Is environmentalism incompatible with low energy costs?

Great Debates
1

Absent some revolutionary new, clean, and cheap fuel for transportation and electricty generation, is it possible to lower hydrocarbon consumption without a high priced crude oil and natural gas environment? Are record crude prices the best thing that an environmentalist could have hoped for?

With the high gasoline prices experienced recently, we have seen real reductions in gasoline consumption. For the first time in years, gasoline usage has reduced (1.1% year over year for recent weeks). This seems directly caused by the high price environment.

While an extremely high percentage of Americans see global warming as a serious threat, it doesn’t seem like the will power to enact real lifestyle changes exists. People like living in the suburbs, driving long distances, driving big cars, flying, heating/cooling their homes, etc. The substantive changes necessary to have a real impact on our environment seem to be too difficult for the general public to enact voluntarily.

Is it inconsistent to be an environmentalist while at the same time wanting cheap fuel?

2

For electricity generation, we already have at least one technology (nuclear) that doesn’t require hydrocarbon consumption.

For transportation, biofuels are a closed cycle, pulling carbon out of the atmosphere (by plants) as fast as it goes in.

3

I don’t think so. I think environmentalism is incompatible with the lifestyle many have chosen to live, a lifestyle which is also dependent on cheap fuel with most of the characteristics of fossil fuels. High energy density, low acquisition cost(pumps out of the ground), high transportability, relatively stable and safe to handle, etc. An environmentalist has no qualms with people being able to have big homes, big cars, frequent trips, etc. as long as the environment is not ravaged to provide these things.

Enjoy,
Steven

4

There does not appear to be much support in building nuclear power plants in the U.S. I believe the percentage of electricty generated by nuclear power in the U.S. has been declining. Environmentalists have differing opinions on nuclear power, but I think it would be safe to say that more are opposed to nuclear than are in favor. Is there any realistic way that we significantly reduce our usage of hydrocarbons in electricity generation without being spurred on by higher prices?

5

But is there any real world possibility that we will have big cars, frequent trips, etc. while at the same time having cheap fuel and good environmental standards?

I mean, sure, an environmentalist isn’t pushing for smaller cars just for the sake of it. He’s pushing for reduced use of hydrocarbons. Is there any way that we stop using so much oil unless prices are high?

6

Well, my first thought is that we could burn the old school eco-fascists types blocking nuclear power…but this would be a very limited source, I’m unsure how well they would burn or how much pollution they would emit. Probably less than the propaganda they spew, but still not inconsiderable.

The thing is that life is full of trade offs. We COULD build solar or wind powered plants…but both technologies are incapable (currently) of scaling up to meet our energy needs and would be VERY expensive and invasive (solar takes up a rather large foot print, as does wind…and there are limited places where they can be used effectively and efficiently). We COULD build more hydropowered power plants…but again, there are trade offs there and I think here in the US we can’t really scale that up much more than we currently have done so, at least not without great cost and greater environmental impact. We COULD simply replace inefficient or older dirty plants with more efficient coal fired plants (and we could add carbon sequestration to both new and older existing plants)…but again, the cost would be pretty great. This would however scale to meet our needs as we already use coal and NG extensively. Or we COULD build nuclear power plants…which as you pointed out has it’s trade offs and would in addition be expensive.

People want magical silver bullets to our problems…but they don’t exist. We need power. We aren’t going to stop driving our cars. Any solutions at this point are going to be slow transitions from one technology to another…or it’s going to cost us a great deal of money in the short term. Perhaps more than even we can afford.

IMHO yes…environmentalists should be rubbing their hands together with glee as the price of gas soars. Of course, people aren’t always rational (note many of those same environmentalists aversion to nuclear, despite the fact that nuclear is CO2 free and could actually scale up to meet our needs), and they aren’t always knowledgeable either. My own (rather limited) experience with environmentalists is that they haven’t a clue how the market works, so many of them wouldn’t appreciate how higher gas prices can drive the market in new directions. Of course that is painting with a broad brush (for instance I know environmentalists who DO think nuclear power is a good over all thing…and some that are quite knowledgeable about how the market works and who ARE rather happy seeing gas prices rise).

Rising gas prices are going to do more to push us to some new alternative technologies both in power generation and personal transport than all the government hand waving ever will…and it will push us to it sooner and with less over all cost (both personal and to society) than anything the government can do by attempting to wave it’s magic government stick at us and force us to do what it thinks is best. JMHO of course.

-XT

7

At the moment, green power sources are not fully developed, either technically (solar, etc.), or infrastructure wise. (Hydro-electric dams, wind turbines, power distribution networks.)

