Nearly half the world uses wood for cook and heat, which contributes significantly to deforestation. (Image credit: Freefoto.com)

In this video, Matt Palmer, filmmaker and photographer, raises good points about how we produce our energy and its consequences–intended and otherwise.

Energy is important to everyone and every process on earth. We want energy to power our lives. So, as [...]]]>

Nearly half the world uses wood for cook and heat, which contributes significantly to deforestation. (Image credit: Freefoto.com)

In this video, Matt Palmer, filmmaker and photographer, raises good points about how we produce our energy and its consequences–intended and otherwise.

Energy is important to everyone and every process on earth. We want energy to power our lives. So, as Robert Bryce, author of Power Hungry, reminds us, “We put energy in a conversion device to make power: a plane, a truck, even ourselves.” [watch "What's a Watt?"] Power is what we want. Energy converts to power to allow work. (And work is “the transfer of energy from one physical system to another.” – American Heritage Dictionary)

Palmer, in this video, considers the scope of our energy needs, what it would take to re-tool the world to non-fossil fuel based systems, and:

What does it mean to say: “Dirty Oil,” “Clean Energy,” “Renewable,” “Sustainable.”

In the project, he wants to through “Constant critical thinking,” “Challenge the idea that fossil fuels are only bad, and that alternative energies are free and benign and free from resource limits.”

“Unintended Consequences” began as an idea to do a feature film that examines the unintended consequences of different energy sources from oil sands, natural gas, and coal to alternative energy sources like wind, solar, and bio fuels, in order to forge an understanding of the impacts that come from our use of energy. So some of the central conflicts we intend to examine include questions like: how do we or can we reconcile our desire to maintain our standard of living at a time of population growth and increasing energy demand given the finite natural resources available to harness energy and the myriad of unintended consequences (social, political, environmental and economic) that result from our consumption of energy? How can we build a rational, pragmatic and optimistic framework from which to bring man, energy, environment, and technology into harmony?…The goal of the “Unintended Consequences Documentary Project” is to challenge all sides in the global energy debate from energy companies to environmental organizations to consumers to think critically about what we think we know, our assumptions, our biases, and our emotional connections to the issue. – Matt Palmer producer of the Unintended Consequences Documentary Project

Does he mean what he says he wants? So far, few people willingly do the math of alternative energy sources. However, the salt crystal lamp in the background gives me pause because they are complete quackery (according to one site I visited their salt crystal lamps “neutralize the positive ions generated by electrical devices,” thus “give your body the same relaxed feeling you experience when enjoying a day at the beach.”). It’s possibly nothing but a gift from his wife.

In corresponding with Matt Palmer, I recommended two books: Matt Ridley’s, The Rational Optimist and Robert Bryce’s, Power Hungry. He wrote that The Rational Optimist was next on his list. If he could interview Ridley and Bryce, that would be good.

Ridley know numbers, plus he can convey ideas simply. In the foreword of his book he writes, “I find that my disagreement is mostly with reactionaries of all political colours: blue ones who dislike cultural change, red ones who dislike economic change and green ones who dislike technological change…(H)uman progress has, on balance, been a good thing…(The world) is richer, healthier, and kinder too, as much because of commerce as despite it.”

You see, the more we trade goods and services, the more we trade ideas as well. Those ideas “have sex” he says. Like DNA recombining to make unique individuals, bits of ideas cross-fertilize with others to make better ways of doing things. “In a nutshell,” Ridley says, “the most sustainable thing we can do, and the best for the planet, is to accelerate technological change and economic growth.” For instance, changing from using animals to using machines, which need power, for farming freed up 30 percent more land, since machines don’t need pasture. Using petroleum to produce nitrogen fertilizers also freed up land, since with fertilization we require less land to be as productive. That freed land then could be used to grow more food or fiber or returned to its natural state.

Which do you think is better: fossil fuel or alternative energy sources? Why?

