Hi all

....I seriously recommend you read the following commentaries - accepting
their very stringent messages will put you completely out of step with your
colleagues..but it is where I (and lots of others worldwide) am coming from
- quite unapologetically.

Maybe you should print them out - as they deserve serious reading, and
serious thought.

and feel free to share them with your colleagues..



Cheers

Hugh Spencer

...............................

Hi all.

A good and actually quite wise commentary...

H

Which is why we have to press for 'letting ourselves down lightly' -
drastic population reduction policies, coupled with 'powering down' (see
next post, below)



Apocalypse

http://carolynbaker.net/site/content/view/853/1/

"I believe that because apocalypse is a fundamental archetype,
something in us knows that that is precisely what we are
experiencing in the final days of 2008 and are likely to continue
experiencing for years to come. Whether we admit it or not, the
archetype of apocalypse is percolating in our psyches. Economists
and politicians in denial or simply wishing to keep their jobs
insist that good times will come again-that everything will bounce
back to "normal" in a couple of years. "A long, and deep recession"
they continue to parrot, even as beads of sweat gather on their
foreheads-a stunning example of fighting for the familiar."

ABDICATING THE "A" WORD, FRANTICALLY FIGHTING FOR THE FAMILIAR, By
Carolyn Baker

Sunday, 16 November 2008

Negative experiences can lead to joy and understanding. Life is
untidy. When we reject this messiness - and in so doing reject life -
we risk perceiving the world through the lens of our economics or our
sciences. But if we celebrate life with all its contradictions,
embrace it, experience it, and ultimately live with it, there is a chance
for a spiritual life filled not only with pain and untidiness, but also
with joy, community, and creativity.
Derrick Jensen

It's Friday again, and as I write, I notice that the term "Black
Friday" has become all too familiar. Some apply it to the day after
Thanksgiving, but more recently, it has become synonymous with other
Fridays in history when the U.S. stock market suffered breathtaking
losses. One week ago today, November 7, was a particularly bloody
day for the Dow as unemployment data in the United States, fudged as
it may be, was released, and it became clear that, as one subsequent
headline stated, "Having A Job Is Soooo 2007."

I'm somewhat sheltered; I admit it. I inhabit the halls of
academia, but I also manage a website where up to the minute news is
gathered and reported, and I visit stores for necessary items, buy
gas, and make medical and dental appointments, so I'm not living a
hermetically sealed lifestyle. I may live in a state not yet as
hammered by the Second Great Depression as others, but I feel and
sense its reverberations everywhere.

About five years ago, even before Truth To Power was born, I was
reporting stories forecasting the coming global economic meltdown. I
have never been nor will be an economist, but I vowed that I would
learn some basic economic concepts in order to grasp what some were
calling at that time a "housing bubble." I was assiduously reading
and researching the dot connections between 9/11, Peak Oil, economic
meltdown, empire, and the U.S. occupation of Iraq. People whose
research I respected were warning of an economic collapse, an energy
crash, and the catastrophic effects of global warming-none of which,
it appeared, would become an imminent threat for at least another
decade.

Suddenly, somewhere in 2006 it became apparent to me that the
convergence of calamity would occur sooner, rather than later, and I
realized that the fabric of empire was unravelling much faster than
I had anticipated. I do not wish to re-state the obvious nor attempt
to trace the unfolding of events in the past two years and beyond.
What I argue, rather, is that the collapse of Western civilization
is well underway-and that my work is not to impede but to assist
that monumental, mythical, and momentous phenomenon.

In recent conversation with a friend I reiterated the essence of the
preceding sentence to which my friend replied, "That sounds so
endtimes." I knew what she meant-rapture, Book of Revelation, Jesus
on a white horse attended by thousands of avenging angels hellbent
on destroying the earth. I abhor the Christian notion of endtimes
with its bloodthirsty white, male, punitive god and would go to any
lengths to distance myself from it. Yet the conversation with my
friend later set me pondering the grain of truth in her comment.
What she had introduced into the conversation was the "A" word:
apocalypse.

