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Technology—Promise or Curse?

Wednesday, August 1st, 2012

By David L. Brown

Historian Niall Ferguson in an article published in The Daily Beast raises a question that’s long interested me. He asks, in effect, which vision of the future we should embrace: The idea that technology will make the world a better place, or the vision of a world in catastrophic economic decline?

Here”s a brief excerpt from the beginning of his essay, titled “Don’t Believe the Techno-Utopian Hype” (you can read the whole thing here):

Are you a technoptimist or a depressimist? This is the question I have been pondering after a weekend hanging with some of the superstars of Silicon Valley.

I had never previously appreciated the immense gap that now exists between technological optimism, on the one hand, and economic pessimism, on the other. Silicon Valley sees a bright and beautiful future ahead. Wall Street and Washington see only storm clouds. The geeks think we’re on the verge of The Singularity. The wonks retort that we’re in the middle of a Depression.

Let’s start with the technoptimists. Last Saturday I listened with fascination as a panel of tech titans debated the question: “Will science and technology produce more dramatic changes in solving the world’s major problems over the next 25 years than have been produced over the last 25 years?”

They all thought so. We heard a description of what Google’s Project Glass, the Internet-enabled spectacles, can already do. (For example, the spectacles can be used to check if another speaker is lying.) Next up: a search engine inside the brain itself. We heard that within the next 25 years, it will be possible to take 1,000-mile journeys by being fired through tubes. We also heard that biotechnology will deliver genetic “photocopies” of human organs that need replacing. And we were promised genetically engineered bugs, capable of excreting clean fuel. The only note of pessimism came from an eminent neuroscientist, who conceded that a major breakthrough in the prevention of brain degeneration was unlikely in the next quarter century.

Ferguson,  a professor at Harvard and also associated with Oxford University in England and The Hoover Institution at Stanford, takes the same point of view that has always struck me as the right path. In effect, he asks: What is the value of technology that merely puts people out of work and provides wonderful whiz-bang stuff that has no real benefits for anyone. He points out that fifty years ago we were promised flying cars, and instead we have Twitter.

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Posted in Conflict and War, Economics, Energy Technology, Politics, Resource Depletion, Technology | Comments Off

A Tragedy in the Making

Wednesday, July 25th, 2012

By David L. Brown

As drought and heat continue to destroy a significant portion of the US crop, a large tranche of corn continues to be mandated for use in ethanol production. The purpose of this is to enrich farmers and channel money to corn producing states in order to secure votes. (It makes no kind of economic sense as a fuel source.) Now that the world faces more widespread famine (it’s already been a reality in many places for several years), it might make sense to shut down the ethanol plants for the time being, as this excerpt from an article today on WIRED (here) suggests (emphasis added):

“In the short run, USDA needs to figure out a way to remove the mandate on ethanol use from corn,” said Timmer [an agricultural economist]. “If we could free up 20 to 30 percent of the U.S. crop, reduced as it is, it would bring corn prices down very quickly.

New speculation limits are scheduled to be enacted by year’s end, but drought means that may be too late, said Bar-Yam [president of the New England Complex Systems Institute, a kind of scientific and technology think tank]. In the meantime, the USDA has rebuffed all requests to reduce corn biofuel allotments.

So it would make sense, but the USDA isn’t having any part of that. Well, duh because obviously farmers and ethanol barons are more important than 7 billion human beings and the reputation of the United States. Well, how is it going to fly when third world people are starving wholesale? They get to suffer and die horrible deaths while the U.S. in all the great wisdom of the USDA (headed by a rain-praying lawyer and professional politician) continues to turn huge amounts of corn into ethanol. Do we want to make America the Great Satan in fact as well as in name? If so, this will certainly do it. With hardly any effort at all we can make our country the most hated in the history of the world. When you open a future dictionary to the word “Evil” there will be a picture of Uncle Sam pointing at you. That’s what these idiots are doing.

Meanwhile, here’s a chart showing what happens when food prices rise. The numbers represent incidents of social unrest.

The Wired article suggests that “some think” food prices may have led to the so-called Arab Spring (it’s pretty plain that they did), and that therefore it was a “good thing.” Boy, if that’s good I’d hate to see what they consider bad. The idea that a bunch of raving lunatics taking over third world countries has something to do with “democracy” is totally nuts. It’s anarchy is what it is, followed by theocratic chaos, mayhem and murder. Somalia et al. are hardly models for Jeffersonian democracy. Incidentally, if you doubt the connection, note the number of incidents of food-related social unrest last year in the nations most affected by the Arab Spring: Tunisia 300+, Libya 10,000+, Egypt 800+, and now Syria 900+. Hmm, where there’s smoke and so forth.

