Guest Opinion | Energy transition, the bigger picture, Part 2 of 3

||| FROM ED SUIJ |||

Before we continue with Part 2, here is some added information that is useful when we talk about the lifespan of solar panels.

Biodiversity is essential for healthy, thriving ecosystems. Mature ecosystems are diverse, resilient, complex, contain lots of species, separations and barriers. (Think of Darwin’s finches in the Galapagos, or the extreme topography of Papua New Guinea that created 700 languages on that island alone). Young ecosystems are less diverse, simpler, vulnerable, contain few species, no separations or barriers, may be large scale (think monoculture.)

Any energy input besides that of the sun will move an ecosystem from mature to less mature, from stable to less stable.  For example imagine rototilling a perennial wildflower meadow (energy input) and expect wildflowers next year. It will likely be broom, nettles or thistles.

Human use of fossil fuel at the moment is 100 million barrels (each of 42 gallons) per day.  In 2018  36.4 billion barrels were burned. In one year, as much oil was burned as half the amount of water in Lake Michigan.  How much energy is in a barrel of oil, you may ask. Well, roughly 23,200 hours of human work. In other words, it would take 11.3 years of human labor to replace one barrel of oil.  A top athlete could do it in 5.7 years. The average American uses 60 barrels of oil per year. If we didn’t burn oil each one of us would need about 600 employees working full time for a year to grow, produce, construct,  transport — in other words, do all the things we do now with the use of fossil energy.

The burning of this massive amount of fossil fuel does two things.  It puts an enormous amount of energy (movement, labor, horsepower) into the Earth’s ecosystems and it raises the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Pumping this much energy into any biodiverse, stable ecosystem moves it rapidly towards a less diverse and more unstable condition. Example: the Amazon rainforest is degraded through energy input (bulldozer) into soy bean fields, and  that way will turn from carbon sink to carbon emitter in a very short time. ( 831.951 thousand km2 was logged in 2022).

You might say why not go all electric.  Won’t that solve all of our problems?  Yes and no.  Yes, it might take care of a part of the carbon dioxide problem. ( Already agricultural practices and cement production alone account for 20% of CO2 emissions)  And no, because it is the amount of energy you put in the ecosystem that makes it unstable, no matter what the source. You can destroy the Amazon rainforest with an electric bulldozer, fell the Redwoods with an electric chainsaw, ruin the topsoil of the midwest with an electric tractor.  Diversity disappears when you eliminate separation and barriers that have created ecological niches and species diversity.

The results of moving in the direction of unstable, less resilient ecosystems are here. We are loosing one unique language every week. We have entered the 6th extinction, where thousands of species that co-evolved with us for millions of years are disappearing for ever. (estimates of 1 million by 2050).  Right now Africa is struggling with the worst locust population explosion ever, caused by extreme climate fluctuations.  A locust swarm of 150 million individuals (about 1 square kilometer) can in a day eat a day’s food for 35,000 people.  In many places we are seeing ecosystem collapse; coral bleaching, dead zones in the Gulf of Mexico, vanishing Monarch butterflies.  Indeed, if you connect every place with every other ( think energy input in the form of airplanes), a new (mutated) organism (pathogen) can spread like wildfire,  like Ebola, Covid 19, and the latest example Mpox.  Just like a fungus or insect infestation in a mono-cultured crop.  An ecosystem with no diversity has no resilience.  Then come the poisonous pesticides, fungicides, herbicides, and antibiotics, vaccines to “correct” the system.

So, even if we we were to replace all our energy use with non fossil fuel sources, it is the AMOUNT of extra energy that you put into an ecosystem that degrades it.  And it doesn’t matter how that energy is produced!

So even if we were to reach carbon neutral or zero emissions by 2050  through a huge communal, global effort (virtually impossible), what good would that do if you have ruined the planet getting there?  As I said before extinction is forever.

So the only thing that makes sense is to bring about a steep energy descent and begin repairing the damage done, saving whatever is left of relative undamaged systems and strive to increase bio-diversity where ever we can.