Throughout the major spiritual traditions on earth one finds what
Jung called the archetype, theme, motif of apocalypse. We are all
too familiar with the fundamentalist Christian notion of rapture,
tribulation, and new millennium now popularized in Tim
LaHaye's "Left Behind" series. Yet Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims, and
myriad indigenous traditions include, for different purposes and
with their own unique embellishments, concepts of apocalypse. It
appears that apocalypse is a mythic, archetypal phenomenon deeply
embedded in the human psyche. Without exception, apocalypse, which
actually means "unveiling" or "revealing", is perceived universally
as a process in which that which is hidden will be revealed,
resulting in some sort of purification. A Hopi prophecy says
that "When the Blue Star Kachina makes its appearance in the
heavens, the Fifth World will emerge. This will be the Day of
Purification." Hopi elders believe that we are now transitioning
from the Fourth to the Fifth World and that purification is the
purpose of the current upheaval.

I believe that because apocalypse is a fundamental archetype,
something in us knows that that is precisely what we are
experiencing in the final days of 2008 and are likely to continue
experiencing for years to come. Whether we admit it or not, the
archetype of apocalypse is percolating in our psyches. Economists
and politicians in denial or simply wishing to keep their jobs
insist that good times will come again-that everything will bounce
back to "normal" in a couple of years. "A long, and deep recession"
they continue to parrot, even as beads of sweat gather on their
foreheads-a stunning example of fighting for the familiar. We're
just sailing through some rough waters, they insist, unable to grasp
that what began as a few choppy waves has now become a sea change.

What it is difficult for humans to wrap their minds around is the
unprecedented nature of the current moment. We grasp for whatever
straws of evidence we can produce that might prove that there's
nothing really idiosyncratic about it. Species have come and gone
before; the earth itself has been decimated and then restored more
than once, we protest. Yet such statements, while accurate, miss the
staggering reality that never in human history has our species
devoured in a mere two or three centuries nearly all of the
hydrocarbon energy painstakingly produced by the planet over the
span of millennia; never have so many humans inhabited the earth at
one time, nor fouled the earth's surface and atmosphere to the
extent of the current blight. And what is even more astounding is
the fact that never before in human history have all of these
factors occurred simultaneously with the others. So argue as we may
for continuity, the current moment is dramatically unique.

Moreover, if apocalypse is an unveiling, what is it that might be
revealing itself in the current predicament? Is it the looting of
billions, perhaps trillions by the federal government and corporate
capitalism? Is it the impotence of presidents and politicians to
reverse the unravelling? Is it the reality that they actually
orchestrated financial collapse and will profit handsomely from it?
Will the "revelation" be the public validation of economic
investigators like Chris Martenson, Catherine Austin Fitts, Pam
Martens, and Nomi Prins?

I for one wish that those realities were actually being revealed
in the waning weeks of 2008, but it may be years or decades before
the extent of the plunder becomes fully transparent. However,
economic meltdown is not a cause of the collapse, but rather a
glaring symptom of it. What is being revealed, I believe, is the
profligate, soul-murdering toxicity of Western civilization and all
of the assumptions from which it has emerged. As Derrick Jensen
notes, "We are members of the most destructive culture ever to
exist. Our assault on the natural world, on indigenous and other
cultures, on women, on children, on all of us through the
possibility of nuclear suicide and other means - all these are
unprecedented in their magnitude and ferocity." From civilization,
the values and behaviours that have engendered Peak Oil, climate
change, species extinction, and population overshoot were birthed.
In essence, civilization is ego and humancentric, refusing to
recognize any limitations of its agenda, and deems itself entitled
to extract, conquer, own, dominate, and destroy whatever might
impede that agenda.

Has civilization also brought us unprecedented opportunities?
Indeed it has, but quite often at the expense of our own wellbeing
and that of the earth community. And while the majority of
inhabitants of civilization are honorable and decent human beings,
they have overwhelmingly been deeply wounded, if not driven mad, by
it.

All traditions that include an apocalyptic aspect juxtapose an old
paradigm with a new one and invite adherents to allow the unveiling
of the old to purify consciousness so that they might step into the
new. Without exception, according to these traditions, the
transition is painful and demanding and necessarily imposes
circumstances in which the world as one has known it ends.