One could assume that the 2008 and 2011 events (all centered on sharp rises in the UN’s FAO food index shown by the black dotted line) will be followed by similar events in spades when the presently developing food price spike gets its boots on (which is happening right now). Many of these represent small, insignificant countries (in Western eyes, at least although the indigenous peoples might beg to differ), but there are also some significant ones, including India with 1.5 billion mouths to feed. What happens if a major population subset such as India falls into out-and-out famine? India is presently suffering a reduced Monsoon so food shortages may be coming there soon, incidental to the crisis in world supplies which will severely limit or eliminate the possibility of filling production shortfalls with imports.

China doesn’t appear on the chart and I don’t understand why, because it also has been suffering something like 50,000 minor revolts and demonstrations each year, many of which must be food related. I guess it’s not on the list because the wise leaders of China say “nuh uh, it didn’t happen.” They must have legions of Winston Smiths busily rewriting history there in the Middle Kingdom. Northern China is also presently affected by drought. If India or China (or both) were to fall into widespread famine and anarchy It would be like Somalia X1000.

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Posted in Agriculture Issues, Climate Change, Economics, Ethical Issues, Famine, Global Security, Politics, Population Issues | Comments Off

California Stays the Course on Green Energy

Friday, November 12th, 2010

By David L. Brown

Another example of the way in which energy moguls work to block development of sustainable, clean energy was the recent introduction of Prop. 23 in California. This proposition, which came to a vote on November 2, quite simply was aimed at dismantling the state’s Global Warming Solutions Act, passed in 2006. Also known as AB 32,  the GWSA calls for the state’s producers of greenhouse gas to reduce emissions to 1990 levels by the year 2020. Many initiatives are well under way to replace fossil fuels, create greater efficiency in existing technologies, and move the state toward a cleaner “green” future. Beginning to take effect in 2012, the act will require about a 15 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions from present levels by the target date ten years from now.

This seems a moderate goal, perhaps even less than might be hoped. But nonetheless, it had drawn fire from the usual suspects, who organized Prop. 23 to demand that AB32 be suspended until the state’s employment rate dropped below 5.5 percent for a full 12 months. Because this is an unlikely event (that level has been reached only three times in the past 40 years), the proposition in reality was a move to permanently gut the GWSA.

And who was behind this end run to set California up to continue down the dead end path toward oblivion as resource depletion continues to undermine the old economic infrastructure while forward-looking nations such as China and Germany stake their futures on rapid development of alternative energy? Why, the usual suspects, of course. Although the California Republican and Libertarian Parties signed on to support the proposition, Republican Gov. Arnold Schwartzenegger strongly opposed the proposition and was joined by GOP candidates Carly Fiorina and Meg Whitman among others, proving that the party structure is increasingly at odds with its own candidates.

But politicians weren’s the real conspirators behind the proposition. The individuals and corporate entities that acted in support of the proposition wrapped themselves in a cloak of deception, claiming to be concerned with jobs. In fact, they called their effort the California Jobs Initiative. And yet, a look at the list of major donors to the movement tells a different story. Top contributor was a company called Valero Energy ($4.05 million), followed by (among others) Tesoro ($1.525 million), Flint Hills Resources, LP ($1 million; this is a subsidiary of Koch Industries, a major supporter of anti-global warming initiatives); Occidental Petroleum ($300K), National Petrochemical and Refiners Assn. ($100K), Tower Energy Group ($200K); World Oil Corp. ($100K); Southern Counties Oil ($50K); Frontier Oil ($50K);  Murray Energy ($30K); and Berry Petrochemical ($30K).

Hmm, do we see a pattern here? Are these leading supporters of a move to block California from improving its greenhouse gas footprint acting out of concern for the jobs of Californians—or from their own self-interested desire to continue to profit from fossil fuels and the destruction of the environment? It’s rather clear that the answer is the latter, the profit one, the evil one, rather than the charitable desire to protect jobs. for ordinary Californians. In fact, suspending the act would have put paid to at least 50,000 new jobs relating to clean energy initiatives.