Another important point that Heinberg makes is that there will have to be sacrifices in this energy transition and descent to reach our goal.

That raises some questions: what sacrifices and who will have to make them. In 1950 the world emitted 6 billion tonnes of CO₂. By 1990 this had almost quadrupled, reaching more than 20 billion tonnes. Emissions have continued to grow (see the Keeling Curve). We now emit over 35 billion tonnes each year.   Of which 6.3 is emitted by the US.

Do the people who caused the problem have to scarify the most? The USA has emitted cumulative the most to date: around a quarter of all historical CO_2,  twice that of China which is the second largest contributor.  In contrast, most countries across Africa have been responsible for less than 0.02% of all emissions since 1750.

At this point in time China as a country has surpassed the US in total daily emissions by about 2 1/2 times. Even though per capita every American still uses on average double the amount of a Chinese person. So shouldn’t the party responsible for the problem take the lead in fixing it?  Are we responsible for the emissions cause by our parents and grandparents?

The US with only 4.2 % of the world population uses about 25 % of all resources (materials, fuel) available on the planet on a daily basis. If the lifestyle of the average American was extrapolated over the whole world population, we would need 5 planets Earth to provide for that. As science tells us that there is really only one planet Earth, we seem to be willing to deny a great deal of the world population the same lifestyle that we enjoy and take for granted.

So maybe as a community it is time to start thinking about what ONE PLANET living would look like. Are we willing to give up 4/5 of everything we own and use, so the rest of the planet can have at least 1 fifth of what we have? Do we believe that all human beings are in principle equal and have the same rights to food and shelter that we think we have?  Some serious questions to ponder.

At this point the well being and health of a lot of fellow humans all over the world and in this country are sacrificed so we can have a disproportionate share of the pie. Not one person I know would want to live next to a fracking site, where thousands of gallons of toxic chemicals are pumped in aquifers, methane and other toxic fumes are polluting the air and cancer rates are skyrocketing. All, so we can enjoy “cheap” gas prices, which is politically convenient.  All, so most of this hard won fossil fuel can be wasted, because we can and we want to.  Because I want to fly my private jet to the see the Super Bowl in Las vegas ( 1000 private jets did just that), or go on a cruise to see the penguins in Antartica before they go extinct. The folly of it.

This is only talking about what humans would have to sacrifice. ( A life of leisure and luxury without ever having to break into a sweat?)

Modern industrial agriculture causes about 10% of total US greenhouse gas emissions. (Agricultural emissions of greenhouse gases include carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide, and methane). Plus it produces large environmental sacrifice areas. In the Central Valley of California thousands of acres are monocropped in almonds, grapes, citrus, walnuts, tomatoes,  etc, where all other living things that could threaten the crops are chemically exterminated, creating vast ecological dead zones. Factory farming produces contaminated foods with degraded nutrition and creates the opposite of resilience (dependence), courting famine by extinguishing the genetic diversity of the crops themselves.

30 million acres of prime farmland in the midwest are used to grow corn, which is turned into ethanol, which in turn is burned and then releases CO2 and water, while degrading the land and loosing enormous amounts of topsoil. If all the lost topsoil in the midwest were put into railway cars, they would span the planet 4 times over!

Each year on the planet an estimated 24 billion tonnes of fertile soil are lost due to erosion. That’s 3 tonnes lost every year for every person on the planet. Soils store more than 4000 billion tonnes of carbon.

Proper farming techniques in the US alone could store a extra whopping 1 billion tons of CO2 annually.  That is about 1/6 of US emissions.   At this moment only 2 billion tons of the emitted 6.3 billions tons are stored and kept out of the atmosphere. No wonder the Keeling Curve is going up.