Sadly, most individuals being devastated by the current
apocalypse, reel with anguish as their homes and livelihoods vanish;
as their bodies break down for lack of healthcare; as depression,
violence, and suicide reverberate across this nation-yet all the
while they question few of the assumptions of civilization on which
their lives have been constructed from birth. They wish only to
return to the comfort and familiarity of the old paradigm. Hence the
delusion of magic bullet "solutions" that will painlessly allow the
human race to continue its resource-devouring lifestyle. I have
written and continue to believe that it will take massive individual
and collective suffering before most Americans will be capable of
questioning those assumptions and discerning the difference between
the old paradigm and the new. Quite frankly, it is unlikely that
most will.

I Told You So

Some individuals who have been forecasting longer than I have the
events now unfolding, are justifiably, saddened if not enraged by
the obtuseness and denial of other human beings to take seriously
their persistent caveats. I share their frustration, and at the same
time, I realize that none of this is about me or them or any of our
prophetic research. In fact, to continue chanting the "I told you
so, I warned you" mantra is to become further mired in the old
paradigm. Civilization, after all, is nothing if not hierarchical,
competitive, and arrogant.

Apocalypse is demanding the diminution of human ego, in which
case, the appropriate response to the masses who didn't listen is
not "I told you so," but rather, deep compassion and deep grief. The
inability of our species to read the writing on the wall is another
chilling testimony to the power of civilization to mentally,
emotionally, and spiritually incapacitate its inhabitants. There but
for fortune go any of us.

In her article "Are Human Beings Hard Wired To Ignore the
Catastrophic Threat Of Climate Change?" Lisa Bennett reveals
evidence that suggests that civilization has so damaged human beings
that we have been virtually unable to take action to stop climate
change which due to our inaction, may now be unstoppable.
I would be the first to admit that I do not have infinite wisdom
or impeccable acumen with which to discern all aspects of the
current unveiling. I find little pleasure in forecasting what will
happen next since apocalypse now has a life of its own. It is by
definition mysterious and uncertain. What I do know is that things
aren't going to "bounce back" because the "normal" and "familiar"
have faded into history. We're in uncharted, unprecedented, and
untested waters. How desperately we demand the familiar, but in
spite of our flailing, life as we have known it is over. Perhaps the
best description of our plight was offered by the late Susan Sontag,
not in the words "apocalypse now" but rather, "apocalypse from now
on."

Politicians, regardless of how charismatic, brilliant, and astute
they may be have little to offer us because their agenda is one of
expanding, perpetuating, preserving, and protecting civilization and
its values at all costs. While they may be able to ameliorate short-
term pain with placebos and band aids, both the overwhelming
magnitude of collapse and their commitment to civilization preclude
the dawning of insights that might assist them in facilitating their
constituents in making a conscious transition to a new paradigm. In
fact, as Gerald Celente notes, Obama's "Yes We Can" is a delusion
that obscures the harsh reality that "No, we can't" because:
Going to Summers, Rubin, Reich, Tyson, Volker and the rest of them
to fix the economy is like fighting the War on Crime by bringing in
Al Capone, Meyer Lansky, Bugsy Seagal, and Machine Gun Kelly.

'Yes, we can,' sounds good but it is a delusion, 'No, we can't.'
Nobody can, given the current socio-political and philosophical make-
up of the nation. And, unfortunately, Obama's promise of 'change' is
already revealed as a fraud. That won't change either.

Re-Thinking "Gloom and Doom" Definitions

None of this is pleasant to think or talk about, but today it
occurred to me that the time for choosing what we get to talk about
and how good or bad it makes us feel is over. We no longer have the
luxury. We either deal with what's in front of us, or we actively
choose suicide.

Whereas some folks who have been forecasting collapse take it
personally when others don't pay heed, I tend to take personally the
label of "doomer." Those applying the label would not do so if they
understood things like apocalypse, civilization, and new paradigm.
What I endeavour to do in my writing is clarify those concepts so
that my readers can grasp that what we're living through is so much
larger, grander, more compelling, momentous, and mysterious than
mere "gloom and doom."

