ALTERNATIVE ENERGY INFORMATION
Every month I will be copying a chapter (with permission) of John G. Howe's the End of Fossil Energy and the last Chance for Survival book. While it was published in 2005 it is a stimulating look at our dependance on fossil fuel and what can be done about it. I will attempt to get the lastest edition. Please email either John or myself with questions and comments. In the interest of getting right to it, I will not be copying the intro or preface you can read these if you so choose to get the book. (howe@megalink.net)
The end of Fossil Energy pages 4 - 7
Our present complacency is encouraged by a mix of the following (not essentially in order):
* THE CRISIS IS NOT URGENT. LEAVE IT TO FUTURE GENERATIONS. Wrong!! The crisis is here now. In the next 5 years, major changes will occur. The direction of these changes depends on us. Our children will be left with nothing but scraps if we don't act now. The sooner we start to reduce our fossil-fuel consumption, the more hope we have. We are stealing the future from everyone.
* RELIGION AND PRAYER WILL SAVE US. Wrong! God is sending us a message now. We should heed it well. The free-energy party is man-0made including all the luxuries we take for granted - cheap and plentiful food, plush and easy transportation, warm houses and hot baths. We cannot even return to the harsh existence of the Middle Ages. There are too many people now, and the Industrialized World, we have lost our subsistence skills. If heaven and afterlife are the salvation for some, we are not leaving enough finite resources for our earthly descendants.The religious community may in fact be a ray of hope in its recognition of the energy crisis and call to action as stewards of the earth. There is a groundswell of activity by Christians, Muslims, and Jew joining with other beliefs in a common concern for environmentalism and the subject of finite-fuel sources. Prompt dissemination of the energy-crisis message may be facilitated through religious networks. For those with strong biblical beliefs, Noah planned ahead and was extremely proactive when he was warned of the coming flood (See Chapter 7 for further discussion on religion and energy).
* THE SCIENTISTS WILL SAVE US. Wrong!After scientists taught us how to use essentially free, previously-stored fossil energy, they are now telling us we are running out. Unfortunately, the public is not hearing this message, possibly because it is in complex books and technical language. An exception is the excellent book, Hebbert's Peak by Kenneth Deffeyes(2) (The follow-up book by the same author is Beyond Oil: The View From Hubbert's Peak) Other books are reviewed in the new Chapter 2. These recent books explain in clear, undeniable detail the history and consumption of petroleum as our most important fossil fuel.. It makes little difference if we have 20 or 40 years left. The truth is, we can't go on this way. The more we have left and the sooner we start to conserve, the better our chance for survival.
One othe rimportant point to ekep in maind is that any possibility for a signficant, high-technology future requires the springboard of a functioning, energy-intensive society such as we have today. The infrastructure and investment required for controlled nuclear fusion or other energy related breakthroughs cannot come from the ashes of anarchy or a failed civilization.
*THERE IS A STRONG ENVIRONMENTAL MOVEMENT GROWING IN THE WORLD TODAY. Unfortunately, the messages are soft, sometimes misdirected to other priorities and may lead to false complacency. Other weaknesses of well-meaning, non-profit advocacy groups (sometimes referred to as non government organizations or NGO's) are:
1. They churn around and around preaching to the choir, their own members. With memberships of up to a million each is still less than one percent of the U.S. population. They are not reaching enough of the masses to be effective. Glossy periodicals and tiny environmental actions delude the public into thinking there is progress. Instead we are losing ground, especially with leadership (right or left) concened with re-election based on optimism, near-term gratification, and , hwere deemed necessary, military intervention to maintain energy resource slow with little or no planning for future supplies and resources.
2. Even the closely related subject of climate change is not making an impact since the time frame is measured in hundreds of years not decades. Not many people care. The public doesn't feel and urgent crisis. They may think global warming would require less energy for heating ( or plowing snow) and be a good thing. Global warming will become a more serious problem after we run short of oil and natural gas as we obtain more and more of our energy from dirty fossil fuels like high-sulfur coal and difficult to extract, non-conventional sources like tar sands and heavy oil. By that time, in a few years, our civilization will already be in serious trouble if we do not address the immediate problem of dwindling cleaner fuels. The few extra years we gain by using environmental unfriendly dirty fuels, like tar sands and coal, will not avert the coming crisis.
3. Other issues like species extinction, pollution, water quality, public health, etc. are not of urgent interest to most Americans. WE NEED TO FOCUS ON ONE MESSAGE - WE ARE RUNNING OUT OF FOSSIL FUELS. The tank is moving toward empty. Our energy-guzzling economy is hurtling down the road with no hope for refueling. The truth is, if we start immediately address the fossil-fuel depletion problem, many of the other related environmental problems will become less serious. Even if we continue on our present path, all fossil fuel and closely-related population problems will eventually resolve themselves through harsh laws of depleted resources. Mother Nature will triumph in the end. As just another living species, our remaining descendents will be cruelly forced to come to long-term sustainable equilibrium with the environment and remaining resources.
