Green Chip Living is a blog by Green Chip Stocks focusing on Green and Sustainable Living
To simplify where we are as a civilization and where we’re going with respect to energy consumption, economics, and environmentalism, it’s useful to postulate three broad “plans”:
Plan A: We continue on our current course. We ignore the fact that our population will soon be growing from 7 billion to 10 billion, and that an ever-growing percentage of that population is joining the ranks of consumers. Our leaders know that we’re in the process of driving off a cliff; they may lack basic decency, but they’re long on intelligence, and they exploit voter ignorance of this core truth as long as they possibly can. During this time, they and the extraordinarily powerful forces that elected them desperately look for new ways of extracting fossil fuels, while obfuscating the effects on global climate, ocean acidification, social chaos, war, respiratory disease, etc. The elite remain in power until the planet is in ruins.
Plan B: We aggressively adopt what Jeremy Rifkin and others refer to as “The Third Industrial Revolution,” which contemplates continued economic growth by focusing on renewable energy and the many other components of sustainability. As Rifkin conceives this, there are “five pillars” at play here: shifting to renewable energy, developing buildings as power plants, deploying hydrogen and other storage technologies, using Internet technology, and transitioning the transport fleet to electric, plug-in and fuel cell vehicles. Not to give anything away, but this concept is embraced by several of the people I interviewed in my second book, due out shortly: “Is Renewable Really Doable?”
Plan C: Although we’d probably love to believe in Plan B, we just don’t see it as a pragmatic reality. We regard the phrase “sustainable growth” as an oxymoron, and find a way to cut back on energy consumption and deal with a period of negative growth, because this is our only choice. Btw, this too is addressed in my next book, and it’s the core belief of Bill McKibben and many other great minds.
My job is to pull this apart, to unravel the issues that underlie each of the three major plans. And now may be a good time to thank you, reader, for being here, and offering your insightful comments as we work this through together.
Where does your food come from?
How is it grown?
How is your meat processed?
These aren't typically questions we think about while eating a spinach salad or biting into a burger. And sadly, that's what most industrial farming operations are counting on.
The fact is, our food system is one that is highly unsustainable. Through the rapid deterioration of our soil to the push to produce more meat at a cheaper cost, we are choking on our own progress.
Now there's an amazing movie called FRESH that highlights this very issue. But it also offers solutions that are actually being integrated right now. You see, this is not your typical, depressing documentary that focuses on the problem but offers no solution. In fact, I would argue that this movie offers those who care about sustainable agriculture, a sense of hope.
Normally, when I come across these types of documentaries, I include a trailer. But for the next few days, you can actually watch the entire movie for free right here.
I strongly urge you to check it out. It's truly inspiring.
A reader recently sent me this question. . .
Craig, I’m reading your book and really like the point made about gas being double dirty and double inefficient because of the refining process. I just think that the conversation then should also look at the double / extra cost and pollution that the batteries represent. Thoughts?
Here’s the way I would look at that:
1) Batteries are more closely analogous to the gas tank than they are to the gas itself. I.e, they’re the place in which the energy is stored, and they are only minutely consumed as the electro-chemical energy is converted to kinetic energy to power the vehicle, and then recharged from an external source.
2) Car batteries are the single most recycled item on the planet, and that will certainly continue to be the case with electric transportation. Even if that were to change suddenly, there are (by the quick calcs I just did) 2210 cubic miles of lithium in the top 100 meters of the Earth’s crust, or about 10^13 pounds, sufficient to build lithium-ion batteries for hundreds of billions of electric vehicles.
3) Personally, I think zinc-air is on its way, and zinc is more than four times as abundant in the Earth’s crust as lithium.
4) Having said all this, to your point, there is most certainly an ecological impact of anything we do in terms of energy generation and transportation (other than walking/bicycling). Even energy efficiency normally comes at a cost in terms of insulation, installation equipment, etc. As I often say: There is no free lunch. Yet, just as the trade-off in installing insulation in our buildings is a no-brainer, the overall “well-to-wheels” comparison between gasoline-powered vehicles and electric transportation is favorable to the latter, and will continue to improve as we bring on more renewables. Here is the piece I normally recommend to those wishing to know more on the subject: Sherry Boschert’s “The Cleanest Cars: Well-to-Wheels Emissions Comparison.”
I suppose one could say that the only exception to the “no free lunch” rule is conservation. We all need simply to use less energy.
A nice video from Translogic on their drive in the electric Delorean from DMC.
The Delorean became famous for its appearance in the Back to the Future movies, where it was used for time travel.
Before that, with the looks of a sportscar, it appealed to the masses as cutting edge technology. Unfortunately, it was too heavy to handle like a sportscar. But the electric vehicle version now has twice the power of the original Delorean and a prototype is in the making to achieve a 0-100 km/h within 5 seconds.