What exactly does doom mean? That depends on one's perspective. If
you mean that since the earth was built to sustain 2.5 billion
people riding bicycles, not 6.5 people all wanting to live in 6000-
square-foot homes and that the earth must shed at least 4-5 billion
people in order to sustain itself-from that perspective, collapse is
synonymous with doom. The current extinction of 200 species on earth
per day, and the possibility of the entire human race becoming
extinct within a few generations is certainly not a cheerful topic
of conversation. But if I seriously believed that these sorts of
realities are the only ones to consider in conversations about
collapse, then I would deserve to be labeled a "doomer." They
aren't, and I don't.

If we can allow it, collapse may take us into mythic territory-to
the place within us that civilization was designed to destroy but
hasn't-and cannot, to the unveiling of a "new" paradigm that
isn't "new" at all because something in us remembers that it is how
we were meant to live with ourselves and the earth community.
Civilization does not have to die in order for any of us to
experience the unveiling, but there is no question that to do so
would be easier if civilization were a faint memory in our minds. I
for one am not willing to save it, preserve it, prop it up, put it
on life support, or apply salves of salvation. What I am willing to
engage in is a vigil-a death watch for civilization while it
breathes its last breath and celebrate what is revealed in the
process.

Unquestionably, collapse entails suffering, and there are no
guarantees that any of us will survive. Many innocent members of the
human and other species will perish. Wise people from the great
traditions tell us that the transition cannot be made painlessly.
What is also true is that it offers something extraordinary-
something like what I see in small communities where people are
already creating local currencies, becoming first responders for
crisis situations, organizing neighborhood watches to provide food
and heat for the vulnerable, maintaining winter farmers markets,
celebrating the holidays in unique ways that do not focus on
consumption but rather, on cooperation. At the same time that I feel
pervasive despair nationally, I see unexpected people in unexpected
places seizing unexpected opportunities. Who knows if they will
survive? Who knows if anyone reading this article will survive? Who
knows if I will survive?

But if mere physical survival is all it's about, then we are left
with nothing but doom and gloom. If, however, things like
cooperation, compassion, building authentic community, and living
from a new paradigm, even if only for a brief period of time, occur,
then civilization will have been transcended and dealt a significant
death blow. Humans who participate in those ventures will have
tasted something far more momentous than mere physical survival-
something civilization can only obliterate, not sustain: the
opportunity to savour one's inextricable connection with all aspects
of the earth community. Or as Richard Heinberg reminds us, "Growth
is dead. Let's make the most of it. A crisis is a terrible thing to
waste."

Juan Santos, whose articles are frequently featured on the Truth
to Power website says it eloquently and succinctly:
" ...the key tasks before us lie not in saving the global economy,
not in creating a "green" economy, not in inventing new ways to
exploit new energies in order to continue to mine the life of the
Earth, nor in any other activity that would seek to preserve this
system in any form whatsoever".

The key tasks before conscious people today are the forging of a
profound understanding of what has gone wrong - a sweeping and utter
re-evaluation of all values that will be tantamount to a new
renaissance, a conscious re-creation and co-creation of culture.
Much of that work began to be undertaken in the 1960s, and has borne
important fruit, like William Kotke's work, The Final Empire. It is
ours to forge an authentically sustainable culture, even in the
midst of this civilization's fast approaching end - by relying on
and integrating the deepest, clearest and most coherent teachings of
traditional indigenous cultures, of students of the ecology, and of
the multivalent healing practices of both indigenous cultures and of
the new therapies that have arisen in the last 50 years. Such a
movement - one that is intent on restoring the Earth and fostering
social justice and renewing our cultures by incorporating the values
and vision of indigenous peoples - is already underway on a global
scale. Paul Hawkens, in his important book Blessed Unrest, calls it
an "unstoppable movement to re-imagine our relationship to the
environment and one another." His research shows that it is the
largest movement in human history, involving some 2-3 million
organizations worldwide and some 200 - 300 million people whose
cultural, ethical, political and ecological creativity are already
impacting billions. That the processes of renewal - of healing,
rectifying and relearning - will best be fostered among those in
living in direct contact with, and in a caretaking relationship with
the Earth and other, non- human living beings should, I hope, be
self evident.

As I ponder the quote by Derrick Jensen at the beginning of this
article, I notice an extraordinary paradox: If I reject collapse, I
reject life, not death. Civilization kills all that it touches.
Could it be that the more I facilitate its demise, the more alive I
become?