To put this in further perspective, let’s take a closer look at some of those supporters of the proposal to block the green act. No. 1 contributor Valero operates two oil refineries in California. No. 2 donor Tesoro is the 24th largest producer of air pollution in the United States. And Koch Industries, the third largest contributor, is one of the top 10 corporate polluters in the nation.

What more can we say, except to applaud the wisdom of California voters who soundly defeated Prop. 23 by a 22 percent margin, approximately 61 percent to 39 percent. The Golden State may face deep and serious problems but at least its people have the courage to stand up against polluters and those that Ayn Rand called “looters,” the corporate highway robbers who want to continue their nasty ways at all costs.

California, and the world at large, needs to vastly expand support of alternative energy programs. It’s not the time to listen to those who advise us to inserting our heads into the sand in ostrich-like denial.

In an editorial written prior to the election, Science magazine editor Bruce Alberts had this to say:

The public and private investment in energy innovation now totals only about 0.3% of U.S. energy expenditures. California’s Proposition 23 needs to be soundly defeated, sending a clear signal to Washington that the people of the United States are ready and willing to mobilize its considerable resources in the vital drive to a sustainable energy future.

To which I add, bravo! And thanks to California voters the message has been sent.

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Posted in Age of Oil, Climate Change, Conservation Issues, Economics, Energy Technology, Fossil Fuels, Melting Planet, Politics, Pollution | Comments Off

My New Book

Sunday, October 31st, 2010

By David L. Brown

depcovercropI am pleased to announce the publication of my new book DEAD END PATH: How Industrial Agriculture Has Stolen Our Future. This work, in the form of an extended essay, is the result of a lifetime of experience and study. It is written in an easy-to-read style and thoroughly documented with more than 250 footnotes and a bibliography of nearly 150 volumes included in its nearly 300 pages.

DEAD END PATH is unusual in that it is part essay, part memoir, part speculative journalism and part research-based analysis. It examines the serious challenges that face the human race, including the unhappy facts that as human population continues to grow the resources on which our technological civilization depends are being depleted through runaway “progress” and “development,” code words for the destruction of the environment in the interests of profit for the few.

Many of the ideas in this book have been discussed in this weblog, including population issues, resource peaks, and economic considerations. The main argument of DEAD END PATH is that while most of the structural problems of our civilization can be traced to over-population, that core fact itself rests on the short-sighted use of industrial methods to produce more food in the short term than the Earth can sustain. As resources peak and begin to decline, a food crisis looms ahead of us at the terminus of the path we have taken.

To give you the general flavor of this work, here is the official description from the publisher’s website:

DEAD END PATH is an important book because it describes in simple, jargon-free words the critical dangers facing humanity, including many facts that the media seldom report. It’s an extended essay on how industrial agriculture has led us down an unsustainable path that threatens our very civilization. The danger is real and looming before us in the here-and-now. Our petroleum-based technology is reaching its limits and the coming collapse will likely trigger a domino-like food crisis that will change the world forever.

Readers will learn how machine technology has transformed food production and pitted the human race against Nature herself. Topics include over-population, resource depletion, climate change, economic realities and the long-term outlook for human survival. Part journalism, part history, part memoir, part essay — this book aims to entertain and inform curious readers in non-technical language. The subjects of this book are possibly the most important issues of the 21st Century, a stark reality that is little reported by the media and largely ignored by world leaders. Every thinking person should be aware of this looming threat to civilization, the real-life story that unfolds in the pages of DEAD END PATH.

To help bring the message of DEAD END PATH to a wider audience, I have begun to create a new website at www.agdeadend.com. It is only partially constructed, but you may find it interesting to visit it now to read the text of the Author’s Note from the book in which I explain my personal life’s journey and how it resulted in the writing of this book. Please bookmark and return to it as it takes form. It will contain news and commentary relating to the subject of the book.

Posted in Agriculture Issues, Book Reviews, Desertification and Soil Loss, Economics, Essays and Opinion, Famine, Fossil Fuels, Politics, Resource Depletion, Technology | Comments Off

Famine Continues to Stalk the Earth

Saturday, July 31st, 2010

By David L. Brown

Wheat, the Staff of Life

Wheat, the Staff of Life

We’ve talked here before about the fact that the world’s supply of basic foodstuffs is falling short with production barely able to meet demand. Now wheat prices are soaring due to drought in Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Australia, added to excess rain in Canada that has taken 13 million acres out of production this season.