Until those methods come online, the costs of oil/gas based energy will remain high unless demand changes. If you use less resources and demand drops, prices may (hopefully) drop. However, those oil and power suppliers have to make enough to stay in buisness (and to pay for past, present, and future infrastructure investments), so they won’t bottom out to ridiculously low prices, either.

Is environmentalism incompatible with low energy costs? No, at least not once the current oil/gas stuff gets replaced. But the transition may be a PITA.

8

It sounds to me like you are saying that once we move past using oil for transportation fuel and natural gas for electricity then environmentalism is not incompatible with low energy costs as long as the replacement fuels are low cost and environmentally safe. In my opinion, that is not a very realistic scenario. Obviously I do not want to put words in your mouth, so please feel free to correct me if I am misunderstanding your position.

9

Well, sorta.

The dream scenario for enviornmentalists is energy sources that are cheap and green.

Super efficient solar panels for example. Fusion power is sold as green, I think.

Not very realistic? With “future” tech, I have no idea, I am not an engineer. I can only dream.

But with current tech? Yes, extreme and unyielding enviornmentalism is incompatible with the high standard of living we are used to now.

I realise there will always be some impact on the enviornment as long as man uses technology and materials more advanced than Medieval tech levels.

10

If you strike “costs” from the title and replace it with “prices”, the answer’s yes. If you want to discourage use of carbon-based energy and encourage technological change in favour of low emission sources, the price has got to go up. Emission trading schemes, carbon taxes and regulations about what uses are permitted will all do this.

But that doesn’t have to mean increased energy costs. It would be possible, to give a crude example, to give me a fixed rebate on my electricity bill whilst tripling my prices in such a way as to leave my electricity costs pretty much unchanged. That would give me an incentive to reduce my consumption without making me worse off.

11

It is possible to lower HC consumption without high prices, but there has to be some motivating factor to get people to change behavior. In the US, the motivating factor is usually price. So it will probably take both time and high fuel costs to begin changing behavior.

The current infrastructure and modes of behavior are all based on cheap energy. I don’t think people necessarily want to drive long distances - at least on a daily basis - but they do want to maximize their home comfort/enjoyment at minimum cost, so we end up driving more, heating/cooling more, and so on. If we had an infrastructure that was designed for saving energy instead of using it, we would have shorter distances, smaller and more efficient homes and cars, and so on. But that will probably take high prices to make that happen. The motivation of being a good environmentalist usually doesn’t come into play in a big way when people make their buying decisions - price definitely does.

Some environmentalists are thrilled that the price of energy is so high. My guess is that those who work for a living don’t much like it, though, since they have to pay the bills just like everyone else. They (the second group) may see it as something that was bound to happen, complain that the government could have kept it from happening, and be glad that it’s moving behavior toward something they like, but I suspect that they’d prefer everyone change their behavior without having to be motivated by price.

I don’t think it’s at all inconsistent to be an environmentalist and want lower priced energy. I’m for environmental protection (probably don’t fit the stereotype of environmentalist, though) and would love to see energy prices at zero (if that didn’t result in excessive pollution, of course)! I do think it’s unrealistic to be an environmentalist (or pretty much anything else) and assume that people are going to change their behavior for reasons other than price.

One last thought. Just because energy prices are (or were) low, that doesn’t mean that the net cost of energy is low. If there’s lots of pollution and that pollution is harming health and ecosystems, then there’s a cost to that. It’s just that we pay for it through means other than through our energy bills or at the fuel pump. We pay higher prices for health insurance, for crop losses (higher food bills), have to travel farther to see wildlife, and so on. There’s a difference between price and cost.

12

As others mentioned upthread, old school environmentalists screwed the pooch on nuclear power. We should be building nuclear power plants as fast as possible to serve everyone’s goals, including theirs. Somehow, the word “nuclear” sounds especially menacing to a pot fueled brain.

Nuclear power is the best alternative by far in the short and medium term that already exists and is proven to work on a large scale. Lots of nuclear power plants would eliminate a very large portion of the energy resources that are decidedly not green. They could also make electricity even cheaper so that things like electric cars become even more attractive to the general public while other energy resources mature and improve.

Instead of dicking around, there should be a mass mandate for more nuclear energy in the U.S. Those plants take many years to build and we need to start now. Research into other energy resources can be researched in the mean time because most of them won’t be mature for a long time either.

13

Using the Native American’s ‘7th Generation’ approach (What will things be like 7 generations hence) Then true environmentalism is impossible with cheap energy. The Natives were limited by the fact that they had to spend so many hours a day acquiring food, fuel and water. This self regulated them to communities of a certain size. If we had cheap unlimited energy, we would continue to build things that used that energy until the materials and energy to build those things would bring us back to where we are.