....................................................
and...


which is why we HAVE to power-down fast (ans will powering down be subject
to the same time scales as Smil observes - I think not - as switching off
the power can be quite abrupt! - think of a blackout....

H





AMERICAN.COM <http://www.american.com>
A Magazine of Ideas

Moore's Curse and the Great Energy Delusion

By Vaclav Smil
<http://www.american.com/author_search?Creator=Vaclav%20Smil> From the
Magazine: Wednesday, November 19, 2008

Filed under: Big Ideas <http://www.american.com/topics/big-ideas>

Today's talk of a quick transition away from fossil fuels will prove to be
blowing in the wind.



During the early 1970s we were told by the promoters of nuclear energy
that by the year 2000 America's coal-based electricity generation plants
would be relics of the past and that all electricity would come from
nuclear fission. What's more, we were told that the first generation
fission reactors would by then be on their way out, replaced by
super-efficient breeder reactors that would produce more fuel than they
were initially charged with.

During the early 1980s some aficionados of small-scale, distributed,
"soft" (today's "green") energies saw America of the first decade of the
21st century drawing 30 percent to 50 percent of its energy use from
renewables (solar,wind, biofuels). For the past three decades we have
been told how natural gas will become the most important source of
modern energy: widely cited forecasts of the early 1980s had the world
deriving half of its energy from natural gas by 2000. And a decade ago
the promoters of fuel cell cars were telling us that such vehicles would
by now be on the road in large numbers, well on their way to displacing
ancient and inefficient internal combustion engines.

These are the realities of 2008: coal-fired power plants produce half of
all U.S. electricity, nuclear stations 20 percent, and there is not a
single commercial breeder reactor operating anywhere in the world; in
2007 the United States derives about 1.7 percent of its energy from new
renewable conversions (corn-based ethanol, wind, photovoltaic solar,
geothermal); natural gas supplies about 24 percent of the world's
commercial energy-less than half the share predicted in the early 1980s
and still less than coal with nearly 29 percent; and there are no
fuel-cell cars.

This list of contrasts could be greatly extended, but the point is made:
all of these forecasts and anticipations failed miserably because their
authors and promoters ignored one of the most important realities ruling
the behavior of complex energy systems-the inherently slow pace of
energy transitions.

It is delusional to think that the United States can install in
10 years wind and solar generating capacity equivalent to that of
thermal power plants that took nearly 60 years to construct.

"Energy transitions" encompass the time that elapses between an
introduction of a new primary energy source oil, nuclear electricity,
wind captured by large turbines) and its rise to claiming a substantial
share (20 percent to 30 percent) of the overall market, or even to
becoming the single largest contributor or an absolute leader (with more
than 50 percent) in national or global energy supply. The term also
refers to gradual diffusion of new prime movers, devices that replaced
animal and human muscles by converting primary energies into mechanical
power that is used to rotate massive turbogenerators producing
electricity or to propel fleets of vehicles, ships, and airplanes. There
is one thing all energy transitions have in common: they are prolonged
affairs that take decades to accomplish, and the greater the scale of
prevailing uses and conversions the longer the substitutions will take.
The second part of this statement seems to be a truism but it is ignored
as often as the first part: otherwise we would not have all those
unrealized predicted milestones for new energy sources.

Preindustrial societies had rather simple and fairly stationary patterns
of primary energy use. They relied overwhelmingly on biomass fuels
(wood, charcoal, straw) for heat and they supplemented their dominant
prime movers(muscles) with wind to sail ships and in some regions with
windmills and small waterwheels. This traditional arrangement prevailed
in Europe and the Americas until the beginning of the 19th century, and
it dominated most of Asia and Africa until the middle of the 20th
century. The year 1882 was likely the tipping point of the transition to
fossil fuels, the time when the United States first burned more coal
than wood. The best available historical reconstructions indicate that
it was only sometime during the late 1890s that the energy content of
global fossil fuel consumption, nearly all of it coal, came to equal the
energy content of wood, charcoal, and crop residues.