Wheat futures on the Chicago Board of Trade experienced a 42 percent increase just during the month of July, the biggest monthly percentage gain since the CBOT began keeping records in 1959. Wheat contracts jumped by $1.97 per bu. in July, with September futures closing on Friday the 30th at $6.615 per bu. This is not an all-time high—wheat reached the eight dollar level during the food crisis of 2008—but the end isn’t in sight and more increases are expected as bad news continues to come in about yield expectations and traders keep bidding up the price.

Now as one might expect the press reports on this story raise the specter of, well, higher prices for bread and pasta in the grocery store. Nowhere is the word “famine” mentioned in the stories I read. It’s all about us, you see, and how this might impact our family budgets., a relatively minor fact if you want to know the truth. You may remember we went through a similar period of angst two years ago when the price of wheat was a concern, with reports of rioting in Italy because pasta prices had jumped.

Let me put this in perspective. A bushel of wheat weighs 60 lbs. When wheat prices hit that $8 range in 2008, the North Dakota Wheat Commission estimated that the farm value of the wheat in a typical loaf of bread was about 20¢, up from a previous range of 12-15¢ so the actual cost of a loaf of bread represented by the wheat it contained actually rose by just 5¢ to 8¢ — hardly cause for panic. The March 14, 2008 Wheat Commission news release (read it here) concluded that the extra cost for a family that consumed one loaf of bread and one pound of pasta per week would be about $20 a year. Actually, my calculations are even lower (+8¢ per loaf or packet of pasta, times 2/week times 52 weeks equals just $8.32). This shouldn’t even be considered as news, and little more than a rounding error in family budgets.

But what’s the real story? It’s famine, because it’s not the price of wheat that matters, but the supply. The fact is that a shortfall in wheat production will mean there won’t be enough wheat to satisfy world demand. About a third of the people on our planet rely on wheat as their major foodstuff, the “Staff of Life.” Many of these people live in poor nations and must buy their grain or rely on food aid from rich nations.

The confusion with availability of food and money is a sign of our misguided emphasis on monetary factors. Clearly, when there isn’t enough food to go around, money cannot solve the problem. In other words, actual food cannot be magically transformed from the ether by the application of paper dollars from a printing press. Sadly, humans can’t even eat the money, so there’s trouble ahead for many in the poor regions of the world.

As far as we here in the comfortable West are concerned, the price of wheat will be bid up as is presently taking place until demand drops to meet supply. That occurs when some potential consumers conclude they cannot afford to buy wheat at the higher price. The first to reach that point will be the poorest of the world.

Another way that reports mislead us is by conflating percentages with actual values. Let’s imagine a worst-case scenario in which wheat rises to $20 per bu., or about four times the recent price range. Wheat will sell for 400% of its previous price. Whoa, a terrible disaster, right? Well, maybe not. Using the factor noted above where $8 wheat was equivalent to 20¢ per loaf, at $20 the farm value of the wheat in a loaf of bread would rise to 50¢. That’s a little less scary. And if a premium loaf of bread sells for $3, and other factors don’t change (they will, but never mind), then although the price of wheat will have risen by four times, the cost will add only about 16 percent to the cost of the loaf of bread.

Taking it one more step, if a family consumes one loaf of bread and one box of pasta per week, and the wheat they contain costs an extra 50¢, the cost is just $2 a week or $104 per year. That’s under a worst case assumption that is probably quite a bit higher than wheat prices are likely to reach, because the poor will be priced out of the game before prices reach that lofty height.

Prices even in the range of 2008 would be devastating to several hundred million people who depend on wheat and have few if any alternatives. And to repeat: Money cannot solve the problem; food aid agencies cannot create more food simply by throwing money at the problem. Rich nations will ante up whatever it takes to get as much wheat as their populations demand and others will be left without. For more on this point, see my essay “Money Won’t Solve Looming Famine,” posted June 2, 2009 here.

Not only that, but when the price of one commodity goes up it takes others with it as frustrated buyers seek alternatives. Thus, corn and soybean prices also rose last month, although not nearly not as much as wheat.

The specter Famine

The specter Famine

Folks, we are reaching Peak Food, and with population continuing to rise this is an unfolding tragedy. For the press and politicians to moan and gnash their teeth over the price of bread is beside the point, which is that many people of the world will go without enough to eat. Most of those same people are already malnourished, so a wheat shortfall will push them toward outright starvation.