Danica has inherited a better world than her mother.

She has been born into a healthier, wealthier, safer, and better-educated world. A world her grandparents and great-grandparents never dreamed of. Today’s average Filipino is twice as rich and lives 18 more years [...]]]> Last month, the world welcomed the birth of Danica Camacho of the Philippines.[i] The United Nations chose her to represent the arrival of the seven billionth person on Earth. And, even though the UN picked Halloween, this event is more in keeping with Thanksgiving.

Danica has inherited a better world than her mother.

She has been born into a healthier, wealthier, safer, and better-educated world. A world her grandparents and great-grandparents never dreamed of. Today’s average Filipino is twice as rich and lives 18 more years than the average Filipino of 1961.[ii][iii] Today’s average Filipino mother has nearly four fewer births than a 1961 mother.

Please note that I am not saying that she has it good. Danica certainly does not have it as good as an American baby; the average American’s income is nearly 15 to 30 times greater than an average Filipino’s (depending on the method used to compare incomes).

I am saying baby Danica was born into a world whose people (compared with 1961) are richer, healthier, happier, with a lower birth rate and exceedingly better off than 100 years ago.

Little Danica will probably be healthier than her mother due to increased availability of vaccinations, sanitary facilities, and clean water. She will have 70 percent less chance of contracting malaria than someone had only twenty-five years ago.

Danica will probably live in a city; today, more than half our planet’s population lives in an urban area. According to the United Nations Population Fund, cities “can deliver education, health care and other services” efficiently, due to compactness and that can relieve stress on natural habitats.[iv]

She will probably own a cell phone, since 80 percent of Filipinos already do.[v] In her developing country, Danica will be able to use her phone to find the best places to market her goods or services and where to find the best prices for what she needs. “Data services such as mobile-phone-based agricultural advice, health care and money transfer could provide enormous economic and developmental benefits,” wrote Tom Standage in The Economist.[vi]

She will probably go to school and be literate. “More than four-fifths of the world’s population can now read and write,” wrote Charles Kenney in Foreign Policy magazine, “And progress in education has been particularly rapid for women, one sign of growing gender equity.”[vii]

In fact, the world she entered is better than just six years ago and, given our current trend, extreme poverty (defined as less than a 1985 dollar a day), could be gone by 2035.[viii] A report issued by the Brookings Institution estimated “that between 2005 and 2010, the total number of poor people around the world fell by nearly half a billion people, from over 1.3 billion in 2005 to under 900 million in 2010.”[ix]

While you may scoff that far too many still live in soul-crushing poverty, the world is better. Better, by definition, is better. Instead of the world’s poor losing ground to being poorer, sicker, less well off, they are healthier, wealthier, and more prosperous than even ten years before.

That trend marks a first in our world’s history and we should give thanks this Thanksgiving season. Of course politicians and the high priests of Green theology can reverse the trend with calls to burn carbohydrates (biofuels often made from food) instead of hydrocarbons (oil and gas) for energy; thus driving up the price of food for those least able to pay for such claptrap. “I’m sorry about taking food out of your mouth, but we need to curb global warming for your own good.”

Let us give thanks for a world moving, for now, in the right direction. Although no one would argue the world is perfect, the strides made are striking. Have a happy Thanksgiving.

Note: Many of the numbers used in this article came from the World Bank. And others from www.gapminder.org, the brainchild of Swedish doctor Hans Rosling. Gapminder exhibits trends by having circles (representing countries) move in relation to two variables over time. It has some ready-to-go graphs, such as “The Wealth & Health of Nations,” that will whet your appetite for more.