The Western world then rapidly increased its reliance on fossil fuels
and hydroelectricity, but in large parts of Africa and Asia the grand
energy transition from traditional biomass fuels to fossil fuels has yet
to be completed. Looking only at modern primary energies on a global
scale, coal receded from about 95 percent of the total energy supply in
1900 to about 60 percent by 1950 and less than 24 percent by 2000. But
coal's importance continued to rise in absolute terms, and in 2001 it
even began to regain some of its relative importance. As a result, coal
is now relatively more important in 2008 (nearly 29 percent of primary
energy) than it was at the time of the first energy "crisis" in 1973
(about 27 percent). And in absolute terms it now supplies twice as much
energy as it did in 1973: the world has been returning to coal rather
than leaving it behind.

These are the realities of 2008: coal-fired power plants produce
50 percent of U.S.electricity, nuclear stations 20 percent, and there
are no operating commercial breeder reactors.

Although oil became the largest contributor to the world's commercial
energy supply in 1965 and its share reached 48 percent by 1973, its
relative importance then began to decline and in 2008 it will claim less
than 37 percent of the total. Moreover, worldwide coal extraction during
the 20th century contained more energy than any other fuel, edging out
oil by about 5 percent. The common perception that the 19th century was
dominated by coal and the 20th century by oil is wrong: in global terms,
the 19th century was still a part of the millennia-long wooden era and
20th century was, albeit by a small margin, the coal century. And while
many African and Asian countries use no coal, the fuel remains
indispensable: it generates 40 percent of the world's electricity,
nearly 80 percent of all energy in South Africa (that continent's most
industrialized nation), 70 percent of China's, and about 50 percent of
India's.

The pace of the global transition from coal to oil can be judged from
the following spans: it took oil about 50 years since the beginning of
its commercial production during the 1860s to capture 10 percent of the
global primary energy market, and then almost exactly 30 years to go
from 10 percent to about 25 percent of the total. Analogical spans for
natural gas are almost identical: approximately 50 years and 40 years.
Regarding electricity, hydrogeneration began in 1882, the same year as
Edison's coal-fired generation, and just before World War I water power
produced about 50 percent of the world's electricity; subsequent
expansion of absolute production could not prevent a large decline in
water's relative contribution to about 17 percent in 2008. Nuclear
fission reached 10 percent of global electricity generation 27 years
after the commissioning of the first nuclear power plant in 1956, and
its share is now roughly the same as that of hydropower.

These spans should be kept in mind when appraising potential rates of
market penetration by nonconventional fossilfuels or by renewable
energies. No less important is the fact that none of these alternatives
has yet reached even 5 percent of its respective global market.
Nonconventional oil, mainly from Alberta oil sands and from Venezuelan
tar deposits, now supplies only about 3 percent of the world's crude oil
and only about 1 percent of all primary energy. Renewable
conversions-mainly liquid biofuels from Brazil, the United States, and
Europe, and wind-powered electricity generation in Europe and North
America, with much smaller contributions from geothermal and
photovoltaic solar electricity generation-now provide about 0.5 percent
of the world's primary commercial energy, and in 2007 wind generated
merely 1 percent of all electricity.

The absolute quantities needed to capture a significant share of the
market, say 25 percent, are huge because the scale of the coming global
energy transition is of an unprecedented magnitude. By the late 1890s,
when combustion of coal (and some oil) surpassed the burning of wood,
charcoal, and straw, these resources supplied annually an equivalent of
about half a billion tons of oil. Today, replacing only half of
worldwide annual fossil fuel use with renewable energies would require
the equivalent of about 4.5 billion tons of oil. That's a task equal to
creating de novo an energy industry with an output surpassing that of
the entire world oil industry-an industry that has taken more than a
century to build.

The scale of transition needed for electricity generation is perhaps
best illustrated by deconstructing Al Gore's July 2008 proposal to
"re-power" America: "Today I challenge our nation to commit to producing
100 percent of our electricity from renewable energy and truly clean
carbon-free sources within 10 years. This goal is achievable,
affordable, and transformative."

Nuclear fission reached 10 percent of global electricity
generation 27 years after the commissioning of the first nuclear power
plant.