As resources such as oil and gas decline, famines are probably inevitable. We haven’t seen much of that  ancient scourge of humanity in recent decades, but it’s fated to return, perhaps very soon. I’ll keep you posted.

Posted in Agriculture Issues, Economics, Famine | Comments Off

Oh How Far We Have Come!

Saturday, April 3rd, 2010

By David L. Brown

In 1965 Gordon E. Moore, a co-founder of Intel Corp., wrote a paper in which he predicted that computing power would continue to increase exponentially, that is, doubling again and again. Moore noted that since the invention of transistors, about seven years before, the number of components (switches) that could be put on a single integrated circuit chip had doubled approximately every year. He claimed that that trend would continue “for at least ten years.”

Well, what has become known as “Moore’s Law” turned out to be an understatement. Since his paper appeared, computing power has continued to double, not every year but every 18 to 24 months, regular as clockwork. And while contrarians have often claimed the end is in sight, technology has continued to roll forward. Present estimates are that Moore’s Law will continue  to hold true until at least 2015, and the promise of new methods coming over the horizon may extend the exponential expansion even further. And, oh yes, should quantum computing become a developed technology, it could go even faster and further to almost unimaginable levels of storage and computing power. In a few years, you may be able to hold the entire contents of the Library of Congress in one hand while scratching your head with the other.

Words are great things, and it is my personal belief that despite the old saying they are more powerful than pictures. Sometimes, though…well, here’s an example.

storage-1980-2010crop1What you see here are two forms of computer storage, one from 30 years ago and one from today. On the left is an eight-unit IBM 3380 Disk System from 1980. Each of the eight units can hold 2.5 GB of data, so the total capacity of the array is 20 GB. The estimated cost of this system ranged to more than $1 million. It weighs about 4400 pounds. This was an advanced example of the cutting-edge technology that had put a man on the Moon.

On the right, by way of comparison, we see three 32 GB micro SD flash memory cards from today. Each card has more than half again more capacity than the complete IBM array from 30 years ago, and together the three cards could store nearly five times as much as the eight units of the old hard disk unit. The weight of a single flash memory chip is about half a gram, or 1/70th of an ounce. You can buy a 32 GB flash card for less than a hundred bucks, and Apple’s latest iPod and iPhone products, not to mention the new iPad, can be ordered with that much memory. Prices are sure to come down fast as new, even larger capacity products hit the market.

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Posted in Communications, Economics, Technology | Comments Off

A World Teetering on the Brink of Instability

Thursday, December 17th, 2009

By David L. Brown

A news release from Earth Policy Institute this morning features a peek at the subject of global stability as reported in Lester Brown’s new book Plan B 4.0. This is a critical issue because nations that are failing create difficulty for any response to climate change and resource depletion.

I was intrigued by the list Brown presents, a ranking of the Top 20 failing states in the world as of 2008 (the 2009 list is out now, and is essentially unchanged). The table is from Foreign Policy magazine, based on statistics developed by the Fund for Peace in cooperation with the magazine. Together they each year measure the instability index of the world’s nations, that is, the chances they are failing or have already failed. These are the worst-cases:

top_20_failing_states

The rankings are based on 1-10 scores in 12 critical areas, with 10 being the worst. Thus, a completely failed state will score 120 points. (It’s hard to imagine such a place; it would probably consist of radioactive slag.) It’s no surprise to see that Somalia is No. 1 with 114.7 points. Zimbabwe is less than a point behind, followed by Sudan, Chad and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

It’s interesting to examine some of the other failed or failing states on this list. Extremely notable, to me at least, is that coming in Nos. 6 and 7 are nations familiar to most Americans … Iraq (108.6) and Afghanistan (108.2). These scores represent 90% of “perfect,” and yet we must scratch our head in puzzlement at the fact that our nation and many of its allies have spent the better part of a decade in the mission of creating successful democratic societies in those very places.

Now I am all in favor of peaceful democratic societies, but it’s generally been proven that nearly-failed states are not usually places where they are found. Does it make sense to attempt to plant the seeds of Western civilization in such infertile soil?

Iraq was formerly ruled by a ruthless dictator, “peace” being maintained under the iron-shod boot of tyranny. As Western troops depart, will that unhappy nation continue to move in the direction of “peaceful, Western-style democracy,” or will it break down into bloody rivalry between Shia, Sunni and Kurdish factions? As a very nearly failed state, the latter scenario seems a more likely outcome than the emergence of a Jeffersonian Golden Age.

