I think we should preserve existing infrastructure and direct all new infrastructure spending toward conservation rather than trying to replace the gas/oil infrastructure at all in the short-term. Society could still do things like add geothermal to homes or increase train use or reduce car fleets or deploy passive solar heating/lighting or even develop coal for energy.
Countries could end fossil fuel subsidies and take more control over oil/gas corporations. In the 1970′s we understood that domestic energy supplies were a national security issue, and that conservation was a way out of oil wars. We didn’t take that path but we still can.
Spending on renewables actually seems too speculative to me, ignoring risks of changes in weather, climate, available resources, energy demand, and infrastructure location requirements.
Electrifying cars seems like a waste to me. There’ll be no one-to-one substitution of an electric fleet for a gas fleet. The total fleet counts will have to radically decline, and then it will be obvious we should have kept the fuel infrastructure we had.
I’m not talking about the business-as-usual scenario for oil/gas. I also don’t agree with the IPCC estimates of the relative value of conservation.
Most of my thinking is not about creating a vision of an ideal, its about how to negotiate through a very difficult future.
As far as water availability, it might be a frustrating obstacle to most required societal changes. There are no reassuring models of freshwater availability changes in the next 30 years. They are all extreme as far as I know. But calculating what the impacts are is what’s missing from common discourse. People will move. How many? Conflicts might start. What kind? How dangerous? Etc.
Thanks for your thoughts on this. To briefly reply, I would disagree with the idea that renewables, electric cars, etc are a waste. As much as I might personally like to see more car-free urban design, it is still the case that renewables + electric cars can substantially reduce emissions. The point about ending fossil fuel subsidies is an important one, albeit with a caveat about political feasibility. To the extent that there can be political will to end these subsidies, it’s clearly a good thing to do, but finding the political will can be elusive.
there’s no plans that are real for car-free urban design
all cars take a lot of energy and GHG’s and resources to make
we drive more than we need to
we drive more than we can sustain
As far as oil/gas subsidies, I’d like to see governments tax the oil/gas companies but not disallow oil/gas exploration. We will need the fuel.
I am thinking of what could work, not what’s ideal. So, car-free urban design sounds great, it would work. Conservation will work, lowering emissions through renewables and electric cars won’t, because:
building new infrastructure and manufacturing new vehicles will produce lots of GHG’s
we won’t know where to put the infrastructure, because climate and other pressures will eat away the existing infrastructure and move people around, we’ll have to patch up the infrastructure and keep on.
supply-chains will take such a hit that doing redundant transportation as we do with multiple cars per family won’t happen, there’ll be a sharp decline in car sales and use w/in a couple decades.
energy consumption will reduce because of unexpected shortages, and conservation will be required. It would be nice if it were proactive though, so less damaging to lifestyles and done better.
energy security will require portable energy-dense fuel and use of the existing infrastructure. We will need oil and gas, and will just have to sip it when before we used to gulp it.
I imagine the rich will have their own cars and drive them on roads that are mostly empty except for buses, government, ride-sharing vehicles, and a few transport vehicles. And that’s if the roads are maintained.
There’ll be less goods transport on roads, and less goods transport overall. Trains might make even more of a contribution there though. Shipping might be stalled because of damaged ports and canals or impassible storms at sea (I only suspect that last one).
Every market-driven change, because of the time frames involved in relying on the market, is one that could have started 30-40 years ago and contributed positively to slowing rates of global warming. We could have gone high-efficiency gas vehicles and skipped the whole SUV and electric thing. But expecting those changes 20-30 years in the future with market solutions? Nah. That is a waste of GHG emissions and will fail.
That is when wind storms are ripping up solar farms, hydro dams are drying out, there’s a battery shortage, roads are being cut off by weather damage and supply chains are failing so car parts aren’t available because dust storms are blowing through factories. That is when governments are wanting to move masses of people, there’s serious water and food shortages, and having a car requires a garage, maybe driving at night (because daytime is too hot), and definitely life behind a big wall.
Investing in renewables and replacement infrastructure using the same growth and stability expectations that held in the last several decades will just make the situation worse and fail the goal. We have what we need now, we just don’t use it well. We’ll either learn how to use it well or our civilization will whither away. There’s always moonshot technologies, but basically the problem is a political one with some operations research elements. We need to be much more efficient and change how we live.
