of fuels for as long as they can, to line their own pockets, unless their own people stop them by getting rid of them or unless the west can gain the upper hand diplomatically and economically and keep it.
In the event that I can't get all I want, I may be able to get some of what I want.
If we control fugitive emissions and local environmental damage, fracking may give the west the political power we need to force a long term settlement over both climate and global democracy.
Of course, a massive immediate investment on renewable energy and energy efficiency would have much the same effect.
I'd prefer this solution over fracking.
But I never get all of what I want.
Thursday, December 6, 2012
More Green Keynesianism
More evidence for the "Green Keynesian" macroeconomic proposition that the fiscal multiplier associated with renewable energy and energy efficiency is greater than that for fossil fuels, while the externalities are much less. New numbers shows the UK's renewable energy and energy efficiency sector is doing very well despite the Coalition Government's best efforts to trammel it.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/damian-carrington-blog/2012/dec/05/osborne-autumn-statement-2012-gas-environment-green-economy
Remember, even green growth cannot continue forever on a finite planet, so eventually we will need an ecological macroeconomics, rather than mere addenda to Keynes, but my contention that this process, which is desirable but which will inevitably weaken the western world economically, militarily, and diplomatically, can only happen after threats to democracy are dealt with hasn't encountered a credible counter-argument yet.
What I notice, though, is that many commentators and eco-pundits muddle their economic prescriptions, calling on the one hand for a very aggressive trammeling of corporate growth and hegemony across the board, while lauding the green economy on the other, despite the fact that corporations are involved. At least, that's what I seem to get out of some of the editorials and books, I've read lately, McKibbon and Speth being the two prime examples.
I guess our corporations are OK. It's the other ones that are bad.
Four legs good, two legs bad.
Actually, probably the clearest example is Monbiot's latest Gruaniad jeremiad.
Mr. Monbiot, who lives in my grandmother's home town of Machynthlleth in west Wales, has always taken a hard but consistent line on capitalism and neo-liberalism. I'm not unsympathetic, and I do think you can have it both ways, much as the Scandinavians have done, especially Danes and Norwegians.
But the revision of property rights and economic rights that would be required for a serious revision of American capitalism is probably not good politics right now and for the foreseeable. We can barely manage health care reform that favors a capitalistic health care industry, let alone a government-run system of national health care. In particular, the education requirements needed before the American electorate began to think ecological economics was good politics would be rather great.
So pragmatically, much of this is the same kind of utopianism we saw in early ecological economics and the green movement from the 1970s on.
There's nothing wrong with having a utopian ideal as a touchstone. It's good to know what you'd like the world to look like if everything fell into place. And there's great value in calling into question our weak-minded thinking regarding the multiple, overlapping, systemic failings of capitalism. All this has value. Monbiot says we have neoliberal dogma, and he's right. I don't believe there's any reason to imagine that a corporate world is a natural state of affairs, any more than there was reason to imagine that absolute monarchy or mercantilism were. We could do better. Perhaps much better.
But I don't think we can do better in time, and that's the point.
We need a climate policy that can be enacted in five years, ten at the most. We're not going to be storming the barricades. The ocean is going to be storming our barricades!
And we need to see much greater growth of human rights and democracy around the world before the west decides to shrink economically and militarily.
So we're probably stuck with green Keynesianism for now. I for one just want to get on and enact as much of it as we can.
It's our BATNA. And it seems to be working.
But too slowly.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/damian-carrington-blog/2012/dec/05/osborne-autumn-statement-2012-gas-environment-green-economy
Remember, even green growth cannot continue forever on a finite planet, so eventually we will need an ecological macroeconomics, rather than mere addenda to Keynes, but my contention that this process, which is desirable but which will inevitably weaken the western world economically, militarily, and diplomatically, can only happen after threats to democracy are dealt with hasn't encountered a credible counter-argument yet.
What I notice, though, is that many commentators and eco-pundits muddle their economic prescriptions, calling on the one hand for a very aggressive trammeling of corporate growth and hegemony across the board, while lauding the green economy on the other, despite the fact that corporations are involved. At least, that's what I seem to get out of some of the editorials and books, I've read lately, McKibbon and Speth being the two prime examples.
I guess our corporations are OK. It's the other ones that are bad.
Four legs good, two legs bad.
Actually, probably the clearest example is Monbiot's latest Gruaniad jeremiad.
Mr. Monbiot, who lives in my grandmother's home town of Machynthlleth in west Wales, has always taken a hard but consistent line on capitalism and neo-liberalism. I'm not unsympathetic, and I do think you can have it both ways, much as the Scandinavians have done, especially Danes and Norwegians.