Let's see. In 2007 the country had about 870 gigawatts (GW) of
electricity-generating capacity in fossil-fueled and nuclear stations,
the two nonrenewable forms of generation that Gore wants to replace in
their entirety. On average,these thermal power stations are at work
about 50 percent of the time and hence they generated about 3.8 PWh
(that is, 3.8 x 1015 watt-hours) of electricity in 2007. In contrast,
wind turbines work on average only about 23 percent of the time, which
means that even with all the requisite new high-voltage
interconnections, slightly more than two units of wind-generating
capacity would be needed to replace a unit in coal, gas, oil, and
nuclear plants. And even if such an enormous capacity addition-in excess
of 1,000 GW-could be accomplished in a single decade (since the year
2000, actual additions in all plants have averaged less than 30
GW/year!), the financial cost would be enormous: it would mean writing
off the entire fossil-fuel and nuclear generation industry, an
enterprise whose power plants alone have a replacement value of at least
$1.5 trillion (assuming at least $1,700/installed kW), and spending at
least $2.5 trillion to build the new capacity.

But because those new plants would have to be in areas that are not
currently linked with high-voltage (HV)transmission lines to major
consumption centers (wind from the Great Plains to the East and West
coasts,photovoltaic solar from the Southwest to the rest of the
country), that proposal would also require a rewiring of the country.
Limited transmission capacity to move electricity eastward and westward
from what is to be the new power center in the Southwest, Texas, and the
Midwest is already delaying new wind projects even as wind generates
less than 1 percent of all electricity. The United States has about
165,000 miles of HV lines, and at least 40,000 additional miles of new
high-capacity lines would be needed to rewire the nation, at a cost of
close to $100 billion. And the costs are bound to escalate, because the
regulatory approval process required before beginning a new line
construction can take many years. To think that the United States can
install in 10 years wind and solar generating capacity equivalent to
that of thermal power plants that took nearly 60 years to construct is
delusional.

And energy transitions from established prime movers to new converters
also take place across time spans measured in decades, not in a decade.
Steam engines, whose large-scale commercial diffusion began with James
Watt's improved design introduced during the 1770s, remained important
into the middle of the 20th century. There is no more convincing example
of their endurance than the case of Liberty ships, the "ships that won
the war" as they carried American materiel and troops to Europe and Asia
between 1942 and 1945. Rudolf Diesel began to develop his highly
efficient internal combustion engine in 1892 and his prototype engine
was ready by 1897. The first small ship engines were installed on
river-going vessels in 1903, and the first oceangoing ship with Diesel
engines was launched in 1911. By 1939 a quarter of the world's merchant
fleet was propelled by these engines and virtually every new freighter
had them. But nearly 3,000 Liberty ships were still powered by oil-fired
steam engines. And steam locomotives disappeared from American railroads
only by the late 1950s, while in China and India they were indispensable
even during the 1980s.

A decade ago the promoters of fuel-cell cars were telling us
that such vehicles would by now be on the road in large numbers.

Automobilization offers similar examples of gradual diffusion, and the
adoption of automotive diesel engines is another excellent proof of slow
transition. The gasoline-fueled internal combustion engine-the most
important transportation prime mover of the modern world-was first
deployed by Benz, Maybach, and Daimler during the mid-1880s, and it
reached a remarkable maturity in a single generation after its
introduction (Ford's Model T in 1908).

But massive automobilization swept the United States only during the
1920s and Europe and Japan only during the 1960s, a process amounting to
spans of at least 30 to 40 years in the U.S. case and 70 to 80 years in
the European case between the initial introduction and decisive market
conquest (with more than half of all families having a car). The first
diesel-powered car (Mercedes-Benz 260D) was made in 1936, but it was
only during the 1990s that diesels began to claim more than 15 percent
of the new car market in major EU countries, and only during this decade
that they began to account for more than a third of all newly sold cars.
Once again, roughly half a century had to elapse between the initial
introduction and significant market penetration.

And despite the fact that diesels have been always inherently more
efficient than gasoline-fueled engines (the difference is up to 35
percent) and that modern diesel-powered cars have very low particulate
and sulphur emissions, their share of the U.S. car market remains
negligible: in 2007 only 3 percent of newly sold cars were diesels.