Sustainability is the environtal buzzword for a steady state process. To sustain means to maintain, support, and keep alive. For our purposes and for the future of civilization, we need to find a balance between energy intake and energy expended. This is equally true of our own bodies. Each of us is a complex machine able to convert energy (measured in calories) from the food we eat into work. For eons, our ancestors survived by expending nearly all their energy just to grow or hunt for enough food. In today's ages of easy energy and resulting plentiful food, we each can eat far more Calories than we need. This leads to obesity and other related ills.
The energy party the Industrialized World is now enjoying helps to explain many disparities and conflicts. Energy is the difference between modern military might and legions of foot soldiers. The conspicuous consumption of the Western World, now visible to the Third World via modern media, leads to great animosity. Why do they hate us? Our gross consumption of energy, much of it coming from Third World resources, is visible and alarming to the rest of the world. Modern Western Europeans question American squandering of teh world's energy resources, while at the same time they are heavily taxed on fuel for transportation.
This book is an engineer's attempt to envision a model of a low-energy, sustainable, modern lifestyle along with a timely plan to get there. No attempt is made to alienate specific groups who may be liberal or conservative, religious fundamentalists or nonbelievers. We are all on one lifeboat and must share the resources and pull in unison if there is to be any future worth living. All of us will have to make the necessary changes. These will not necessarily be sacrifices since in many cases we will be better off.
BASIC SCIENCE AND MATH CLEARLY SHOW THAT WE MUST MAKE SIGNIFICANT REDUCTIONS IN OUR ENERGY CONSUMPTION. OUR ONLY HOPE IS TO START IMMEDIATELY WHILE WE STILL MAY HAVE ENOUGH FOSSIL ENERGY LEFT TO MAKE A CONTROLLED TRANSITION.
* THE CRISIS IS NOT URGENT. LEAVE IT TO FUTURE GENERATIONS. Wrong!! The crisis is here now. In the next 5 years, major changes will occur. The direction of these changes depends on us. Our children will be left with nothing but scraps if we don't act now. The sooner we start to reduce our fossil-fuel consumption, the more hope we have. We are stealing the future from everyone.
* RELIGION AND PRAYER WILL SAVE US. Wrong! God is sending us a message now. We should heed it well. The free-energy party is man-0made including all the luxuries we take for granted - cheap and plentiful food, plush and easy transportation, warm houses and hot baths. We cannot even return to the harsh existence of the Middle Ages. There are too many people now, and the Industrialized World, we have lost our subsistence skills. If heaven and afterlife are the salvation for some, we are not leaving enough finite resources for our earthly descendants.The religious community may in fact be a ray of hope in its recognition of the energy crisis and call to action as stewards of the earth. There is a groundswell of activity by Christians, Muslims, and Jew joining with other beliefs in a common concern for environmentalism and the subject of finite-fuel sources. Prompt dissemination of the energy-crisis message may be facilitated through religious networks. For those with strong biblical beliefs, Noah planned ahead and was extremely proactive when he was warned of the coming flood (See Chapter 7 for further discussion on religion and energy).
* THE SCIENTISTS WILL SAVE US. Wrong!After scientists taught us how to use essentially free, previously-stored fossil energy, they are now telling us we are running out. Unfortunately, the public is not hearing this message, possibly because it is in complex books and technical language. An exception is the excellent book, Hebbert's Peak by Kenneth Deffeyes(2) (The follow-up book by the same author is Beyond Oil: The View From Hubbert's Peak) Other books are reviewed in the new Chapter 2. These recent books explain in clear, undeniable detail the history and consumption of petroleum as our most important fossil fuel.. It makes little difference if we have 20 or 40 years left. The truth is, we can't go on this way. The more we have left and the sooner we start to conserve, the better our chance for survival.
One othe rimportant point to ekep in maind is that any possibility for a signficant, high-technology future requires the springboard of a functioning, energy-intensive society such as we have today. The infrastructure and investment required for controlled nuclear fusion or other energy related breakthroughs cannot come from the ashes of anarchy or a failed civilization.
*THERE IS A STRONG ENVIRONMENTAL MOVEMENT GROWING IN THE WORLD TODAY. Unfortunately, the messages are soft, sometimes misdirected to other priorities and may lead to false complacency. Other weaknesses of well-meaning, non-profit advocacy groups (sometimes referred to as non government organizations or NGO's) are:
1. They churn around and around preaching to the choir, their own members. With memberships of up to a million each is still less than one percent of the U.S. population. They are not reaching enough of the masses to be effective. Glossy periodicals and tiny environmental actions delude the public into thinking there is progress. Instead we are losing ground, especially with leadership (right or left) concened with re-election based on optimism, near-term gratification, and , hwere deemed necessary, military intervention to maintain energy resource slow with little or no planning for future supplies and resources.