But the revision of property rights and economic rights that would be required for a serious revision of American capitalism is probably not good politics right now and for the foreseeable. We can barely manage health care reform that favors a capitalistic health care industry, let alone a government-run system of national health care. In particular, the education requirements needed before the American electorate began to think ecological economics was good politics would be rather great.
So pragmatically, much of this is the same kind of utopianism we saw in early ecological economics and the green movement from the 1970s on.
There's nothing wrong with having a utopian ideal as a touchstone. It's good to know what you'd like the world to look like if everything fell into place. And there's great value in calling into question our weak-minded thinking regarding the multiple, overlapping, systemic failings of capitalism. All this has value. Monbiot says we have neoliberal dogma, and he's right. I don't believe there's any reason to imagine that a corporate world is a natural state of affairs, any more than there was reason to imagine that absolute monarchy or mercantilism were. We could do better. Perhaps much better.
But I don't think we can do better in time, and that's the point.
We need a climate policy that can be enacted in five years, ten at the most. We're not going to be storming the barricades. The ocean is going to be storming our barricades!
And we need to see much greater growth of human rights and democracy around the world before the west decides to shrink economically and militarily.
So we're probably stuck with green Keynesianism for now. I for one just want to get on and enact as much of it as we can.
It's our BATNA. And it seems to be working.
But too slowly.
Wednesday, December 5, 2012
Tuesday, December 4, 2012
Nick Stern on developing countres' responsibilities
According to my morning Guardian, my favorite and most formidable policy wonk, Lord Stern, has apparently released a new report on why basic math precludes developing countries, particularly India and China, from continuing to evade responsibility for climate emissions reductions.
(Backgrounder: The Stern Review of 2006 continues to be the keystone text for those interested in a more or less conventional economic approach to climate change policy -- something that doesn't require barricade-storming or other unlikely revolutionary activity on the part of the world's people, especially middle-class people that have the vote. He left the UK Government after the election a couple years ago, and became a professor at the London School of Economics and head of a major UK climate change think-tank, the Grantham Institute.)
Of course, when I wanted to read this report over my morning coffee, the miserable Grauniad couldn't provide me with a link.
Is it just me, or are their standards slipping in their attempt to become the world's leading liberal intellectual newspaper -- lots of typos lately.
But then neither could the Grantham Institute. I'll try to find it later today.
(Backgrounder: The Stern Review of 2006 continues to be the keystone text for those interested in a more or less conventional economic approach to climate change policy -- something that doesn't require barricade-storming or other unlikely revolutionary activity on the part of the world's people, especially middle-class people that have the vote. He left the UK Government after the election a couple years ago, and became a professor at the London School of Economics and head of a major UK climate change think-tank, the Grantham Institute.)
Of course, when I wanted to read this report over my morning coffee, the miserable Grauniad couldn't provide me with a link.
Is it just me, or are their standards slipping in their attempt to become the world's leading liberal intellectual newspaper -- lots of typos lately.
But then neither could the Grantham Institute. I'll try to find it later today.
Monday, December 3, 2012
Living the life on the high ice ...
Tim Godaire learns a useful science skill: High angle rescue. (The snow, ice and crevasse version of high angle rescue is a required skill for glaciological fieldwork.)
One advantage of becoming a climate scientist in today's changing world is that you're likely to travel and camp out. The greatest changes are taking place in the high latitude areas of the northern and southern hemispheres, so that is where many young scientists are heading.
I was lucky enough to do quite a bit of this kind of thing when I was a young serviceman, mostly because there was an interchange between the RAF Mountain Rescue system and science and science training organizations. The science organizations used MR "troops" for rescue and logistical services on the ice, and as leaders for expeditionary training.
Some of us volunteered for the British Antarctic Survey, and could be seconded to that organization for a year or more. For my part, I worked with science training organizations such as the annual NORPED expedition to Norway's ice caps, or the British Exploring Society, essentially a science training and youth expeditionary arm of the UK's Royal Geographical Society. I spent time on ice caps in Norway and Iceland and thoroughly enjoyed the experience.
I'm thinking about this now because of our recent graduates, Tim Godaire, now at UMaine's Climate Change Institute, arrived for a visit with the news that he would soon be heading to Alaska for some training work, then possibly to Greenland the following year.
I was over the moon to hear that he would make it to the high latitude country so quickly.
Here's a study in pictures of the BAS's current work at Lake Ellsworth in Antarctica, which has been in the news lately because of the discovery of specialized bacteria in the waters of the frozen lake.