I think we should preserve existing infrastructure and direct all new infrastructure spending toward conservation rather than trying to replace the gas/oil infrastructure at all in the short-term. Society could still do things like add geothermal to homes or increase train use or reduce car fleets or deploy passive solar heating/lighting or even develop coal for energy.
Countries could end fossil fuel subsidies and take more control over oil/gas corporations. In the 1970′s we understood that domestic energy supplies were a national security issue, and that conservation was a way out of oil wars. We didn’t take that path but we still can.
Spending on renewables actually seems too speculative to me, ignoring risks of changes in weather, climate, available resources, energy demand, and infrastructure location requirements.
Electrifying cars seems like a waste to me. There’ll be no one-to-one substitution of an electric fleet for a gas fleet. The total fleet counts will have to radically decline, and then it will be obvious we should have kept the fuel infrastructure we had.
I’m not talking about the business-as-usual scenario for oil/gas. I also don’t agree with the IPCC estimates of the relative value of conservation.
Most of my thinking is not about creating a vision of an ideal, its about how to negotiate through a very difficult future.
As far as water availability, it might be a frustrating obstacle to most required societal changes. There are no reassuring models of freshwater availability changes in the next 30 years. They are all extreme as far as I know. But calculating what the impacts are is what’s missing from common discourse. People will move. How many? Conflicts might start. What kind? How dangerous? Etc.
Thanks for your thoughts on this. To briefly reply, I would disagree with the idea that renewables, electric cars, etc are a waste. As much as I might personally like to see more car-free urban design, it is still the case that renewables + electric cars can substantially reduce emissions. The point about ending fossil fuel subsidies is an important one, albeit with a caveat about political feasibility. To the extent that there can be political will to end these subsidies, it’s clearly a good thing to do, but finding the political will can be elusive.
Well, on cars in the US and China:
there’s no plans that are real for car-free urban design
all cars take a lot of energy and GHG’s and resources to make
we drive more than we need to
we drive more than we can sustain
As far as oil/gas subsidies, I’d like to see governments tax the oil/gas companies but not disallow oil/gas exploration. We will need the fuel.
I am thinking of what could work, not what’s ideal. So, car-free urban design sounds great, it would work. Conservation will work, lowering emissions through renewables and electric cars won’t, because:
building new infrastructure and manufacturing new vehicles will produce lots of GHG’s
we won’t know where to put the infrastructure, because climate and other pressures will eat away the existing infrastructure and move people around, we’ll have to patch up the infrastructure and keep on.
supply-chains will take such a hit that doing redundant transportation as we do with multiple cars per family won’t happen, there’ll be a sharp decline in car sales and use w/in a couple decades.
energy consumption will reduce because of unexpected shortages, and conservation will be required. It would be nice if it were proactive though, so less damaging to lifestyles and done better.
energy security will require portable energy-dense fuel and use of the existing infrastructure. We will need oil and gas, and will just have to sip it when before we used to gulp it.
I imagine the rich will have their own cars and drive them on roads that are mostly empty except for buses, government, ride-sharing vehicles, and a few transport vehicles. And that’s if the roads are maintained.
There’ll be less goods transport on roads, and less goods transport overall. Trains might make even more of a contribution there though. Shipping might be stalled because of damaged ports and canals or impassible storms at sea (I only suspect that last one).
Every market-driven change, because of the time frames involved in relying on the market, is one that could have started 30-40 years ago and contributed positively to slowing rates of global warming. We could have gone high-efficiency gas vehicles and skipped the whole SUV and electric thing. But expecting those changes 20-30 years in the future with market solutions? Nah. That is a waste of GHG emissions and will fail.
That is when wind storms are ripping up solar farms, hydro dams are drying out, there’s a battery shortage, roads are being cut off by weather damage and supply chains are failing so car parts aren’t available because dust storms are blowing through factories. That is when governments are wanting to move masses of people, there’s serious water and food shortages, and having a car requires a garage, maybe driving at night (because daytime is too hot), and definitely life behind a big wall.
Investing in renewables and replacement infrastructure using the same growth and stability expectations that held in the last several decades will just make the situation worse and fail the goal. We have what we need now, we just don’t use it well. We’ll either learn how to use it well or our civilization will whither away. There’s always moonshot technologies, but basically the problem is a political one with some operations research elements. We need to be much more efficient and change how we live.