2. Even the closely related subject of climate change is not making an impact since the time frame is measured in hundreds of years not decades. Not many people care. The public doesn't feel and urgent crisis. They may think global warming would require less energy for heating ( or plowing snow) and be a good thing. Global warming will become a more serious problem after we run short of oil and natural gas as we obtain more and more of our energy from dirty fossil fuels like high-sulfur coal and difficult to extract, non-conventional sources like tar sands and heavy oil. By that time, in a few years, our civilization will already be in serious trouble if we do not address the immediate problem of dwindling cleaner fuels. The few extra years we gain by using environmental unfriendly dirty fuels, like tar sands and coal, will not avert the coming crisis.
3. Other issues like species extinction, pollution, water quality, public health, etc. are not of urgent interest to most Americans. WE NEED TO FOCUS ON ONE MESSAGE - WE ARE RUNNING OUT OF FOSSIL FUELS. The tank is moving toward empty. Our energy-guzzling economy is hurtling down the road with no hope for refueling. The truth is, if we start immediately address the fossil-fuel depletion problem, many of the other related environmental problems will become less serious. Even if we continue on our present path, all fossil fuel and closely-related population problems will eventually resolve themselves through harsh laws of depleted resources. Mother Nature will triumph in the end. As just another living species, our remaining descendents will be cruelly forced to come to long-term sustainable equilibrium with the environment and remaining resources.
Sustainability is the environtal buzzword for a steady state process. To sustain means to maintain, support, and keep alive. For our purposes and for the future of civilization, we need to find a balance between energy intake and energy expended. This is equally true of our own bodies. Each of us is a complex machine able to convert energy (measured in calories) from the food we eat into work. For eons, our ancestors survived by expending nearly all their energy just to grow or hunt for enough food. In today's ages of easy energy and resulting plentiful food, we each can eat far more Calories than we need. This leads to obesity and other related ills.
The energy party the Industrialized World is now enjoying helps to explain many disparities and conflicts. Energy is the difference between modern military might and legions of foot soldiers. The conspicuous consumption of the Western World, now visible to the Third World via modern media, leads to great animosity. Why do they hate us? Our gross consumption of energy, much of it coming from Third World resources, is visible and alarming to the rest of the world. Modern Western Europeans question American squandering of teh world's energy resources, while at the same time they are heavily taxed on fuel for transportation.
This book is an engineer's attempt to envision a model of a low-energy, sustainable, modern lifestyle along with a timely plan to get there. No attempt is made to alienate specific groups who may be liberal or conservative, religious fundamentalists or nonbelievers. We are all on one lifeboat and must share the resources and pull in unison if there is to be any future worth living. All of us will have to make the necessary changes. These will not necessarily be sacrifices since in many cases we will be better off.
BASIC SCIENCE AND MATH CLEARLY SHOW THAT WE MUST MAKE SIGNIFICANT REDUCTIONS IN OUR ENERGY CONSUMPTION. OUR ONLY HOPE IS TO START IMMEDIATELY WHILE WE STILL MAY HAVE ENOUGH FOSSIL ENERGY LEFT TO MAKE A CONTROLLED TRANSITION.
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MORE LINKS:
www.masstech.org
This is the site that you can access the Commonwealth Solar information from. There are links here to deal with residential and commercial projects. This is the site I spoke of during the work shop.
Click here for the latest information on the environment from Seventh Generation Products
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Sugar
Hollow Farm is getting closer to its goal of educating the public on
environmental awareness directly at the farm. Lauren has completed a
course in grant writing to be able to apply for funding to create the
Wetlands Preserve and Educational Reserve at the farm. The following
is the mission statement for this project.
Our
mission is to bring awareness to school children regarding the
important role wetlands play in ecology and to invest them in becoming
good stewards of the world by having them take care of a small part of
it.
We feel it is imperative to reach children at school age
in order for them to be aware of their impact on the environment and be
empowered to make that impact positive.
Recently we provided
began a program that provides a 12X12 area of wetlands for a classroom
to observe, take care of and journalize the changes it goes through as
well as the impact of pollution on it.
Our program needs
additional support so that it may offer this hands on learning
experience to an increased number of classrooms
It
will be our goal in the year 2009 to establish the foundation,
collaborate on curriculum with the Phillipston Elementary School, raise
the first $10,000.00 needed to map out the wetlands and open one
classroom to the children at the school. Donations to the fund can be
made to " The Sugar Hollow Farm Wetland Preserve and Educational
Reserve" in care of Lauren Roy, Director, Owner Sugar Hollow Farm.
Records for tax purposes will be released at the end of the year.