And in Afghanistan, things are even worse. That benighted place has never really been a nation at all, but a ragtag collection of fiefdoms ruled over by warlords and funded by the opium trade. Even today, after years of military operations against them, the Taliban control wide areas of the region. Now that the U.S. has set its departure date for  2011, what hope is there for this failed state to suddenly thrive and grow into a peaceful member of the world’s democratic nations? To demonstrate my guess about the odds of that happening, try this experiment: Place one large snowball in a microwave oven; set the controls to “high” and the timer for ten minutes; and hit “cook”. Later as you mop up the floor, you’ll have a good analogy of what will likely be the future in Afghanistan, a place that has been impossible to rule since the days of Alexander the Great. Namely, a huge mess.

The place is absolutely unready to take responsibility for its own governance and security. The U.S. Marines have been assigned the task of training native Afghan soldiers, and according to a recent report from The Guardian, it’s a near fruitless exercise, dealing with illiterate, lazy, hash-smoking peasants who are completely ill-suited to function as modern-day soldiers.

So the outlook is dim for Afghanistan, No. 7 on the list  of Top 20 Failed States. But what can we learn from some of the others?

Well, there’s Pakistan right there at No. 10. The world’s sixth most populous nation, Pakistan is a nuclear power. How do you feel knowing that a nation that ranks 104.1 on an instability scale of 120 has nuclear bombs and missiles? Imagine how India feels, having to live right next door.

Pakistan isn’t the only unstable nation with a large population to make the list. Bangladesh, with a score of 98.1 is the seventh most populous nation, and right behind it is Nigeria, the eighth largest by population and a score of 99.8.

But that’s not all, for the Top 20 also includes North Korea, another nuclear power. Talk about instability!

Now, from the Fund for Peace website, here is a graphic to give you the “big picture” about world instability. You might be surprised and even dismayed, may even feel chills go up and down your spine. The nations colored in red are the most seriously failed or failing. There are presently 38 of them including Iran, another dangerous and potential nuclear power with a score of 90.0.

failedstatesYes, the red is where the most trouble is, but notice how much of the world is covered in orange, indicating a “warning” stage. And as far as those nations shown in green and judged “sustainable,” meaning safe, there are only 13 of them, not including the U.S., Britain, France, Germany, Japan and many other advanced nations. As you can see, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, along with Ireland and five Scandinavian countries including Iceland are the main “safe” places, along with Switzerland, Holland, Austria and Luxembourg.

In case you’re wondering, here are the scores for some of the “yellow” countries: Germany 36.2; France 35.3; United States 34.0; United Kingdom 30.5; Japan 31.2. And the “safest” place of all: Norway 18.3.

It is interesting to note that the further you get from the “center” as indicated by this map, the safer. Central Africa, the Middle East and a few nations along the fringe  of Asia are worst off, surrounded by a sea of orange. It is only when you get far away from these areas that the colors fade to yellow, and finally to green.

And all of these nations, with perhaps only a rare exception or two, are presently meeting in Copenhagen to discuss a global plan to cooperate in mitigating CO2 emissions, no doubt the greatest challenge humanity has ever faced. What could go wrong?

Posted in Conflict and War, Default File, Economics, Energy Technology, Essays and Opinion, Global Security, Politics, Population Issues | Comments Off

Already Doomed, New Dinosaur Goes to Sea

Friday, November 13th, 2009

By David L. Brown

If there is any segment of the wounded economic world that stands out as primed for failure, it may be the cruise ship industry. There are dozens of floating pleasure palaces plying the oceans these days, many of them only partially occupied and with special “deals” offered by desperate operators that make it cheaper to stay on a cruise ship than to hole up at a Motel 6.

In the news today is the arrival in Florida of the latest cruise ship behemoth, the Oasis of the Seas, as pictured here:

1_21_111309_cruise1This monstrous boat has 16 decks and 2700 cabins, with capacity for 6300 passengers and 2100 crew members. It is 40 percent larger than the next largest cruise ship, and five times the length of the Titanic.

There are literally hundreds of these things, ranging in size from specialized small ships but including dozens of large ocean-going ships. The Oasis of the Seas will bring to 22 the number of ships operated by Royal Caribbean Cruises. Carnival cruise lines has 23, and Princess, made famous by “The Love Boat” TV show, operates 15.