And it has taken more than half a century for both gasoline- and
diesel-fueled internal combustion engines to displace agricultural draft
animals in industrialized countries: the U.S. Department of Agriculture
stopped counting draft animals only in 1963, and the process is yet to
be completed in many low-income nations.

Finally, when asked to name the world's most important continuously
working prime mover, most people would not name the steam turbine. The
machine was invented by Charles Parsons in 1884 and it remains
fundamentally unchanged 125 years later. Gradual advances in metallurgy
made it simply larger and more efficient and these machines now generate
more than 70 percent of the world's electricity in fossil-fueled and
nuclear stations (the rest comes from gas and water turbines as well as
diesels).

There is no common underlying process to explain the gradual nature of
energy transitions. In the case of primary energy supply, the time span
needed for significant market penetration is mostly the function of
financing, developing, and perfecting necessarily massive and expensive
infrastructures. For example, the world oil industry annually handles
more than 30 billion barrels, or four billion tons, of liquids and
gases; it extracts the fuel in more than 100 countries and its
facilities range from self-propelled geophysical exploration rigs to
sprawling refineries, and include about 3,000 large tankers and more
than 300,000 miles of pipelines. Even if an immediate alternative were
available, writing off this colossal infrastructure that took more than
a century to build would amount to discarding an investment worth well
over $5 trillion-but it is quite obvious that its energy output could
not be replicated by any alternative in a decade or two.

Renewable conversions now provide about 0.5 percent of the
world's primary commercial energy, and in 2007 wind generated merely 1
percent of all electricity.

In the case of prime movers, the inertial nature of energy transitions
is often due to the reliance on a machine that may be less efficient,
such as a steam engine or gasoline-fueled engine, but whose marketing
and servicing are well established and whose performance quirks and
weaknesses are well known, as opposed to a superior converter that may
bring unexpected problems and setbacks. Predictability may, for a long
time, outweigh a potentially superior performance, and associated
complications (for example, high particulate emissions of early diesels)
and new supply-chain requirements (be it sufficient refinery capacity to
produce low-sulfur diesel fuel or the availability of filling stations
dispensing alternative liquids) may slow down the diffusion of new
converters.

All of these are matters of fundamental importance given the energy
challenges facing the United States and the world. New promises of rapid
shifts in energy sources and new anticipations of early massive gains
from the deployment of new conversion techniques create expectations
that will not be met and distract us from pursuing real solutions.
Unfortunately, there is no shortage of these unrealistic calls, such as
the popular claim that America should seek to generate 30 percent of its
electricity supply from wind power by 2030.

And now Al Gore is telling us that the United States can completely
repower its electricity generation in a single decade! Gore has
succumbed to what I call "Moore's curse." Moore's Law describes a
long-standing trend in computer processing power, observed by Intel
cofounder Gordon Moore, whereby a computer's power doubles every year
and a half. This led Gore to claim that since "the price paid for the
same performance came down by 50 percent every 18 months, year after
year," something similar can happen with energy systems.

But the doubling of microprocessor performance every 18 months is an
atypically rapid case of technical innovation. It does not represent-as
the above examples of prime mover diffusion make clear-the norm of
technical advances as far as new energy sources and new prime movers are
concerned, and it completely ignores the massive infrastructural needs
of new modes of electricity generation.

The historical verdict is unassailable: because of the requisite
technical and infrastructural imperatives and because of numerous (and
often entirely unforeseen) socio-economic adjustments, energy
transitions in large economies and on a global scale are inherently
protracted affairs. That is why, barring some extraordinary commitments
and actions, none of the promises for greatly accelerated energy
transitions will be realized, and during the next decade none of the new
energy sources and prime movers will make a major difference by
capturing 20 percent to 25 percent of its respective market. A world
without fossil fuel combustion is highly desirable and, to be
optimistic, our collective determination, commitment, and persistence
could accelerate its arrival-but getting there will demand not only high
cost but also considerable patience: coming energy transitions will
unfold across decades, not years.

Vaclav Smil is the author of "Energy at the Crossroads" and "Energy in
Nature and Society" (MIT Press). He is Distinguished Professor at the
University of Manitoba.

Image by Frans Lemmens/Bergman Group.


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