Population

When the topic of the climate crisis comes up, what we hear a lot is, that there simply are too many people on the planet. Often end of conversation. But it is not that simple. Indeed the planet would greatly benefit  from a declining population, but at this point in time it is only 1% of the world population that is responsible for 25% of carbon emissions. So the carbon footprint per person varies enormously. For example one American child generates as much CO2 as 106 kids in Haiti. And the longterm carbon impact of a child born in the US is 160 times more than one born in Afrika.

And then there is the attitude towards the environment. If you have 8 billion people who think about nothing else than exploitation, always more, instant gratification, rivalry, and immediate profits versus longterm survival, yes, than 8  billion will lead to disaster.

But 8 billion people willing to cooperate, restore, regenerate, build soils rather than destroy them, could probably live peacefully and well on this planet.

Now what? The way forward and possible actions

The evolution of life has come a long way. From the Big Bang 13.8 billion years ago, the forming of our solar system 4,5 billion years ago and many celestial collisions, meteors, tectonic plate movement, ice ages, volcanic eruptions and extinctions later, amazingly here we are.  To think of all the pieces of the puzzle that had to fall into place in that long long history for us to be here at this moment, that is just beyond imagination.

And now we gonna throw it all away in a few hundred years?  Really?

After reading this (maybe too long article) many people will throw their hands up in the air and say: another (s)care article about climate change, I am sorry but I have a life to live, a job and kids to care of, it will all last my time. And then go on with their lives. Easy to understand.

How did we find ourselves in this conundrum?  Maybe the following analogy might shed a bit of light on what we are facing.

Imagine a rickety old yellow school bus heavily loaded with people. It has being running for a remarkable long time, it has plenty dents, rust spots, the roof is leaking here and there, some windows are seriously cracked, the tail pipe leaks and hangs low, the engine is sputtering and missing quite a few parts, is leaking oil and did not have an oil change for quite a while. The tires are bald and the brakes are so so. But heh, it is running. The people in the bus are on a long journey, but they brought some beer and snacks, the radio is playing some great music and everybody is having a good time and are taking the exhaust fumes for granted.

At some point in the trip a steeply raised railroad crossing is looming not far ahead. All of a sudden bells start ringing, lights flashing and in the distance a huge freight train is rapidly approaching around a bend. It is one of those situations were it is hard to judge how fast the train is approaching.

What do we do? Two choices: either we slow down, slam on the poor brakes, hope to avoid the collision and save the bus or rev the engine hard, hope for the best and that the pistons don’t freeze.  We probably will loose a couple more parts and the low hanging exhaust will likely break off on the big hump, trying to beat the oncoming locomotive in the hope that there will be good auto parts store on the other side to help us continue the trip. In case we get stuck, all is lost.

What would you choose? Slow and stop the bus, take a break, camp out for a while and repair the exhaust, make sure no train is coming and for safety have the bulk of the people walk while crossing the tracks. Or? (Bus is planet Earth, train is Keeling Curve, rev the engine is the economy, auto parts store is technology and A.I.)

Well, you might have guessed. As society we are choosing to rev the engine and try to beat the train.  A few people at the top are gambling with the future of all humanity, although the odds are very poor. “W’re not going back”, is the battle cry.

As an individual you have nothing to say about it. Not a single native tribe would take such a decision.

Because we NEED to grow the economy, because we have bills, debts and mortgages to pay, we have to recoup our investments. (the national debt is currently 35.28 TRILLION dollars)  We need lots of money to make all the carbon scrubbers and sequestering machines, we need lots of money to make all the robots, we need lots of money to pay for our former mistakes ( the Hanford clean up will cost between 400 and 600 billion dollars, say at least $1000 per person ), we need lots of money for a big army, because other people might come and get what we have pilfered from all over the planet (military spending for 2023 about 900 billion dollars, roughly $3000 per person annually! ).

So we got work to do. We have to wrestle all that wealth somehow form the planet. Really? And without causing any harm? More folly. Collective brain fog? Maybe caused by the increasing nanoparticles of plastic in our brain? But more likely it is the way we have organized ourselves.

SEE ALSO:

Energy transition, the bigger picture, Part 1