Wonder if there will be more iconic cars from movies that are getting the EV upgrade they need.
So it looks like the DOE has put together a new video explaining electric and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles.
If you're a regular reader of these pages, this video probably won't tell you anything you don't already know. However, it's a pretty decent first attempt at disseminating some very important information about the electrification of our personal transportation.
Check it out. . .
There's still quite a bit of misinformation out there about electric cars. Hopefully, these types of educational videos will enlighten a very misinformed public.
A couple of weeks ago, Ford recalled 539,000 vehicles to fix flaws that could lead to fires in some SUVs and complete loss of power in some minivans.
I think that story made headlines for about an hour.
Now think back to the Chevy Volt recall from late last year. I'm sure you remember.
After a series of crash tests led to a couple of Chevy Volts catching fire in a testing area, the news streams were pouring over with coverage.
Oh no, the electric vehicle is dead!
Government Motors taxpayer boondoggle up in smoke!
Electric Car Momentum Halted After Cars Catch Fire!
There were thousands of stories that used this opportunity to bash electric cars. You know, those things that can help us displace foreign oil and alleviate the environmental burden that comes with living in our car-centric society.
It's sad really, that partisan slavery and a general pride in complacency and ignorance is something we champion so well in this country. But it doesn't matter.
The fact is, electric car momentum is alive and well. And as far as the Volt fires?
Well, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has officially closed its investigation into whether or not the Chevy Volt poses a fire risk after an accident.
The agency said it found no evidence of a defect trend with the Volt and concluded that it does not believe electric vehicles are any less safe than gasoline-powered cars.
I'm quite certain this won't get as much coverage as the Volt fires. But at least we can put that issue to rest while the naysayers try to dig up another excuse to deter progress.
Despite simple-minded critics who blast high-speed rail development because they refuse to comprehend the value and necessity of infrastructure investments, California Governor Jerry Brown thew his support behind the new high-speed rail system in the Golden State in his second State of the State address.
Here's what the Governor had to say. . .
"The Central Valley Water Project was called a 'fantastic dream' that 'will not work.' The master plan for the interstate highway system in 1939 was derided as 'New Deal jitterbug economics.' In 1966, then-Mayor Johnson of Berkeley called BART a 'billion-dollar potential fiasco.' Similarly, the Panama Canal was for years thought to be impractical, and Benjamin Disraeli himself said of the Suez Canal: 'Totally impossible to be carried out.' The critics were wrong then, and they're wrong now.''
The bottom line is that high-speed rail offers tremendous environmental, economic and national security benefits that are well worth the investment. Trust me, future generations will thank us. Just as we have thanked previous generations for the interstate highway system.
Descending the nearby mountain I had hiked last Sunday afternoon, I slipped a bit, and almost sprained my ankle. Though I quickly recovered my balance, the brief incident caused me to think about how clever nature is; in the case of such a trauma, my body would have instantly provided pain and swelling to the injured joint, limiting motion, thus minimizing further injury.
Of course, this is one of many self-limiting systems that helps regulate individual organisms, and society at large. We laugh about the annual Darwin Awards, posthumously bestowed on people who accidentally kill themselves in the process of attempting extraordinarily stupid things, thus unintentionally performing acts of kindness, removing bits of “stupid DNA” from the human gene pool.
Similarly, the natural environment contains numerous systems to counteract the damage that humankind is inflicting on it. As the late comedian and social critic George Carlin pointed out, “I love these people who talk about ‘saving the Earth.’ Don’t worry about the planet; the planet will be just fine. It’s people who are going away. The Earth is in the process of shaking us off like a bad case of fleas — like a landlord who evicts tenants who don’t pay their rent.”
Of course, he was exactly correct; that’s precisely what’s occurring. Those of us who can observe this, but who have, thus far, been ineffective in preventing the destruction, describe it as “watching a train wreck in slow motion.” The processes by which all this happens at the geologic scale are so slow that untold ruin is occurring while we’re gradually coming to understand the magnitude of the disaster we’re creating. Imagine how much damage an individual would sustain to his ankle, if, after a sprain, there were a week’s delay in the experience of the pain and swelling.
Because ecosystems on a planetary scale change so slowly, there is no real way to assess the harm we’re doing to the atmosphere and oceans on a day-to-day basis. As a result, it is possible that we’ll be bickering about which countries should cut greenhouse gas emissions until the damage is so great that it can no longer be corrected.
How many people will die in extreme weather events? Starved through desertification of our farmland? Displaced from their homelands by global climate change? There’s no way to know. But maybe we should consider wrapping our planetary ankle right now, limiting further injury.
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