14

I think this is key. While the word ‘need’ is not completely accurate, I think our problem is that our whole infrastructure/society/economy is based around (relatively) cheap fuel. To change our trajectory at this point is practically impossible. Whether or not we can slightly bend that trajectory enough to avoid a disaster remains to be seen.

Um, right. It’s the pot heads versus the corporate fat-cats. Down with the system, man! :rolleyes:

At any rate, I agree that nuclear is a possibly viable option, but to this 28-year-old, “old school” environmentalist with a pot fueled brain, the idea of thousands of nuclear power plants in America is scary, and is not a future I’d want to work towards unless I felt it was absolutely necessary.

15

Yes, there are people who are reflexively anti-nuclear, bu there are real questions as well. What are the costs involved with long-term storage of waste? We just don’t know. It may be that a convincing cheapish technology comes along and that safety considerations can be addressed. But equally, it may be that carbon sequestration is going to come along in 20 years and solve the carbon problem.

16

The only reason this is an unknown is because the anti-nuclear crowd has repeatedly put up ever conceivable road block to the creation of a long term storage facility (as if by doing so the problem will somehow go away). At a guess I’d say that the Yucca Mountain facility has cost this country at least double (if not more) that it SHOULD have and taking 5 times longer to come on stream (and it’s STILL no online btw…because the eco-fascist types are STILL blocking it every way they can and whipping up the populace with propaganda that incites their fears). Get those fucking dinosaur eco-nuts out of the way and the long term storage costs are quite predictable.

What burns me up is that the anti-nuclear crowd plays the same anti-science numbers game that is played by the anti-Evolution crowd (and I suppose the anti-AGW crowd…at least the ones who are political and don’t have a real scientifically based contention)…because science can’t predict with 100% accuracy 10,000 years in time the anti-nuke crowd agitates that the facility isn’t safe. As if to be safe it has to be 100% safe for a ridiculously long period of time. As if even if the very worst happens it isn’t more than a really nasty clean up job. Same with the reactor facilities…there are so many ridiculous hoops and barriers that the anti-nuke crowd has put in the way of actually building one of these things that…well, you can’t build one in the US anymore.

All the while a nation like France has been able to operate nuclear facilities for decades seemingly without all the problems we have. Why? Why can they do it (and other nations) but we can’t? Why can they develop new, better, safer, cheaper power plants and we can’t? Engineering is engineering.

The eco crowd needs to figure out what is more important here…either GW is real, and our CO2 emissions are contributing to a green house effect that is causing the temperatures globally to rise (or I suppose a better way to put it is causing the climate to change) or not. If so then, well, is it important that we cut those emissions? If so then should we wait for magical future technology that MIGHT come along (and might have pretty hefty price tags and environmental impacts of their own), or start doing something about it now? Because if you are really serious about CO2 emissions then the only real technology available today that can scale up to meet our needs is nuclear. Nothing else (that doesn’t involve coal or other hydrocarbon based tech) comes close today.

I suppose we can wait a decade or two before the new magic pony technology is fully developed and ready for prime time, tested and then maybe another decade while it’s implemented (no one is going to throw a switch and scrap all the old plants over night and replace them with the new tech). We’ll have plenty of coal to wait that long for the new technology. Should we let our (well, the anti-nuke folks) irrational fear of nuclear energy hold us back? How important is it for us to start to switch over to eliminate CO2 from the atmosphere? If it can wait a few decades then I guess we don’t need nuclear. If not…well, get those idiots out of the way you more rational eco folks!

-XT

17

Not intending to play Jr. Mod at all, but in the context of GD, and being a person who is not really behind a move towards nuclear power, would you (and others) mind refraining from using rude insults that aren’t quite directed at anyone specifically, but sort of are? It makes it hard to feel like there’s room in this thread for a discussion of the issue at hand.

Thanks!

18

I completely agree with your first paragraph here. If it’s important to cut our emissions, and, as you say in the next paragraph, we can’t really afford to wait x number of years for a possible alternative technological solution, we need to make tough choices about where our energy comes from today. Nuclear is certainly a possible answer to this dilemma.

The “irrational fear” of nuclear energy is, however, far from irrational. My largest concern is that 200 years down the road we find ourselves in a messy situation WRT disposal and moderate environmental contamination. Even in the best of situations, a nation fueled by nuclear power is only as safe as it is stable. It just seems like a very undesirable thing to replace oil/gas with nuclear when significant damage can be done by any given plant if proper care isn’t maintained.

