An Unintended Irony

Throughout the Winter Olympics, energy companies have been busy selling themselves to viewers. From the sheer volume of the advertising, one might think the United States was about to abandon fossil fuels entirely and that oil, gas, and coal were fighting a rearguard action.

Some of the ads, like those praising "clean coal" and linking it to national security, are simply misleading. "Clean coal" sounds good, but there is really no such thing. There are proposals to sequester the carbon emissions from coal-fired power plants and keep them out of the atmosphere, but none of these has been tried on a large scale, and there are real questions whether they would work at all.

My personal favorite among the ads is the one that touts America's Oil and Natural Gas and its many benefits. These are said to include jobs, transportation, food supply, electricity, warm houses—everything that makes America great. The spokeswoman who presents the ad is attractive and well-spoken; the graphics are engaging; and the message appears to be that we really need to keep drilling for oil. I say "appears to be" because nowhere in the ad is this stated explicitly. Nor does the ad talk about where we might find the magic fuels. That might be embarrassing because the U.S. has very small oil reserves, though it does have large natural gas reserves. It is, after all, an ad, not a strategic assessment.

Watching this ad while reading The Omnivore's Dilemma, Michael Pollan's excellent natural history of four meals, I realized that, with a few changes in wording, the ad could actually present a very good case against continued dependence on fossil fuels. Pollan's first meal is a fast food lunch bought at MacDonald's. He traces in fascinating detail how the beef and chicken for the lunch are produced—using fossil fuels to make fertilizer to grow the corn to feed the animals, truck the animals from pasture to feedlot, and truck the meat from slaughterhouse to processing plant and then from processing plant to the various fast food restaurants where it is sold. In the end, he concludes that when we eat a fast food hamburger, we are indirectly consuming large amounts of oil. Most of the food that most Americans eat depends on fossil fuels. Our food system as now constituted would be in serious trouble without them.

So, and more directly, with the other benefits of American Oil and Natural Gas. Our transportation sector uses fossil fuels. Commerce depends on fossil fuels. Electricity depends on fossil fuels, though that is slowly changing. And so on.

The problem is that the supply of oil and natural gas is finite, and our dependence on oil in particular pollutes and warms the globe and makes us vulnerable to changes in the politics of the oil-rich countries. The fact that our food system would be in trouble without fossil fuels says more about the food system than it does about the virtues of oil. A politically-motivated rise in oil prices—even the threat of such a rise—sends shock waves throughout the world economy. (It did, though this is barely remembered now, in the early 1970s.)

The writers of the ad clearly did not intend to bring us up short and make us realize how precarious our position really is. And few will understand the implications of the ad in this way. But by showing how important fossil fuels are in our lives, this ad almost performs a public service—because it also shows how dependent we are on an expensive and ultimately dangerous energy source.

Suggestions for Rebuilding

President-elect Obama's economic recovery program includes a great deal of funding for infrastructure repair and green development. Herewith a few suggestions for infrastructure repair that would also be green development—and good strategy as well.

Rebuild the Railroads: The United States was once the leader in developing railroads. Now, as its rail system has been allowed to decay, it has fallen far behind other developed countries and some, like China, that are still emerging. Environmentally and strategically this makes no sense. Rail transport is the most efficient way to move freight, far more efficient than trucking goods or flying them. With better track and rolling stock, freight hauling by rail would be competitive with trucking—as it has to be if we are to cut greenhouse gas emissions and become less dependent on imported fuel.

Make Passenger Rail Competitive: For those seeking alternatives to driving or flying, passenger rail is frequently not an option. Trains are infrequent, sometimes more costly, and often much slower than they could be with improved track and rolling stock. As with freight, rail is the most efficient way to move passengers. It makes little sense to continue policies that encourage air travel, or even driving, when investing in passenger rail—even subsidizing it—would save fuel and cut emissions.

Connect the Dots: Fuel prices, although temporarily in retreat, will not remain low indefinitely. The supply of oil for making gasoline is finite, and the cost of extracting it will go up, not down, in the future. Over time, this will doom the U.S. suburbs to—depending on who is talking—decline or collapse. The suburbs may be, as James Howard Kunstler maintains, the worst misallocation of funds in recent memory; but they are there, and people live in them. The best way to make them viable again is to connect them with rapid, efficient public transport—light rail for preference, or low-emission buses.