The trouble is that there is no future for the cruising business, and for a number of reasons:

• Fewer people can afford to take cruises, and especially if they are expected to pay full-fare. Many are taking advantage of blow-out pricing, but cruise lines cannot continue to operate ships forever at a loss. The present economic crisis has taken more than ten trillion dollars out of the net worth of Americans, and potential travelers around the world face similar conditions.
• Operating costs have risen substantially, primarily as a result of uncertainties and price spikes in the oil markets. That puts the operators in a serious bind, caught between low bookings and higher fuel costs. My guess is that most ships are losing money at unsustainable rates and that during the next year we will see a great many ships going into dry dock or being sent to the ship-breaking yards in Asia.
• Continual outbreaks of mysterious illnesses on board ships have plagued the industry, confounding public health experts and causing  passengers to stay away in droves.
• Political instability in some areas is having an effect on cruise operators. For example, increasing numbers of Caribbean destinations are perceived as too dangerous for tourists. Dockage facilities at the remaining islands and coastal countries are too limited to take the huge numbers of ships that would like to make them ports of call.
• Pirates, bless their black little hearts, have also contributed to the uncertainty of cruise ship operations, particularly in the Indian Ocean but now spreading to other areas including reports of activity off the coast of South America.

Put it all together with many other factors plaguing the world economy, and it seems that cruise ship days are numbered. And dinosaurs such as the Oasis of the Seas, built at a cost of $1.5 billion, are doomed to extinction.

And finally, is it just me or is this latest seagoing dino just, well, ugly? It reminds me of a barge on steroids, with none of the graceful lines of a Queen Mary II or the late-great QE II, destined to become a permanent tourist attraction in Dubai — a place that is suffering the same kind of implosion now destroying the cruise lines … but that’s a story for another time.

Posted in Age of Oil, Economics, Transportation | Comments Off

High Hopes for Copenhagen May Be Dashed

Tuesday, October 6th, 2009

By David L. Brown

081204093041Great hope is being placed on the upcoming conference on climate change, to take place December 7*-18 in Copenhagen, Denmark. The meeting has the acronym COP15, which indicates it is the 15th “Conference of Parties” in the UN’s Framework Convention on Climate Change. Representatives from 170 countries are expected to take part. It is hoped that COP15 can make substantial progress toward a replacement of the Kyoto Protocol which expires in 2012.

Although there is much sturm and drang about this issue, my feeling is that any significant progress may be difficult if not impossible to achieve. The problem is that most poor or developing nations want exceptions to the need to reduce emissions of CO², methane and other greenhouse gases (GHGs), in effect pushing the problem onto the advanced nations. The general argument is that the rich nations have been the biggest polluters in the past, and that they should therefore bear the expense of fixing the problem. That particularly targets the United States, which was formerly the No. 1 source of carbon emissions. Unfortunately, in view of the present economic woes, the First World economies are not exactly robust.

Another fact to consider is that the advanced nations have already passed into what is called the Post-Industrial Age, even as developing nations are introducing into the world a new era of industrialization. Thus, the title of the world’s No. 1 source of GHGs has recently passed to China.

Identifying rich nations as the responsible culprits also flies in the face of the fact that developing countries are the main source of rising GHG emissions. For example, the amounts of carbon released by India grew by 103 percent between 1992 and 2007. China did even worse, with carbon emissions growing by 150 percent. As we’ve reported here, China is bringing nearly two coal-fired power plants on-line each week.

How do these figures relate to the global picture? Taking all nations into account, on average GHG emissions increased by 38 percent during that period. In the United States, a rise of just 20 percent was reported. Some EU member nations have done even better, with several including Germany, France and Great Britain among others actually achieving net reductions.

Now I will be the first to point out that to compare statistics in the form of percentages such as those can be extremely misleading, subject to the embarrassing question “percentage of what?” To explain by example: If you have one apple and get one more apple, you have enjoyed a 100 percent increase. A very big increase, right? But it’s relative, you see, for if you have 100 apples and get one more apple you have experienced an increase of only one percent . A very small increase—and yet in both cases the difference was precisely the same, one apple.

India and China were coming from behind, with lower bases against which to measure the increase (fewer apples), so it makes their statistics seem larger. The US had a higher starting point (more apples), thus making that increase seem smaller by comparison. Indeed, according to the World Resources Institute:

Overall, with less than one-twentieth of the world’s population (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 2009), the U.S. currently accounts for about one-fifth of total global emissions of [GHGs].