Sunday, December 2, 2012
Siting issues
More evidence to support my contention that there are perfectly respectable local environmental concerns regarding the siting of just about any industrial energy plant, even renewable ones.
The first is a nuanced and intelligent summary of the state of play in the UK wind power industry from today's Guardian, the immediate occasion for which stems from a nice community-based turbine project of the sort I've been advocating for years:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/nov/30/windfarms-bitter-fight-dividing-uk
The second is the planning battle in Waldo County's own Searsport, which we've been following for many years since a major LNG terminal was first proposed, then rejected. The latest development is a propane storage tank of significant scale, not quite the level of the formerly proposed LNG system, but a major imposition nevertheless. The controversy continues, exacerbated by some bad decisions. On Facebook recently we saw evidence of some questionable behavior by local Searsport police at the public hearing -- they removed an elderly man who did not seem to be doing anything wrong. I would hope the city government investigates carefully, to make sure they don't have a policing problem.
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Searsport-LPG-Tank-Protest/177114419044869
http://bangordailynews.com/2012/06/21/news/midcoast/searsport-balloon-test-quells-fears-of-some-angers-others/
Since my computer died and so we haven't had chance to go into much of this material in class, for those of you who didn't know, LNG or liquid natural gas is different from LPG or liquid petroleum gas, the most common commercial variant of which in the US is propane. Natural gas is found by drilling for gas and increasingly from fracking, or hydraulic fracturing technique, and may then be liquified for shipping, although most natural gas used in the US is delivered in gaseous form via pipeline. Propane is a petroleum distillate and comes from "cracking" or fractional distillation of crude oil and natural gas, not often directly from fracking. It is nearly always liquified for convenient shipping. There is quite a bit of confusion of these issues in the public mind, since "cracking" and "fractional distillation" and "hydraulic fracking" and even LPG and LNG are all easily confused terms. The differences do need to be carefully teased out for policy purposes. You can't regulate both fuels using identical techniques, short of an outright ban, because they are such different materials. An outright ban would require serious reworking of our political system to achieve, requiring us to question basic assumptions about capitalism and economic and property rights, assumptions I'd like to see questioned, but that are very unlikely to be so questioned politically in the US for years or even decades to come. Additionally, propane is an important fuel in rural areas, while gas is more important in the cities, so there are geographical complexities.
Neither one is good for the planet's climate, except in the cases that they are used a) to replace coal, or b) to back up intermittent supplies of wind or solar power, in which case they do make a contribution, although this too has to be considered carefully. US climate emissions are down in recent years primarily because of the cheap supply of natural gas, some from fracking wells, and this drop can no longer be ascribed primarily to the recession, which is very good news. But there are concerns over the environmental impact of the gas wells, and methane leakage from natural gas production and distribution systems may be a significant contribution to climate altering tropospheric methane, so we may not be doing any good, or at least as much good as we think we are.
I've been in the business of studying climate and energy for a long time and I think I know the science and economics well enough to say there are no easy answers here. The safety issues and climate benefits of fracking wells are both highly questionable. I'd love to be able to do without. I'd also like to be able to do without propane.
But we're going to need very much more aggressive energy efficiency and renewable energy development to do so, and so we''ll need to site more wind turbines, build more transmissions lines, put up more solar panels, switch out more inefficient appliances, and insulate more homes.
None of which, especially the wind turbines and transmission lines, is likely to be particularly popular either. I've been to a lot of planning board meetings and public hearings now for wind power development in Maine, and it isn't much fun to attend these things, even as the scientist with the white hat. You get yelled at fairly easily. Rationality does not prevail. There's a lot of complexity involved in wind turbine siting too.
The upshot is, nobody wants any kind of energy facility in their backyard.
In other words, NIMBY's are ubiquitous, and so we need a sensible system of national and state-level prioritization and planning for energy development.
It needs to start with very much more aggressive measures in energy efficiency and renewable energy development. That isn't an easy answer, but it's at least a good answer, based on the science and economics.
Which is why, I suppose, when we first began to think about all these problems many years ago, we put renewable energy, energy efficiency and climate change education in the curriculum for every Unity College student, regardless of major, and we built a Sustainable Energy Management program that has been fairly successful at training students in these issues at the level of professionality and complexity required.
The first is a nuanced and intelligent summary of the state of play in the UK wind power industry from today's Guardian, the immediate occasion for which stems from a nice community-based turbine project of the sort I've been advocating for years:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/nov/30/windfarms-bitter-fight-dividing-uk
The second is the planning battle in Waldo County's own Searsport, which we've been following for many years since a major LNG terminal was first proposed, then rejected. The latest development is a propane storage tank of significant scale, not quite the level of the formerly proposed LNG system, but a major imposition nevertheless. The controversy continues, exacerbated by some bad decisions. On Facebook recently we saw evidence of some questionable behavior by local Searsport police at the public hearing -- they removed an elderly man who did not seem to be doing anything wrong. I would hope the city government investigates carefully, to make sure they don't have a policing problem.