Create Walkability: Walkable neighborhoods are in vogue for good reason. They are the future, if we are to have one. In the long term, it would make sense to give businesses incentives to build stores within walking distance (or easy public transport distance) of the dots which the infrastructure package has just connected. This would make it easier for us to lower our dependence on the private car, and hence lower emissions and dependence on imported fuel.

All of these items would cost money—as would other components of any stimulus package worth doing. But unlike simply repairing roads and bridges, however much they need repair, these suggestions would build for a future of high fuel prices and environmental constraints. That, after all, is the future that we face.

Further Thoughts

Coordinate Electric Cars and Public Transport: Commentator Lorcan suggests that roads should be made electric-car ready so that rail passengers could take the train to a depot or station, then pick up an electric car for the trip to their final destination. This imaginative suggestion echos Israeli architect and planner Moshe Safdie's concept of the utility car, which would be available for short trips at transit points like train stations. His book, The City After the Automobile, repays study. By making roads electric-car ready, I assume Lorcan means adding electric car battery-charging stations at intervals on the roads—also a fine suggestion.

The larger issue here is whether we can coordinate our transportation system to encourage users to take the most efficient transport mode for their journey. A future post will address this question.

Mountaintop Removal: Lorcan also argues for abandoning the notion of "clean coal" as a dead end and ending mountaintop removal. Both are important points. For a discussion of mountaintop removal, see "The Price of Coal" on this blog.

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An Argument to Nowhere

Climate skeptics set great store by the argument that science has not "definitively proved" that human actions are the cause of global warming. The chief problem with this argument is that it goes against the scientific consensus and the evidence, but there is another criticism, less-noted but equally compelling: It does not support the policies that the skeptics think it does.

Skeptics, among them Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (insofar as I can make out what she is saying), are fond of simply stating that there is doubt about the role of human activity in climate change, as if because of this we need not worry about our use of fossil fuels. The implication (never stated) is that we are free to drive to our heart's content in ever-bigger cars, build a new coal-fired electric plant each week, and clear as much rain forest as we like. Nothing of the sort, however, follows. The argument is a kind of bridge to nowhere—or more accurately, to an uninhabitable planet.

What the skeptics have done is to assume that the only reason to cut back on fossil fuels is the danger of global warming. If we can't prevent it whatever we do, then we do not have to change.

Not quite. The reasons to cut back on fossil fuels are many, and they would be persuasive even if the skeptics were right and climate change were beyond human control. Some of the arguments below apply to all countries; others apply chiefly to the West and the United States. None depend on any particular explanation of climate change.

• Fossil fuels are a major source of pollution. This summer's questions about air quality in Beijing were not about long-term climate change, but about short-term clouds of unbreathable smog and how they might affect the summer Olympics. Chinese authorities dealt with the problem by restricting automobile traffic. The smog level dropped, although Beijing's air quality probably remained poor because of China's heavy dependence on coal. It would be hard to imagine a more concrete demonstration of the role of fossil fuels in air pollution. Fewer cars on the road=less fossil fuel emissions=less smog.
  
• Fossil fuels are expensive and often dangerous to produce. Coal mining is known to be a dangerous profession with a long list of mining disasters and tragedies in every major coal producing country. Oil drilling, while not as hazardous as mining, has become more expensive as producers turn to sources like oil shale which are more difficult to extract.
  
• Even before they are burned, fossil fuels create environmental hazards. Oil, for instance, must be transported to markets, generally by ship, with the risk of accidents and spills. The best-known of these was the Exxon-Valdez oil spill. Pipelines, while generally safer than ships, also damage the environment where they are laid.
  
• For the West, and particularly the United States, dependence on fossil fuel is bad strategy. In the summer of 2008, for example, Russian troops invaded Georgia. Although Georgia had attacked first, the Russian action was universally condemned—but the West could actually do little or nothing. Military action was out of the question because of the danger that Russia might resort to nuclear weapons, and an economic boycott was impractical because Europe was heavily dependent on Russia for its fuel supplies. Some like Thomas Friedman argue that the West's use of fossil fuels helps to fund "petro-dictatorships" and, indirectly, terrorist groups. Depending on a resource that funds those who might attack you is not especially good strategy.
  