Image via Wikipedia

In the movie, Fried Green Tomatoes, Cathy Bates waits for a parking space only to have it taken by two female twenty-somethings who blow her off with, “Face it lady, we’re younger and faster.” She rams her tank of a car into their tinier VW convertible. Bates’ parting shot is, “Face it, girls. I’m older and I have [...]]]>  

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In the movie, Fried Green Tomatoes, Cathy Bates waits for a parking space only to have it taken by two female twenty-somethings who blow her off with, “Face it lady, we’re younger and faster.” She rams her tank of a car into their tinier VW convertible. Bates’ parting shot is, “Face it, girls. I’m older and I have more insurance.”

If one lives long enough, one can gain perspective from living and observing. It may boil down to “been there, done that, and I have more insurance.”

I was eighteen when the Apollo 11 astronauts walked on the moon and photographed an earthrise.

Their iconic photo taken from the moon, with the earth looking like a blue-green spaceship, galvanized my Boomer generation around the environmentalist cause.

That photo shows how finite the world is, and it sounds counter-intuitive to argue that anything on it is limitless. Resources and energy need to be conserved if we are to survive on this small orb spinning in the vastness of space, do they not?

What cannot be seen in that photo is the unlimited collective intelligence of the people that inhabit that amazingly beautiful place.

“The availability of almost everything a person could want or need has been going rapidly upwards for 200 years and erratically upwards for 10,000 years before that,” Matt Ridley points out in The Rational Optimist. “This generation of human beings has access to more calories, watts, lumen-hours, square feet, gigabytes, megahertz, light years, nanometres, bushels per acre, miles per gallon, food miles, air miles and, of course, cash than any that went before.”

The counter-argument says our resources are part of a zero-sum game, if we humans become better off, other species are worse off—this is the “Environmentalist’s Paradox.”

Bear with me; I’m going to argue that the trend Dr. Ridley extols will continue, and our non-renewable resources are nearly limitless. As a result, I am not a “live simply, so others can simply live” kind of guy. Not that I am against living simply or witty aphorisms, but that it is wide of the mark. To paraphrase P.J. O’Rourke, our resources are not like a pizza, if I eat too many slices you won’t have to eat the Domino’s box.

The end of our resources has been foretold before. In 1865, the British economist, Stanley Jevons predicted the end of coal. In his book, The Coal Question, he wrote that Britain’s easy ride was over and soon coal, which, powered their industrial revolution, would be gone. It was “physically impossible” to continue. Therefore Britain needed to decide “between brief greatness and longer continued mediocrity.” William Gladstone, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, found Jevons’ argument so compelling he begged Parliament to pay down their national debt while they still could.

The ink had barely dried on Jevons’ book when the output of coal rose and the price fell. The first oil well was sunk in Pennsylvania six years later. Today, Britain still produces coal.

Jevons assumed it was coal that was needed to fuel their industrial revolution, rather it was energy, and because the human mind knows no limits, there’s a lot of energy in the world. For instance, right now, in the United States, natural gas in shale deposits holds the promise of energy for another 250 years at present consumption levels. Each year, the world will “use about 450 exajoules (about 1250 billion kilowatt-hours of energy) of fossil fuel,” Matt Ridley wrote in the Times of London, “Total oil, gas and coal resources in the Earth’s crust are estimated at more than 570,000 exajoules.” In other words, we have over a millennium’s worth of energy left in just fossil fuels.

I may not change your mind to believe that the world will continue to have enough energy and resources. As the late Julian Simon said, “First, humanity’s condition will improve in just about every material way. Second, humans will continue to sit around complaining about everything getting worse.”

But for me, not only is the glass half-full, there’s evidence that it’s fuller than ever before and everyone will have more to drink soon. Think about that the next time you hear someone say, “Our current rate of consumption is unsustainable.”

Trust me; I’m older and have more insurance.

Footnotes

Related Reading

• John Stossel on How Ideas Reproduce (reason.com)
• Matt Ridley: Chris Huhne, The Anti-Energy Secretary (junkscience.com)
• Matt Ridley: Bioenergy Versus The Planet (junkscience.com)
• Book Review: The Rational Optimist (ben.casnocha.com)