Undesirable, though it may be the best answer. I’m willing to entertain that certainly. But I think it’s folly to assume that opposition to nuclear power is unfounded and irrational.

19

Oil disasters have caused much more damage to the environment over the years than nuclear have, and honestly nuclear is only dangerous compared to that which is 100% safe. Nuclear is one of the safest technologies we have to provide electric power. It’s also much safer when you compare all the environmental devastation that comes from extracting and transporting coal and oil. (Have you ever seen the damage that large-scale mining does to the environment? Mountain-top removal? What it does to local water tables, how it affects runoff and et cetera.) Let’s not even mention the hundreds to thousands of people who die every year mining coal. That doesn’t even factor in all the black lung and et cetera.

No, nuclear isn’t perfectly safe. But coal and oil have enormous safety issues concerning them as well, for society at large and especially for the people involved in the extraction and processing of those materials. Nuclear also doesn’t contribute to the carbon footprint like coal and oil do.

I’m not saying fear of nuclear power is “totally irrational.” I’m saying it is overblown, and since coal and oil are more dangerous taken as a whole–it is irrational to be hand-wringing over nuclear power in our present condition.

20

It’s ‘irrational’ in much the same way as people who worry about getting into a plane crash…while driving their car and talking on their cell phone. People are terrible at risk assessment and worry about all the wrong things…while NOT worrying about the things that are probably going to kill them. And the anti-nuke crowd has played on this to generate public sympathy (hell, I say ‘played’…but these fools are maybe worse at risk assessment than anyone).

So, I guess I disagree with you in principal. While I’m not saying that nuclear energy is without RISK…the FEAR of nuclear energy is complete irrational. As are most fears of low order probability events. JMHO of course.

Why? Let’s say the worst case scenario happens and all the waste in Yucca mountain escapes? How bad would it be? Well, locally it would probably be no picnic, no doubt. But really in the end it would just be a matter of a LOCAL environmental problem…and basically an engineering problem to clean up the mess. Myself, I think 200 years from now people will be looking into ways to get back into the various nuclear repositories…in order to harvest the stuff we call ‘waste’ today.

Well, that’s true…however, if the US becomes unstable politically our nuclear energy program (or lack there of) is going to be the least of the worlds worries. Again, it’s a matter of looking at risk and judging it rationally. Worrying about the US falling apart politically and then attempting to link that with nuclear power programs is irrational IMHO…for one thing it’s a pretty low order probability wise scenario. For another there are a LOT bigger risks if that happens.

I’m not trying to belittle your arguments here…but you are worrying about whether your teeth are clean while smoking 5 packs a day. Let’s say for a moment that the US completely melts down politically and can’t maintain it’s nuclear plants anymore. What is the worst that could happen? Well, they could be run at risk and without maintenence for a period of time…and they could (possibly) experience a major event. Probably not as bad as Chernobyl as our designs, even if pushed to ridiculous limit, wouldn’t fail that way. But lets say that one of our plants DOES do a Chernobyl through lack of maintenence (we are talking about a low order of probability stacked on something of the remotest chance coupled with a golden BB…but what the hell)…how bad would it really be?

Well, when Chernobyl blew it’s top several hundred people were killed (mostly rescue and fire fighter/response types, and mostly because they were poorly trained and equipped…but then the US is supposed to have sunk way down so maybe it’s comparable). A major city needed to be evacuated and the region is still uninhabitable in and around the plant. Strapped as the Soviets were (and the Russians are) they were still able to entomb the bad reactor…and are actually still producing energy out of the remaining reactor(s) IIRC.

That would certainly suck…but it would be a LOCAL disaster. Sort of on the order of Love Canal I suppose.

Now, think about the probability of that happening. We are talking about extremely remote here. First the US would have to pretty much melt down for maintenance to drop off enough to even make something like that possible. Then the plants would have to be run beyond their safety limits (instead of just shut down which is most like what WOULD happen). And then, considering modern reactor design you’d have to have a nearly perfect series of fuckups to get something remotely like Chernobyl.

Life is full of trade offs. There is no magic technology that is actually real, scalable and has no risks, no impacts. Every power technology has it’s risks and it’s impacts on the environment. Some of the new pebble bed reactor designs are about as risk free as I can think of…and yet, the US, afaik isn’t even seriously looking into them. Why? Because of this irrational fear of low order probability events…and the lack of understanding as to just how bad the disaster would even be if they happened.

There are valid concerns about nuclear power…but most of them are economic, not safety. Most opposition to nuclear power IS irrational and unfounded because it comes from ignorance and fear…fear generated on purpose and playing on peoples horrible abilities to rationally judge risk and assess the current technologies and their relative dangers and impacts.

-XT