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Searsport-LPG-Tank-Protest/177114419044869
http://bangordailynews.com/2012/06/21/news/midcoast/searsport-balloon-test-quells-fears-of-some-angers-others/
Since my computer died and so we haven't had chance to go into much of this material in class, for those of you who didn't know, LNG or liquid natural gas is different from LPG or liquid petroleum gas, the most common commercial variant of which in the US is propane. Natural gas is found by drilling for gas and increasingly from fracking, or hydraulic fracturing technique, and may then be liquified for shipping, although most natural gas used in the US is delivered in gaseous form via pipeline. Propane is a petroleum distillate and comes from "cracking" or fractional distillation of crude oil and natural gas, not often directly from fracking. It is nearly always liquified for convenient shipping. There is quite a bit of confusion of these issues in the public mind, since "cracking" and "fractional distillation" and "hydraulic fracking" and even LPG and LNG are all easily confused terms. The differences do need to be carefully teased out for policy purposes. You can't regulate both fuels using identical techniques, short of an outright ban, because they are such different materials. An outright ban would require serious reworking of our political system to achieve, requiring us to question basic assumptions about capitalism and economic and property rights, assumptions I'd like to see questioned, but that are very unlikely to be so questioned politically in the US for years or even decades to come. Additionally, propane is an important fuel in rural areas, while gas is more important in the cities, so there are geographical complexities.
Neither one is good for the planet's climate, except in the cases that they are used a) to replace coal, or b) to back up intermittent supplies of wind or solar power, in which case they do make a contribution, although this too has to be considered carefully. US climate emissions are down in recent years primarily because of the cheap supply of natural gas, some from fracking wells, and this drop can no longer be ascribed primarily to the recession, which is very good news. But there are concerns over the environmental impact of the gas wells, and methane leakage from natural gas production and distribution systems may be a significant contribution to climate altering tropospheric methane, so we may not be doing any good, or at least as much good as we think we are.
I've been in the business of studying climate and energy for a long time and I think I know the science and economics well enough to say there are no easy answers here. The safety issues and climate benefits of fracking wells are both highly questionable. I'd love to be able to do without. I'd also like to be able to do without propane.
But we're going to need very much more aggressive energy efficiency and renewable energy development to do so, and so we''ll need to site more wind turbines, build more transmissions lines, put up more solar panels, switch out more inefficient appliances, and insulate more homes.
None of which, especially the wind turbines and transmission lines, is likely to be particularly popular either. I've been to a lot of planning board meetings and public hearings now for wind power development in Maine, and it isn't much fun to attend these things, even as the scientist with the white hat. You get yelled at fairly easily. Rationality does not prevail. There's a lot of complexity involved in wind turbine siting too.
The upshot is, nobody wants any kind of energy facility in their backyard.
In other words, NIMBY's are ubiquitous, and so we need a sensible system of national and state-level prioritization and planning for energy development.
It needs to start with very much more aggressive measures in energy efficiency and renewable energy development. That isn't an easy answer, but it's at least a good answer, based on the science and economics.
Which is why, I suppose, when we first began to think about all these problems many years ago, we put renewable energy, energy efficiency and climate change education in the curriculum for every Unity College student, regardless of major, and we built a Sustainable Energy Management program that has been fairly successful at training students in these issues at the level of professionality and complexity required.
Saturday, December 1, 2012
Modeling the Dreamers
For no good reason, other than the fact I'm an immigrant myself, the students in Economics and Quantitative Analysis (now studying systems modeling using the Stella ® software package) were assigned to make a model of US population that simulated the effects of the Dream Act.
Then an article on the same appeared on page one of the New York Times, today's main headline.
I must be psychic.
The number of so called "dreamers," immigrants who qualify under the act's provisions, is up to 310,000, according to the article so far. Which is good, at least from our point of view, because an earlier piece we read said there wouldn't be very many of them.
We need numbers that are big enough to make the assignment interesting.
Then an article on the same appeared on page one of the New York Times, today's main headline.
I must be psychic.
The number of so called "dreamers," immigrants who qualify under the act's provisions, is up to 310,000, according to the article so far. Which is good, at least from our point of view, because an earlier piece we read said there wouldn't be very many of them.
We need numbers that are big enough to make the assignment interesting.
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