Future Energy --- Off big Oil

Found this on youtube and was really interested in what Jeremy Rifkin was proposing. It is a one hour talk on Europe's march to a new energy paradigm. I have also hear that China is now moving in the same direction with a 80 B dollar four year investment. Make me wonder why North America is so far behind.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PmITafYEfEE


Enjoy, and let me know what you might think.

Dave

Renewable energy is really our only option; for the long term. The transition will be difficult, but once we get going with a significant portion of our energy coming from renewable sources, we will begin to see some big benefits.

dniemeyer99:

Thanks for bringing then Jeremy Rifkin presentation to our attention.
Very informative and worth the time to listen and watch.

2012, ES, with QC
Leased until Feb. 2015

The question I keep asking is, "how does the world change IF energy is abundant and at near zero cost ?" What will that do politically and socially. Can we than feed the world. Do we then live in a world of abundance and therefore will not need to wage war to control a limited supply of goods.

Maybe, my thinking is screwed up as I do not believe that there is any example of Jeremy Rifkin vision in history to compare to.

My hope is that he is right and the world will change so that exploration of space is mankind's new adventure. Maybe shake hands with a Vulcan and make love to a green alien. Or maybe, I should stop watching Star Trek, raise my kids and always pay my taxes.

And no, my name is not Sheldon.

Dave

Dave,

There are a lot more challenges, after we switch to 100% renewable energy. The energy part is less difficult to what comes after - that is why we have to switch so quickly.

Food production, and access to water are the main challenge. And the things we actually need, like housing and clothing. We certainly keep the Internet - that is key - so it is not reverting to centuries ago. We all need to learn some new skills, and we all need to learn what really matters.

Neil

Although I agree there will be changes and we will need to learn new skills, I question the difficulty in it. Energy is the key to all social needs. When we have enough energy, we can create whatever type of cities we like wherever we like. Even a desert can be turned green by re-directing water flows to that area. We do not do it now because of cost in which energy is a big part. However, if energy is almost zero, greening the desert is not so difficult to imagine. We do not de-sultanate sea water except in a few places in the world again because of the energy cost.

Cuba went through a farming revolution after the Iron Curtain fell. You can find some documentaries online. Basically, rather than trying to control mother nature, the farmer learned to use mother nature to their advantage. In the end, they were able to produce just as much food per acre as they did when they were using big oil machines. But at a much reduced energy input and therefore a reduced cost.

There is one area I will concede that worries me. That is biodiversity. Climate change (i.e fast climate change) will destroy mother natures balance. Not sure technology can fix that and supply the needs of 9-10 billion people by 2050-2070.

Dave

dniemeyer99 said:

Basically, rather than trying to control mother nature, the farmer learned to use mother nature to their advantage. In the end, they were able to produce just as much food per acre as they did when they were using big oil machines.

Click to expand...

I think this is the biggest part. Humans as a species seem to have this instinct to control nature. We don't like something, we try to eradicate it. We want to build a city, we level hills and valleys and pave the whole lot in concrete. We capitalize every available square foot of land, as long as it's cost effective. Instead of renovating older buildings, we largely demolish and re-develop the lot. There is a tendency to keep to the most convenient route possible, with a major influence of "out with the old, in with the new".

I quote Rachel Carson, "But man is a part of nature, and his war against nature is inevitably a war against himself." The Industrial Revolution was a large stray off of nature's path, and though we are too developed to return, we can become more in line with nature, and a very big piece of that puzzle is to divest from fossil fuels. The more we fight nature, the more we will suffer. I fear that there is not enough time to correct our course. Every minute, the world population increases by 148 people. We are at an estimated 7,182,712,000+ world population right now.

Per capita energy usage is on the decline through efficiency improvements (EVs being a decent portion of that), but overall energy use is still increasing. Since the most of our energy still comes from fossil fuels, we are contributing more and more to the problem every day. The best that we can do to at least stop the increase of CO2 in the atmosphere will be to limit population growth (which we know ain't going to happen) and stop using fossil fuels (better shot with that). Once we stop increasing atmospheric CO2, nature largely can take over and heal itself, though we will have to help along the way. CO2 absorption by plants is powerful enough that CO2 levels decline in the northern hemisphere's summer months. There is a lot of inertia with the atmosphere. It's taken us more than 100 years to increase CO2 by 120 PPM. We are changing the chemical content of the atmosphere much faster than any natural influence. The climate change train is rolling, will we be able to stop it?

Sorry to go on this treehugger rant, but it is what it is.

I like this quote from Wendell Berry:

"Once plants and animals were raised together on the same farm - which therefore neither produced unmanageable surpluses of manure, to be wasted and to pollute the water supply, nor depended on such quantities of commercial fertilizer. The genius of America farm experts is very well demonstrated here: they can take a solution and divide it neatly into two problems."

I think the answer to all our problems is simple: like in Nature, there can be no waste.

I just took the time to see the video today while we are being hit with a supersnow after having days of snow free weather in Michigan. Since this morning it looks like I've got 12 inches of snow and its still falling.

I Like what Rifkin has to say and I think this forum evens embodies wisdom from his talk. For example, I think solutions and knowledge shared here changes how Mitsubishi plans their next BEV i-MiEV. I also think modifications that improve the performance of the car will in part come from distributed wisdom and problem solving which may be greater than what Mitsu can come up with on its own.

Thanks for sharing the video...

I am SO... hoping I get to sign for my i-miev Monday, weather allowing me to get to the credit union....