It is common sense that the world’s largest economies would be the largest sources of carbon emissions, because development has been based on fossil fuels since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. However, the problem of GHG emissions cannot be solved by looking into the past, but by changing future actions everywhere. Unfortunately, the general drift seems to be that the majority of the world’s people, as represented by the governments of populous nations such as India and China, would like for the more advanced nations to contribute most of the hard work and sacrifice of reducing carbon emissions, while leaving the “developing” nations to continue relatively unimpeded on the course of industrialization.

(more…)

Posted in Climate Change, Economics, Fossil Fuels, Pollution | 1 Comment »

The Power of Economic Incentives

Tuesday, September 22nd, 2009

By David L. Brown

How do  we go about reducing carbon emissions to prevent climate change from spiraling into a global catastrophe? One obvious answer is to slow down the go-go industrial economies that pour CO2 into the atmosphere. Not so easy? Well, actually we’re already doing it, according to this article in today’s New York Times. The story leads off with this:

Global carbon emissions are expected to post their biggest drop in more than 40 years this year as the global recession froze economic activity and slashed energy use around the world.

The decline comes as political leaders are struggling to come up with a common approach to dealing with climate change.

The main factor behind this year’s drop in emissions is the slowdown in industrial activity and trade around the world, according to a study due to be released in November by the International Energy Agency.

But the energy agency, which provides policy advice and research to industrialized nations, found that government actions had also contributed to the drop in emissions. The agency said it expected to see global carbon emissions fall 2.6 percent this year.

So, see, we can do it … all it takes is the economic incentive to decrease the use of fossil fuels. There is no doubt that last year’s spike in oil prices has a lot to do with this.

The Times gives credit to the economic bust and “government actions,” but there is another important aspect to this, perhaps the most important one of all. Millions of individuals have learned to think twice about driving unnecessary miles, leaving the thermostat at extreme settings, or letting the lights burn all over the house 24/7. They’ve made personal decisions to reduce energy use.

That’s called conservation, and without a doubt conservation is the easiest and most effective way to deal with CO2 emissions in the short term. The more people become conscious of their contributions to carbon pollution and take steps to reduce their “footprint,” the better for all of us.

And what is the secret behind all of this? It’s easy. Think Bill Clinton’s campaign theme: “It’s the economy, stupid.” Yes, the high price of oil and its economic effects — from international trade right down to individual household budgets — is the reason why carbon emissions have dropped.

Your ordinary Joe may not understand global warming or even give a hoot about the environment, but he does react when he sees his wallet taking a hit. Like most of us, he’s on a limited budget, so when the cost of profligate energy use starts to hurt, he does what he can to save money. In this case, he stops using as much energy.

A major reason why alternative energy sources have been slow to arrive on the  scene is that petroleum remained relatively cheap for far too long. In their self-interested way, for decades OPEC and major oil companies did everything in their power to hold down costs and stifle alternatives. They did it by using the  power of supply-and-demand, turning up the pumps whenever there was a new spurt of interest in alternatives. They played that game for years, until it became no longer possible.

It is fairly well documented that the Oil Peak has been reached, or at least we are teetering on the top. Beyond lies the downside slope of the Hubbert Curve, leading to a time when demand for oil cannot be met by supply. That means sustained higher costs for petroleum, which will introduce new opportunities for alternatives. We are already seeing voluntary conservation in response to costs, and as time goes on, we’ll undoubtedly see more people embracing alternatives. After all, the human race has been labeled Homo Economicus, “economic man”. Create an economic incentive, and humankind will react accordingly.

There are limits to how much conservation can do to turn around carbon emissions. Of course, none of us want an endless depression to “solve” the threat of climate change. But there are lessons to be learned from the recent experience, and we need to act on them. In fact, the very forces of  economics will make  it almost automatic, because dwindling oil resources will make it difficult or impossible for the world economy to enter a new “bubble” of rising  expectations. Less oil means higher prices, and we have seen that higher prices will put a lid on demand.

We can hope the world economy will begin to edge back from the brink, but we can’t afford to return to the same-old, same-old process of driving economic growth through continued use of fossil fuels. We need to begin to move toward new-style economies that are based on sustainable and environmentally friendly models.

Can we do it? Who knows — but since there’s probably no alternative it would be best if we at least try.

Posted in Age of Oil, Climate Change, Economics, Fossil Fuels, Pollution | Comments Off

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