• "Energy Independence" based on increased production of oil is not possible for the U.S. or the West. The arithmetic is simple and irrefutable. The U.S. controls just over 11% of the oil reserves in North America, or less than 3% of world reserves. Europe controls about 1% of the world's oil. Independence from foreign sources, at least at current consumption levels, is a myth.

The climate skeptics are, of course, wrong. All the evidence and the consensus of the science community says that humans have helped to create global warming and can help to alleviate by changing their way of life. But climate change is not the only reason to change. As the (admittedly incomplete) list above shows, there are many others.

Notes from England

Brief notes from three weeks in England. More will follow on one of them.

North and South: The biggest and most entertaining flap during the three weeks I was there came when Policy Exchange, a favorite think-tank of Conservative Party leader David Cameron, published a study declaring that nearly all major cities in the North of England were failures and that the best idea for residents of the North was to move south to London, Oxford, Cambridge, and the like.

There followed a great deal of scurrying by Cameron to disavow the report; a great deal of outrage from residents of Liverpool, Leeds, and other northern cities; and special features in the national press on the many virtues of the North.

To an outsider, even one who visits England regularly, this all seems baffling. The North of England includes the Lake District and the Yorkshire Dales, two national treasures. One of its "failed" cities, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, was the European Capital of Culture (ECC) some years ago, and the current ECC is Liverpool, named in the report as a city beyond redemption. How is this failure? And why would anyone want to leave these places and move to crowded, expensive London?

I guess an outsider can't see the problem. To this outsider, the very northern city of Leeds looks like a dynamic place whose spirits are in good order and whose pedestrian precincts are beautiful and very well-used. Liverpool is the place where the Beatles originated. Newcastle, although a work in progress, is worth visiting anytime and must be an exciting place to live.

More on Leeds in the future. It is a city worth a closer look. In the meantime, I think it is fair to say that no great north-south migration is anticipated in England.

A Tale of Two Countries: Shortly after we arrived in York, the national press featured, as its top headline, a prediction on climate change. I have tried to think of the last time this happened in the United States, apart from the specialist press, and came up with nothing. The equivalent headlines in the United States are about gas prices.

This says a lot about both countries, but less than one would hope about England. The United Kingdom is still behind most European Union countries on environmental issues—it is even behind the City of Philadelphia on recycling—and the Labour Government has approved construction of the first new coal-fired electricity plant in a generation. The environment makes headlines, but all may be less well than it seems.

But, and it bears repeating, at least the environment makes headlines in the UK. It would be nice if it did in the U.S. as well.

The Price of Coal

Coal-fired plants are a primary source of electricity in the United States, China, and many other countries. There are proposals in the U.S., including one in Pennsylvania, to manufacture liquid fuel from coal because there is a lot of coal in the ground, and synthetic fuels would lower U.S. dependence on Middle East oil.

Coal, that is, is central to industrial society as we now know it. But it comes with costs. It is a major source of greenhouse gases, soot, and smoke. Coal mining—the traditional underground sort of mining—is one of the most dangerous professions on earth. These are among the costs of coal.

There is another price we pay for our coal: the destruction of some of our most beautiful and precious mountains and the culture of the people who live in them. The people of Appalachia have long suffered more than their share of poverty. Now they also suffer, even more than in the heyday of "strip mining" (removal of the earth above a coal seam), from environmental ruin. The method of this devastation is called mountaintop removal. It is, according to the mining companies, more efficient and safer than underground mining. What they fail to mention is what it does to the hills, the valleys, the watersheds, and the people who must live next to mountains whose tops have been blown off.

A detailed description of mountaintop removal and its effects is at ilovemountains.org. When a mining company blows off the top of a mountain to get at the coal beneath, the debris from the explosion must go somewhere—and "somewhere" usually means into the valleys below. This disrupts watersheds that have existed since long before there were humans in those valleys. It leads to flooding, destruction of property and roads, and huge economic costs in a region that is already poor. (Little or none of the proceeds from mountaintop removal find their way back to those same valleys.)

To environmental and economic costs, we can add spiritual and aesthetic ones. Mountain people may not have a great deal of money, but because of the beauty of the mountains they are seldom poor in spirit. Mountaintop removal destroys that beauty—a loss which is in some ways more painful than any economic cost.

All this because we have not found a substitute for coal to feed our appetite for power. And because we have assumed that the cost of energy is what we see in our electric bill. It is not. In the long run, the price of coal as we now extract and use it is too high to pay.